From Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ===== In the mid 1970s a group of young men leave the Connemara Gaeltacht, bound for London and filled with ambition for a better life. After thirty years, they meet again at the funeral of their youngest friend, Jackie. The film intersperses flashbacks of a lost youth in Ireland with the harsh realities of modern life. For some the thirty years has been hard, working in building sites across Britain. Slowly the truth about Jackie's death become clear and the friends discover they need each other more than ever. However, by the end, the friends split up for good, going their separate ways. ===== A loner gunman named Maek is assigned to kidnap a police informant named Iht, but Maek has a change of heart when he takes Iht to the 'hit house'. Maek is ordered to kill Iht, but because he only kills scum and has discovered that Iht isn't bad, he refuses, turning the gun on the enforcers who had hired him to murder Iht. A gun battle ensues during which Maek is wounded, but Iht grabs Maek's gun and shoots their way out of the mobsters' headquarters. The two men then escape on Maek's motorcycle. Maek tells Iht to leave at gun point but he won't and takes Maek back to his rooftop hide-out. There, over a period of time, Iht tends to Maek's wound and finds himself attracted to him. In fact, Maek is also attracted to Iht, but keeps it hidden, while Iht cares for his former would-be killer with great tenderness. While giving Maek a bath one day, Iht kisses him on the mouth. Maek reciprocates and the two men engage in a passionate sexual experience. The next day, however, a conflicted Maek demands that Iht go away and leave him alone. Iht returns home to his fiancée, Sai, but is no longer interested in continuing a relationship with her. Iht spends his days pining over Maek, and tracks down Maek's brother, Mhok, and their mother. Mhok is HIV positive, as the result of sexual abuse by his and Maek's stepfather, and their mother is dying of AIDS. Maek remains elusive, hiding from Iht when he visits the hideout, but leaving signs that he's there so Iht will return. Though Maek avoids making contact with Iht, eventually he goes to visit his mother and brother, and Iht corners him at the entrance to the building, declaring his love for Maek and stressing how much he misses him. They kiss passionately. They are unfortunately covertly observed by Sai, Iht's live-in fiancée. Maek's dream is to take his mother and brother away from Bangkok to the mountains of Mae Hong Son Province. But after Maek's mother overhears that Mhok has prostituted himself to survive after contracting AIDS from his stepfather, she commits suicide by hanging herself. The brothers take her down, and as they are rushing her from the apartment, she is killed by a gunshot fired by an unseen sniper. The bullet is presumably intended for Maek. Maek's former mobster employers are gunning for him and Iht. Maek decides to hunt them down first, and he succeeds in killing them. After Mohk informs Iht what Maek is doing, Iht goes to the capo's house to try to stop Maek, but he is too late and misses Maek by a second. Iht is injured when the capo's wife shoots at a clock that shatters in Iht's face. Maek, meanwhile meets his brother at the railway station to leave Bangkok for good. But before he can board the train, he is apprehended by the police and taken away. Mhok breaks down. He's the sole witness to his brother being apprehended. Years pass by. Iht visits Maek in prison and reveals that he was left blind in the final gunbattle with Maek's ex-boss. Mhok commits suicide while at a Hospice of Watphrabahtnamphu in Lopburi because he no longer has the energy to fight his disease. Eventually, Maek is released from prison, and Iht meets him. But before the two men can leave to start their life together, Maek is shot dead by a single bullet fired by an unseen assassin. A bewildered, blind Iht collapses over his lover's corpse, swearing his love for him again and again. Iht eventually regains his sight, and is finally able to view on his mobile phone a video recorded by Maek himself many years before, admitting that all along, he had loved Iht and that he would love him to his last breath. ===== A beautiful, nefarious senior female SS officer/doctor (Magall) creates a genetic, incubus-like mutant human beast (half man/half beast). The beast is a rapacious, squat, sex fiend which she uses to torture and molest female prisoners while the Nazis watch. The dwarfish beast is kept on a diet of mega-aphrodisiacs. In addition to the beast, the prisoners (male and female) are stripped naked and forced to endure group interrogations, electric shocks, systematic rape, and beatings. In the meantime a group of Italian partisans from the local village are preparing to attack the Nazi camp. ===== Deborah Dainton suffers from a limp as a result of polio. Treatment for the disease as a child has left her claustrophobic and reclusive in large crowds. Her rigid and controlled life is transformed when she meets a struggling artist, Leigh Hartley, at a party she begrudgingly attends to please her parents. Although she is not interested in Leigh, his persistence pays off when she finally agrees to go out on a date with him. Deborah is initially defensive toward Leigh, but he begins to grow on her. Leigh brings Deborah home for some coffee, where he asks to paint her portrait, which she declines but, eventually, allows. Some time later, Deborah persuades Leigh to see if he can sell some of his artwork to an art museum but his work is bluntly rejected by the curator. The couple then attempt to make love at Leigh’s home but Deborah suffers a panic attack, which embarrasses her. However, Leigh reassures her, saying that he doesn't mind and then proposes that Deborah move in with him, and she agrees to, much to the dismay of her parents. Deborah soon discovers that Leigh had been married. When she confronts him about this, he apologises and says he didn't want it to ruin their blossoming relationship. Eventually, Leigh and Deborah make plans to buy an antique shop for themselves to sell his art as well as any valuable antiques Deborah scouts out. However, Leigh believes that the couple cannot afford to do this any time soon and asks Deborah for help in a robbery that he says he will personally have nothing to do with. Deborah works at an antiques shop that is holding a value of £200,000 in a vault. Leigh says that if Deborah offers security details of the antiques shop to his thieving associates, the couple will receive some of the stolen money to open their shop. Deborah is uncomfortable with this but, learning that Leigh would be forced into participating in the theft regardless of whether she aids the heist or not, she agrees to help. Soon, Deborah finds herself coerced into physically participating in the heist when a guard the thieves had bribed into allowing them entrance inside the antiques shop takes ill. The robbery goes successfully and, upon questioning by police, Deborah avoids suspicion. However, the guilt of her participation in the theft leaves Deborah sick of herself and of Leigh. Sometime later, a woman who had previously shown up at Leigh’s place before the robbery is revealed to not be whom Leigh said she was. Leigh had told Deborah that the woman was a neighbour of his father's and that she had dropped by his home to inform him that he was ill. However, when Deborah runs into this woman again at Leigh’s home after the robbery, she learns from the woman that she is actually Leigh’s mother and that his father is doing just fine. Deborah does some more digging and comes to the conclusion that her introduction with Leigh at the party had been planned by Leigh and his associates. Deborah discovers that she was always going to be the insider who let the thieves into the antiques shop - there had never been a bribed guard in the first place. When she confronts Leigh about her revelations, he eventually confesses. However, he then stresses that he has grown to truly love her. Leigh begs Deborah to stay with him but, upon realising that it is hopeless, he ponders, "Is that how fragile love is? All at once everything? All at once nothing?" Alone again, Deborah posts a letter to the inspector investigating the robbery and the audience is left to assume the letter is a confession of the names of all involved in the theft. ===== Four young women have a series of wild and raucous adventures during a bachelorette party in Las Vegas. ===== Ting is a struggling young actress who one day is noticed by Royal Thai Police Lieutenant Te, who heads up the crimes re-enactment unit and is always on the look-out for fresh talent. Ting is put to work playing the victim in photo shoots with the hand- cuffed accused killers and rapists at crime scenes. The photos are published in Thai newspapers as a means of the police publicizing that they have closed the case and done their jobs. Ting takes a liking to her job, and is so convincing that even the criminals are moved to remorseful tears. Her popularity soaring, Ting is signed to play the lead in a film based on one of her true-crime re-enactments - the murder of Meen, a former Miss Thailand whose husband, Dr. Charun, is accused of the crime. Ting then starts experiencing some scary visions that lead her believe that Meen's longtime friend, Fai, is responsible. Then it is revealed that the events were actually entirely a film about Meen's murder, and Ting is merely a character being played by another actress named May. But while on the set filming the movie, in real life May was really possessed by a spirit that is very obsessed with her. ===== The film protagonizes Allan, a professional bodyguard based in Beijing whose tactical and martial skills and quick thinking are well shown as having protected several statesmen from assassination. He is hired by James, a wealthy Hong Kong businessman, to protect his beautiful girlfriend Michelle Leung, who is the only surviving witness to a murder, after all the others had been eliminated in various ways. Allan arrives at the girl's home in Hong Kong to meet with two somewhat incompetent plainclothes police officers - Fat Po and Ken - in charge of her safety. Soon after meeting Miss Leung, he proves the entire contingent of current bodyguards incapable in his fight with them during what he thought was an assassination attempt, and they are all fired. He also disarms both policemen. The bodyguard inspects the entire home and vehicles for bugs, bombs and layout, and installs security cameras covering various areas, including Michelle's bedroom, which he can monitor through a personal device. She is unhappy about this and, after attempting unsuccessfully to order him out, manages to knock down the camera with a frying pan. He also gives her a panic button. During a road trip, hitmen attempt to assassinate her but fail due to Allan's strategy of having a decoy VIP car driven by Fat Po and the girl riding with him in the trailing van. Michelle tries getting away from her bodyguard by complaining to her boyfriend and by sneaking away during the night with the younger officer, Ken, in a car. Allan reassures James and nonchalantly makes himself visible in the car's headlights as the escapees start it; Michelle has a fit as she goes back into the house. Michelle eventually goes to the shopping mall accompanied only by the two cops. The mall, however, is staked out by operatives. One is about to murder her by firing his suppressed weapon through a stall partition, but is shot first by Allan, who had followed them and was in the stall beyond hers. This initiates a gunfight through the mall; Allan takes out multiple hitmen while shielding the girl. Eventually he realizes all the hitmen have two pens in their front pocket as identification, and poses as one to take more out. During their escape Fat Po is wounded. One of the assassins who posed as a police officer and killed by Allan during the shoot-out is the younger brother of Killer Wong, a former Chinese soldier who fought together with his brother. Wong swears vengeance on Allan. In the meantime, Michelle shows her attraction, which understandably had been growing since the beginning, to Allan after using her transmitter to make him storm the bedroom and "protect" her. He leaves to continue his duties, leaving her panting behind the door. Things come to a climax when the transmitter sounds again, this time in earnest. Wong and a group of assassins storm the penthouse and start a gunfight. Both policemen and Allan rush to protect her; Ken, the younger cop, was killed by Wong himself. Allan uses his firearm and martial skills and, after darkening the room, cunningly takes out all the assailants until only Wong is left. He and Wong have a long fight, complicated by leaking gas which threatens to black both out. Eventually Wong recovers a pistol and takes the girl hostage. James arrives unawares, and attempts to dissuade Wong from shooting by offering to pay Wong, but Wong refuses. When an opportunity arrises as the assassin backs away, Allan shields Michelle with his body and takes two shots but manages to pull out a bayonet, with which he had been previously wounded, from his chest and throw it towards Wong's neck, killing him. Before the film ends, James drives Michelle to the border between Hong Kong and mainland China as she tries to see Allan a final time before he heads back to China but guards at the checkpoint deny them entry into the mainland. However, Allan leaves Michelle with the box that held the watch she had given to him as a present and he had tried to refuse. However, when she opens it, the box contains his own watch, while Fat Po receives Allan's payment money to fund his son's school tuition. Michelle cries out Allan's name just as his car drives away from the border back into the mainland. ===== The story follows 16-year-old Dulcie Morrigan Jones through journeys and trials. Her mother moves them both from Connecticut to California after Dulcie's father dies an accidental death. However Dulcie is unimpressed by this level of life change and seeks to solve this problem by stealing her father's old pick-up truck, setting out across America heading for her former home. ===== Wile E. Coyote emerges from the cave, carrying a foldable elevator to capture Bugs Bunny. The rabbit is successfully captured by the coyote and is placed inside a sack. But Bugs is able to make some breathing room for himself by puncturing holes in the sack using his carrot. He then asks the coyote, "Ehhh, whatya got in the bag, Doc?" to which the coyote apologizes for being rude even to his breakfast. The coyote then proceeds to introduce himself through a calling card (LABEL: Wile E. Coyote, Genius, Have brain, Will travel). The rabbit comments, "Have brain, eh? Hey that must be very handy at times." Upon hearing this, the coyote begins a long reply about how his brain will prove handy by predicting that the Bugs will escape from the bag, having bought some time through the coyote's lengthy reply. Wile E. then concludes that he and Bugs both know that there is nothing left in the bag, but Bugs questions him otherwise, having got out of the bag just as the coyote predicted. Bugs is proven to be right, when Wile E.'s face turns grey from the explosion inside the bag. This buys the rabbit some time to escape, and the coyote promptly chases him. But what Wile E. does not know that Bugs has rigged some dynamite inside his foldable elevator, and when he presses a button to descend down the rabbit hole, the elevator explodes, with the wall and door panels toppling and his whole body becoming grey due to the explosion ("Poor chap, he had his chance. Now he must take the consequences!"). The coyote retreats back to his cave, carrying all of the panels of the destroyed elevator and accidentally dropping one behind while he runs back. The coyote, inside his cave, has built a computer called the UNIVAC, a device that MIGHT help him capture the rabbit once and for all. In the first attempt to capture Bugs using the UNIVAC as an assistant tool, Wile E. spies on Bugs going down his rabbit hole and securing it with a rotating- type combination lock. On the UNIVAC, Wile E. presses the following buttons in sequence: RABBIT->HOLE->COMBINATION LOCK, and programs the computer to output a piece of paper which contains the combination pattern needed to unlock Bugs's hole. Later that night, Wile E. sneaks in to unlock the lock, but Bugs (reading a book) seems to be prepared for this when he hears the coyote unlocking the lock, and he throws an "emergency" banana peeling to the bottom of the ladder from a glassbox (Label: In case of coyote, break glass). Surely enough, as Wile E. descends down the ladder, he slips and throws himself off a cliff through a "Coyote Disposal Chute". Morning then comes, and Bugs is busy preparing his breakfast. Again, Wile E., on his second attempt to capture Bugs, spies on him preparing toasted carrots. This prompts the coyote to press the following buttons on the UNIVAC in sequence: BREAKFAST->TOASTER->CARROTS. The computer then offers a solution: substituting hand grenades for the carrots. The coyote then proceeds to the hole to make the substitution. It succeeds, but the toaster's spring malfunctions, springing the grenades back to the surface where Wile E. stands ("OH NO!"). With the rabbit missing the supposed "toasted carrots" for breakfast, he comments: "One of these days, I'm gonna have to have that spring fixed." On his third attempt, Wile E., clueless, presses the following buttons on the UNIVAC: WHAT->NOW. Without showing to the audience the contents of the paper, the computer offers another solution: suck up the rabbit using a bathroom plunger. The coyote then proceeds to do the task, but Bugs counteracts it by installing a chute through another hole, which sucks up a butterfly and the coyote! Upon being sucked, the Wile E. retreats. The fourth attempt of Wile E. now employs slipping a dynamite (TNT stick) into the vacuum cleaner that Bugs currently uses to clean up his place. The plan works, but the dynamite does not explode. Bugs then climbs up to throw the trash that the vacuum cleaner has gathered to the nearest trash can (where Wile E. is hiding inside). Smokes emerging from inside indicate that the rabbit has re-ignited the fuse of the dynamite, and the dynamite explodes, warping the trash can in the process. Wile E.'s greyed- out head appears momentarily until the lid (which was launched upward when the dynamite exploded) knocks him out. On the fifth and final attempt, the computer suggests trying a booby trap in the carrot patch. Wile E. promptly does this, rigging up a carrot in the patch to a boulder (which should fall off and crush Bugs), and hides. The rabbit then climbs up to harvest the carrots while singing ("Carrots wait for no one, so I pick them now, before they are eaten, by some slobby cow..."), and picks up the rigged carrot. But the trap does not activate, and, in frustration, Wile E. proceeds to check whether the trap works or not. Upon touching the rope, the trap activates, making the rock boulder fall. Now panicking, Wile E. inputs on the UNIVAC: "ROCK -> FALLING. WHAT'LL I DO?" To which the computer responds, "Go back and take your medicine." The coyote then scurries back to the carrot patch, and gets crushed by the boulder. It is then revealed that the brain behind the UNIVAC is actually Bugs, who says, "Of course the real beauty of this machine, is that it has only one moving part" shaking his head and swirling his eyebrows. ===== Jenny and Dan wake up from the events of last night where Jenny mocks Dan for doing "the wave". Dan figures that he should explain to Serena what "the wave" meant, while Jenny goes to Blair for help with Chuck. Serena on the other hand thought that Dan hated her when he did "the wave" and goes to Blair's place to ask what the staredown meant at the party. Blair for her part does not want anything to do with Serena, and hopes she doesn't show up at Chuck's father Bart's annual brunch. After telling Serena that she knows what transpired between her and Nate the night Serena left, Blair orders Serena to leave her and her group alone. Meanwhile, at the Palace, Nate and Dan encounter each other waiting for Serena. Chuck sees Dan and it almost comes to blows; Nate restrains Chuck and leads him off to Bart's brunch. At the Waldorf penthouse, Jenny confides to Blair about Chuck, and the junior assures her that Chuck hasn't said anything yet. Jenny then helps Blair dress up for the brunch, and as a reward, Blair gives her one of her mother Eleanor's old dresses. Meanwhile, Rufus meets Lily in Brooklyn, and tells her that Dan "might be the guy Serena needs." Dan and Serena meet outside the Palace, and after explaining about "the wave," he invites her to eat, just as Lily arrives and orders Serena to proceed to the brunch. Dragging Dan along, Serena goes to the brunch, infuriating Blair with her presence. Nate surreptitiously gives Serena a key to Chuck's suite so that the two can talk out from under the watchful eyes of Blair; Chuck gives Blair an identical key, telling her to grab Nate and "seal the deal." Blair and Nate, already in action, tumble into the suite only to be greeted by Serena. Blair flips out, and runs to find Dan to tell him about Serena's past. Meanwhile, as Dan steps outside, he sees Lily and Bart discussing their relationship; Lily catches sight of Dan and admonishes him, demanding that he tell no one what he overheard. Blair finally catches up with Dan, which led to Serena coming clean to her date. A disappointed Dan is further enraged when Chuck insults Jenny, and throws a second punch at the would-be rapist. Serena tries to explain herself to Dan, but he leaves the brunch without her. Back at the Humphrey apartment, Dan relates to Rufus and Jenny that he "...found Serena, but then [he] lost her." Blair and Nate make up yet again, and Jenny tries out her new dress as Serena throws away her cellphone that contained pictures of her, Blair, Chuck and Nate. ===== A far-right candidate is elected to the French presidency, sparking riots in Paris. Hoping to escape Paris but needing cash, a street gang made up of Muslim Arab youths; Alex (Aurélien Wiik), Tom (David Saracino), Farid (Chems Dahmani), the pregnant Yasmine (Karina Testa), and her brother Sami (Adel Bencherif) take advantage of the chaos to pull off a robbery. Sami is shot and the group splits up: Alex and Yasmine take Sami to a hospital, and Tom and Farid take the money to a family-run inn near the border. Innkeepers Gilberte (Estelle Lefébure) and Klaudia (Amélie Daure) claim their rooms are free and seduce the two men. At the hospital, the emergency room staff report Sami's injury to the police. Sami insists Yasmine run before the police catch her. His dying wish is that Yasmine not have an abortion. Alex and Yasmine flee, leaving the fatally wounded Sami behind. Alex and Yasmine phone their friends for directions to the inn. Tom and Farid give them directions but soon after are brutally attacked by Gilberte, Klaudia, and Goetz (Samuel Le Bihan). When Tom and Farid try to escape, Goetz runs their car off a cliff. The injured men wander into a mine shaft, where Tom is quickly recaptured. Farid must fend for himself in the mine with the family's rejected children. Unaware of the danger, Alex and Yasmine arrive at the inn and are captured by the family. Alex and Yasmine are chained in a muddy-floored pig pen. Alex breaks Yasmine's chains and allows her to escape. When the captors discover Yasmine's escape, the family patriarch, von Geisler (Jean-Pierre Jorris), cuts Alex's Achilles tendons. Meanwhile, in the mine, Farid finds the storage area for the victims. The family realizes something is amiss in the mine, and Hans (Joël Lefrançois) chases Farid into a boiler where Farid is cooked alive. Yasmine flees from the inn but is quickly picked back up by Goetz. Back in the pig pen, von Geisler personally grants Alex's last wish, which is to be put down quickly. Initially, von Geisler wishes for Karl (Patrick Ligardes) to "wed" Yasmine to carry on the family lineage, but when von Geisler learns she is already pregnant, he entrusts her to the meek Eva (Maud Forget), who tells Yasmine that she came to the family in a very similar manner and that she is obedient because the family promised her that her parents would return for her some day. Eva also tells Yasmine of the rejected homeless children she and Hans care for in the mine. Eventually, Eva leads Yasmine down to dinner, where the family awaits her. Von Geisler is revealed to be a former (and still practicing) Nazi who's lived at the inn since the end of WWII. Von Geisler offers up a toast to the new blood and Yasmine quickly grabs a large knife and takes von Geisler hostage. Hans grabs a shotgun and shoots and kills von Geisler in the confusion; Karl shoots Hans dead in turn. Yasmine escapes and is chased by Karl and Goetz into the mine. Yasmine eventually makes her way into one of the body storage rooms where she fights with Goetz. After a bloody struggle, she repeatedly hits him with an axe before impaling him on a rotating table saw. Karl catches Yasmine as she tries to return to the surface, but Eva comes to the rescue, blowing off Karl's head with a shotgun. Yasmine searches for car keys to escape, but is ambushed by Gilberte and Klaudia bearing sub-machine guns. During the shootout, Yasmine hits a gas tank, blowing up the room. Gilberte survives the explosion and attempts to kill Yasmine only to have her throat torn out by her. With everyone else in the neo-Nazi family dead, Yasmine tries to persuade Eva to leave with her, but Eva stays to take care of the children in the mine. On the road, Yasmine runs into a police blockade near the border where she surrenders to the authorities. ===== The story is set in the polis known as Cartan Null, where five explorers are preparing to send cloned copies of themselves on a scientific journey into a black hole. As they are about to make the dive a biographer from Earth and his daughter arrive with intentions of writing their story. ===== London was a dangerous place to live during World War II, and many children were evacuated to Ireland or the United States. Elizabeth White, an only child, is sent to live with her mother's childhood friend and her large and bustling family, the O'Connors, in Ireland. Although the mothers were childhood friends, their relationship has become one-sided with Elizabeth's mother, Violet, rarely corresponding and Aisling's mother, Eileen, remembering their closeness with detailed letters. Violet believes even though Ireland is not as refined as London, it is a safe place for her daughter. Elizabeth quickly becomes fast friends with Aisling, who is also ten years old. The novel follows these two girls as they grow into teenagers and young women. Aisling is outgoing and bold, while Elizabeth is quiet with all the manners of a well-bred child. Elizabeth is shown a caring, loving family and begins to feel part of a real family, as opposed to the cold environment of her parents' house. After the war ends and Elizabeth returns to London, their friendship continues for decades. They remain in close contact through letters, supporting each other through their marriages. Their lives remain intertwined, each facing her own relationships, successes, and failures. ===== The Stooges play three sets of identical triplets, born one year apart. All nine brothers lose track of each other after World War II, unaware that they are all living in the same city. One set (Moe, Larry and Joe) is single, one (Max, Louie and Jack) is married, and the other (Morris, Luke and Jeff) is engaged. The brothers can be told apart by their neckwear (the single set wears striped ties, the married wear no ties, and the engaged set wear bow ties). Trouble brews when the engaged set of brothers decided to celebrate at a local nightclub. Before they arrive, the unmarried set show up, followed by the fiancees of their brothers. The ladies start hugging and kissing the unsuspecting brothers. Within minutes, the wives of the married brothers show up, thinking their husbands are cheating on them. Believing that their fiancees are already married, the girls give the single brothers the engagement rings before the three leave. As soon as the brothers leave, the engaged set shows up and the girls let them have it. When the wives get back to their husbands, who have been cooking all day, they agree to go back to the club to prove they were never there. Naturally, the waiter (Frank Sully) believes that they were there, and when the wives let their husbands have it, the engaged set shows up. After a reunion and introduction, the engaged brothers explain that they were beaten by their fiancees, but did not see the wives. The fiancees then return and see the six brothers; altering seemingly working out the confusion, the girls ask for their rings. When more confusion brews, the unmarried brothers arrive, and give the girls back their rings. The entire group decides to go back to the married sets' house to celebrate the reunion, while the married brothers ask the waiter (who has been knocked unconscious the whole time) for some drinks. The furious waiter then chases the group, and hilarity sets in when the engaged set and then the single set come in; the waiter only sees one set at a time, and assumes that there is just one set of brothers. In the end, the waiter sees all nine brothers simultaneously and hits himself with his cleaver. ===== The novel is set during the 1943 Allied occupation of the fictional Italian coastal town of Adano (based on the real city of Licata). The main character, Major Victor Joppolo, is the temporary administrator of the town during the occupation and is often referred to by the people of Adano as Mister Major. Joppolo is an idealistic Italian-American who wants to bring justice and compassion to Adano, which has been hardened by the authoritarian Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini. When Major Joppolo arrives at Adano, he immediately asks the people of the town what they need the most. The first spokesman of the town tells Joppolo that they are in great need of food for some people have not eaten in days. The second spokesman of the town argues that the town's immediate necessity is a new bell. Joppolo is touched by the story of a 700-year-old bell that was taken away from the town by the Fascists. Mussolini had ordered that the bell be removed from the town and be melted to make weapons for the war. The people were greatly attached to the bell. To them, the bell was a source of pride and unity. Joppolo immediately sees the importance of the bell and makes persistent attempts to locate the bell. In addition to finding the bell, Joppolo spends time trying to supply the town with food and other necessities. He soon discovers that the town has no fish because the fishermen have not gone out in months. When he speaks to Tomasino, the leader of the fishermen, Joppolo finds out that this is because the fisherman were forced to pay 'protection' money to the corrupt Fascist government simply to go out fishing. Joppolo tells Tomasino that he will not have to pay any bribes or extra taxes to the Americans for fishing. At first, Tomasino is convinced that Joppolo is lying to him and that it is some sort of cruel trick. Tomasino hates persons of authority because he believes that they are all power-hungry and corrupt. It takes extensive persuading to convince Tomasino that Joppolo's intentions are good and that his only want is for the people of Adano to have fish. Joppolo is faced with another problem in which he had to countermand the order of General Marvin in order to do what was best for the town. General Marvin is an army general who happens to pass through Adano. All day his armored car has been slowed by mule carts that are blocking the road. Finally, on the road to Adano, he loses his temper and orders that his men shoot a mule that refuses to move from the center of the road. When General Marvin arrived at Adano, he orders Major Joppolo to keep all mule carts out of the town. Joppolo is disheartened but complies with the order. Immediately, he calls for a meeting with all the officials of the town and tells them of the new order, but also that he is prepared to find a solution. The next day, Joppolo decides that countermanding General Marvin's order is more important than his own position as mayor of the town; therefore he tells the people of Adano that they may bring their carts into the town (among other things, the town has no source of water without the carts). Later in the novel, Joppolo gains the admiration of U.S. Navy Lieutenant Livingston, who invites Joppolo to come have a drink with some of his Navy buddies. While there, Joppolo tells them of the town's need for a bell. Commander Robertson realizes that they might have exactly the bell that Adano needs, aboard the USS Corelli. The arrival of the bell to the town coincides with a party that the town is hosting for Joppolo to express their gratitude for all of his great doings. Although the bell has arrived at the town, the engineers say that it will take them until the next morning to install it. At the same time Sergeant Borth, one of Major Joppolo's aides, finds a note from General Marvin that says that Joppolo has been relieved of duty as administrator of Adano because he countermanded General Marvin's order. Sergeant Borth tells Joppolo that he has been relieved from duty while they are at the party and hands Joppolo the order. The next morning, Joppolo leaves Adano, but does not say goodbye to anyone because he does not think he could. As the jeep is driving away, he tells the driver to stop for a moment. They hear the clear sound of a loud bell. ===== Confederate veteran O'Meara (Steiger) refuses to accept defeat following the surrender of General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Courthouse. He renounces his family and the United States, travels west, and joins the Native American Sioux tribe, and takes a wife (Sara Montiel). When the US Army builds a fort on Sioux lands and fighting breaks out between the Army and the Sioux, O'Meara must make a difficult decision. ===== Dog Days of Summer opens with adult Philip Walden paying a visit to the unnamed town where he grew up. In a voiceover, he expresses his disgust over the ramshackle, broken down state of things, and, with trepidation, recalls "the summer I unwillingly grew up." That summer kicked off with the arrival of Eli (Will Patton), as witnessed by preteen Philip (Devon Gearhart) and best friend Jackson (Colin Ford). The two boys stare in awe as Eli tumbles out of his ancient-looking car and invite the townsfolk over to look at his amazing model circus. It's not long before Eli convinces the mayor to pay him to create a scale model of the town for the upcoming bisesquicentennial. Philip and Jackson, both dealing with troubles at home, glom onto Eli, using his old camera to take pictures of the town for Eli to use as inspiration. Despite its picture-perfect surface, Philip's town is anything but idyllic. His father is a minister, but not exactly the heroic kind—more the philandering kind. Jackson's blind father drinks his life away, mourning the loss of Jackson's mother to a car crash. Both boys are lost in a sea of adult emotions, with neither the maturity nor the resources to cope. As the boys take pictures for Eli, they watch the lives of those they love unraveling around them, and struggle to hang onto their dream of an uncomplicated life where the sun is always high and the river is filled with fish... ===== The series portrays the Western Police Headquarters Criminal Investigation Division's Sergeant Keisuke Daimon, played by Tetsuya Watari and his subordinates, dubbed the , and their superior, Section Chief Kogure, played by Yujiro Ishihara, as they fight against Tokyo's underworld. With its flashy, over-the-top explosion scenes, and car stunts, this series gained a reputation as a macho drama. It is representative of the police & detective dramas of the 1980s. ===== The film begins in the city of London, where a 30-year-old man sits in front of a university board of 3 women. Apparently, the subject the man is being assessed in is Psychology of women, so hence the unisexual university board. The man is yet again told he has failed completely in the subject, and as he exits the university he is identified as Cheng (Ekin Cheng) by his colleagues. Not giving up, Cheng decides to continue with the subject, but at this time, his girlfriend decides to end their relationship. With no females to talk about and understand, he cannot continue with his essay. On top of that, his mother is getting increasingly worried that he will not settle down, and urges him to marry. She introduces him to her friend's daughter Yoyo (Charlene Choi), and tells them it is a good idea to marry. In this modern world, both Yoyo and Cheng sees this as ridiculous, but Cheng's grandmother is 93 years old and she wants Cheng to marry too. So in the end, Cheng is forced to marry Yoyo, who is 18 at the time. They make a contract that they will divorce within a year and no sexual relationship will occur. Yoyo agrees based on the fact that Cheng is quite wealthy, and she sees it as an opportunity to feed her lifestyle. By chance, Cheng becomes Yoyo's teacher, and she has to hide the relationship from her school and her crush Kelvin. As life continues slowly, various things occur, and Yoyo slowly finds herself falling in love with Cheng. ===== Dexter (Stanley Baxter) and Juliet (Sally Smith) Munro are a young newly-married couple who move to a run-down country cottage in hopes of escaping from Juliet's overbearing father, Sir Beverly Grant (James Robertson Justice). However, the couple is soon confronted by their new home's battered structure. Juliet's father offers help from a reputable building firm, but this help is refused by Dexter, who wants to remain independent of Juliet's father. Dexter sees an ad in the local paper and employs Josh (Ronnie Barker) to do the work. The house is finished, although well over budget, but eventually burns down because Juliet's father had changed the fuses from 15 amp to 30 amp, causing the fire. Roddy, their estate agent (and aspiring actor) (Leslie Phillips) saves the day, telling Dexter and Juliet that a motorway is soon to be built on their land, so they can sell at a profit, and gives them the keys to a cottage requiring no work in the adjoining field. ===== The Stooges have lost their jobs. Adding insult to injury, they received a letter from Dad with the news that he requires surgery. To help pay for the operation, the father suggests the boys search for uranium on his mining property. The boys locate the uranium, but run afoul of a load of dynamite. Then, when they are trying to fix the water pump, it starts gushing oil. Joe tries to cork it by sitting on it, but he is sent flying into the air. When he wishes it would stop, it does, much to Moe and Larry's dismay. Joe manages to get the oil started again, and the boys are in the money. ===== A group of three mobstersSteele, Lomax, and Billyenter a hotel room and await Aubrey, a local man who owes them money. Aubrey arrives shortly after with his male lover, and Lomax shoves a burning cigar down his throat before beating him to death. Aubrey's lover leaps to his death from the 12th-floor window. Afterward, Steele, Lomax, and Billy drive through the countryside. Billy is remorseful for the crime they have perpetrated, while Steele and Lomax are indifferent. During a stop at a grocery store, Steele and Lomax relentlessly terrorize a female clerk, tearing off her blouse before firing a gun above her head and pouring Coca-Cola on her. The next day, the three men seek lodging at a remote farmhouse where an impassive young woman, Lisa, lives a solitary existence with her disabled grandfather. She is notably evasive toward the men but agrees to allow them to spend the night when they claim that Billy has fallen ill. When the police arrive searching for the men, Lomax and Steele threaten Lisa with a gun, and she wards the officers away, assuring them she has not seen the criminals. At dinner, Lisa serves the three men a chicken she slaughtered that morning. While the men eat, Lisa attempts to cut herself in the upstairs bathroom, but is interrupted by Billy, who knocks on the door. In the middle of the night, Lomax attempts to rape Lisa while she sleeps, but she stops the assault by slashing his neck with a straight razor, killing him. She drags his body to the bathtub, where she dismembers it with a hatchet. She stuffs Lomax's dismembered body parts into a steamer trunk. The following morning, Billy helps her carry the trunk into the attic, unaware of its contents. When he discovers blood dripping out of it, he opens the lid to find Lomax's body inside. Lisa lies and claims that Steele killed him. Billy and Lisa go into the woods to talk about the incident away from Steele. Lisa calmly unveils a straight razor, but Billy takes it from her hand, presuming she was passing it over to him to arm himself against Steele. Upon returning to the house, Lisa makes Steele a sandwich in the kitchen. He comments on her physical beauty, to which she does not respond, and this enrages him. Steele drags Lisa upstairs to the parlor where her grandfather is watching television, and the two scuffle. She manages to grab a hatchet near the fireplace and kills him with it. When Billy returns, he finds Steele missing; Lisa claims he was gone when she returned. Lisa prepares tomato soup for Billy and her grandfather in the upstairs parlor. While eating the soup, Billy finds Steele's ring inside his bowl. He watches in horror as Steele's body dislodges from the chimney flue and tumbles out of the fireplace. Lisa pays no attention, quietly humming while feeding her grandfather. Billy flees in horror and runs outside where he is shot to death by police who have returned in search of the trio. ===== Carmen Maura plays a woman who discovers a treasure in the apartment of a dead man. Unfortunately, the neighbors have been waiting for the man to die so that they can seize the money for themselves. ===== During Boys' Week at racially integrated North High School, students Steve Smith, Gus Ruffo and Billy Anderson are elected to temporarily hold the city offices of district attorney, judge and chief of police. After Jewish tailor Herman refuses to pay protection money to Louis Garrett, Garrett's gang bombs his store. Herman and the student who was with him survive the blast, but Herman is later murdered by Garrett after he again refuses to pay. Garrett is acquitted of murder charges because he has a perfect alibi. Steve, who had taken the stand during the trial, is humiliated by his experience as a witness because he failed to prove Garrett's guilt. Billy, Gus and Sam Weber decide to investigate for themselves and discover part of a cufflink at the scene of the murder. They break into Garrett's bedroom, but Garrett is tipped off by Morry Dover, a student who is competing with Steve for the affection of Gay Merrick. While at Garrett's club with Gay, Dover introduces her to Toledo, Garrett's thug. Garrett shoots Billy, killing him, and frames Gus for the murder and robbery. After the funeral, Steve blames Gay for telling Dover about the plan to break into Garrett's apartment. He gathers all the student body presidents from neighboring high schools and formulates a plan to arrest Garrett. With the help of hundreds of students, Steve captures Garrett and takes him to a local brickyard for a secret trial. In the meantime, Gay and Dover, in an attempt to redeem themselves, capture Toledo's attentions, although Gay is forced to seduce him. Garrett confesses after the students suspend him over a pit filled with rats, and the mob marches him to city hall, with the assistance of the police, to get a witnessed confession. Meanwhile, the real "big" boss of Garrett's protection racket leaves town. After eluding Toledo, Gay arrives to witness Garrett's arrest. Garrett signs the confession; Gus is released; and Steve, Gay and Dover sit in a car she temporarily borrowed to get there, listening to a broadcast about themselves until a police officer arrests them for being in a stolen vehicle. ===== A group of elegant monster dogs in top hats, tails, and bustle skirts become instant celebrities when they come to New York in 2008. Refugees from a town whose residents had been utterly isolated for a hundred years, the dogs retain the nineteenth- century Germanic culture of the humans who created them. They are wealthy and glamorous and seem to lead charmed lives – but they find adjusting to the modern world difficult, and when a young woman, Cleo Pira, befriends them, she discovers that a strange, incurable illness threatens them all with extinction. When the dogs construct their dream home, a fantastic castle on the Lower East Side, and barricade themselves inside, Cleo finds herself one of the few human witnesses to a mad, lavish party that may prove to be the final act in the drama of the lives of the monster dogs. ===== The Merrick gang pull off a diamond robbery and murder a police officer investigating their crimes. A paper with the cryptic writing "AD 1935" is found on the murdered officer's body. Outsmarted by the gang, the police assistant commissioner and Inspector Cardby decide to have Pete Borden, a new recruit who the gang would not know, go undercover and join the gang. When he enters a casino, Natascha is sent to check him out. He pretends to be looking for a fence to sell his stolen jewelry. Reassured, the gang recruits him. Merrick (the gang's mysterious leader who never lets anyone see him face to face) first assigns him to check on Delaney, a crooked bookie. Pete then meets Newell, a lawyer. The gang then installs Pete in a flat; he tosses a note containing the address to a policeman when no one is looking. Two police detectives let the flat opposite. One of them is deaf, and equipped with binoculars, can read Pete's lips when he silently mouths what he has discovered. The gang plans to steal the necklace of prominent socialite Lady Mead at a party she is giving. Pete goes to the party with Natascha, while the police attend the party undercover, and send Lady Sybil, a society gossip columnist, to observe. At the party, Pete runs into Conway Addison, a lawyer. The lights go out, and when it goes back on, Natascha has escaped with the stolen necklace. Inspector Cardby pretends to arrest Pete, but lets him go once they are outside. Natascha later visits Pete and tells him that she wants to leave the gang, but one of the crooks is eavesdropping. She claims Merrick sent her to test Pete. The gangster checks with his boss and finds out she was lying. With his plans being tipped off to the police, Merrick soon suspects Pete. This is confirmed when the police notify the next target, who notifies Merrick. The mastermind pretends to accept Pete's proposal for a robbery. However, while the police are waiting for them there, the gang actually strike elsewhere. Pete is taken to an isolated country house. Merrick finally lets Pete see him, as he intends to kill the policeman; it is Conway Addison. Addison explains he took to crime after becoming bored with his job. While Natascha is being taken to the same place, she causes the car to go off the road. She then tells a police officer where she was heading. To avoid tipping Merrick off, she shows up at the house. Merrick, having decided to retire, tries to gas the whole gang, Pete and Natasha to cover his tracks. However, Pete manages to break out of the locked room, and the police arrive in time to shoot Conway and arrest the rest of his gang. ===== ===== Outside the Jingling Bros. Circus (a parody of the Ringling Bros. Circus), a hospital ward clerk hauls out the lion in a wheelchair who has had a nervous breakdown. Watching this, a mouse expresses his disappointment about the lion being "mouse shocked" and then tells about what happened before. We are then given a flashback about the lion being king of the beasts, because all the animals are scared to death of the lion, who roars and gets everyone out of his sight. His loud roar frightens every last animal, including a gorilla who screams, shrinks down in size, and runs off. Then one day, the lion meets a mouse, who says "Boo" and makes the lion double take and feel scared and scream two times at him. He hides up a tree, feels frightened, and comes down from the tree, but stands up, and roars at the mouse, who unfortunately proves to be tougher than him, and eventually walks away, but mistakenly steps into the wrong direction by going into the lion's mouth. The lion succeeds in catching the mouse, and tries to eat him to hopefully kill him, but is so distracted of trying to do so, that he doesn't realize in the next moment, that when he fails to notice that he is missing a tooth, which fell out of his mouth from a gum between the rest of his teeth, that the mouse is hiding in after he inadvertently walks into the wrong direction into the lion's mouth, it is too late for the lion to see his missing tooth. The mouse then gets out of the lion's mouth and rolls out his tongue like a window shade. The lion grabs the mouse with his tongue, and pulls him in, and tries swallowing him while the mouse finds himself inside the stomach. As he finds two bones lying inside, the mouse plays the ribs inside the lion like an xylophone. The lion tries to kill the mouse by lighting a bomb with a match, putting it in his mouth, and swallowing it. When the mouse sees the bomb inside the lion's stomach and screams, he escapes the lion's mouth again and flees from the beast. The lion feels smug until he realizes the bomb is still inside him, which makes him scream for help, and blows up, but can't blow him up when he survives the explosion and gets his tail bitten by the mouse, who grabs and bites the lion's tail and angers him even more. While the lion looks for the mouse, the mouse sneaks inside his head and then pulls out firecrackers, which blow up. The mouse cooks the lion's tail, causing him to roar in pain, and when he goes to the lake to cool it down, the mouse pulls out a safety pin to poke on his rear. The lion then tries to hide from the mouse, but finds him in the following areas: * On top of a palm tree * Under a rock * In an abandoned hut * In a gun that the lion fires * In a bed * In a reflection of the mirror * In a bottle of whiskey The mouse finally peeves the lion in different ways, and when he is now a nervous wreck, the lion runs out of the hut and around the jungle. After the story, the mouse wonders how anyone could be afraid of a mouse when another mouse shows up and says "Boo." and despite being a mouse himself, he says 'A mouse.' and screams and runs off like the lion did. ===== Taking place some months after the events described in When Gravity Fails, Marîd Audran, once a small-time hustler on the streets of the decadent Budayeen, finds himself as one of the lieutenants of Friedlander Bey or "Papa", the most influential man in the city. With his independence taken from him and being stationed as a liaison between Bey and the local law enforcement under the supervision of Sergeant Hajjar, Audran is forced to pair up with his colleague Jirji Shaknahyi in order to track down yet another serial killer who likes to remove some of the internal organs of their victims. Although Hajjar does not share his theory about the murders being connected, Audran begins to suspect there might be more to the recent killings than meets the eye, and wonders where the so-called Phoenix File fits in. ===== After World War II, a German Jew named Hans Müller (Kirk Douglas) is one of a shipload of Jewish refugees who disembark at Haifa in 1949. Like many other concentration camp survivors, Hans has psychological problems, including survivor guilt. At one point, he mistakes a woman and some children for his murdered family. At the first opportunity, he sneaks out of the refugee camp and goes into the city. When he spots a policeman, Hans panics and reacts by fleeing. The policeman chases him down and begins questioning him. Hans becomes very agitated and attacks, leaving the man unconscious in the street. Hans flees and ends up sleeping in the countryside, where he is found by a teenage orphan Sabra, Yehoshua "Josh" Bresler (Joey Walsh). Hans pretends to be an eccentric American, out to see Israel firsthand. Josh offers to be his guide. During their journey, Hans reveals that he was a professional juggler; Josh persuades him to pass on his knowledge. Meanwhile, police detective Karni (Paul Stewart) sets out to track the fugitive down. On their journey, Josh is injured when he wanders into a minefield. He is taken to a hospital at a nearby kibbutz, but has only broken his leg. While Josh recovers, Hans becomes acquainted with one of the residents, Ya'el (Milly Vitale). They are attracted to each other, but he at first strongly resists her attempt to persuade him to remain at the kibbutz. He reveals to her that he had ignored warnings from friends to flee Nazi Germany before it was too late, making the fatal mistake of counting on his fame and popularity to protect his family. Gradually, however, he begins to settle in. Karni finally tracks Hans down and tries to take him into custody. Hans panics again and barricades himself in Ya'el's room with her rifle, but Ya'el and Karni get him to admit he needs help and to give himself up. ===== Nicol, a 14-year-old genius inventor and his girlfriend Stella, manage to invent a dimensional space transporting device. However, their research attracts the attention of Gyumao (Cow Demon), a ruthless dictator of a military empire with plans for space conquest. The Demon offers to buy the device from the couple and act out his nefarious plans. Wanting to preserve the peace of his world, Nicol turns down the offer, denying Gyumao the means to accomplish his goal. The Demon, furious, dispatches his soldiers to kidnap Stella and steal the device from Nicol's laboratory. The soldiers ambush Nicol and Stella during a date, overpowering Nicol and carrying off his girlfriend. Defeated, Nicol returns to his laboratory only to find the device gone. Fortunately, the transporter was not yet complete, lacking a vital part which was still in Nicol's possession. Gyumao hopes to exchange Stella with the indispensable part he needs, but Nicol has other plans in mind. Against Gyumao's orders, he travels to Gyumao's Dairasu star system to free his lover himself. A disapproving Gyumao shatters the device into pieces and scatters those fragments across seven locations. Nicol must then travel across Dairasu, collect the fragments, repair the transporter, and liberate his girlfriend.http://www.quebecgamers.com/archives/dossiers/ai-senshi-nicol- manual/index.html ===== Sylar awakens on an island beach, disoriented, next to a woman named Michelle. She explains that she is Candice Wilmer in disguise, and that she is creating the illusion of a tropical paradise while he is recovering from surgeries following his injury. Sylar is dubious, so she dispels the illusion to reveal that they are actually in a small shack in the middle of a forest. While recovering, Sylar discovers that he cannot use any of the abilities he acquired. Michelle explains that his powers will return, with her assistance, but that his wound must heal first. Peter Petrelli tries to figure out how to control his powers, aiding Ricky and his gang in the theft of a large amount of cash. Ricky's brother Will, however, turns traitor and holds Ricky at gunpoint, demanding the money. He shoots Peter twice when he tries to intervene and continues to demand the money, but is surprised when Peter quickly regenerates and uses telekinesis to hold him against the wall, choking him. Due to Caitlin's pleadings, Peter stops short of killing Will. Maya and Alejandro are still on the run. It's the next day and the two are in an active search to gain a car to get them to the border. When Alejandro tries to break into a random parked car, he and his sister are caught by the police, and the two make a beeline for the alleyway. Maya manages to evade the police by getting over the chainlink fence, but her brother isn't so fortunate; he gets arrested and brought down to the station. While at the station, Alejandro sees on a wanted poster that he and his sister are wanted for homicide. Noah explains to Mohinder he'll protect the latter as long as he's alive. After seeing the subject of the eighth painting, Mohinder takes a snapshot of it with his cellphone and sends it to him, remarking "that's what I'm afraid of." When the painting is shown, it appears to depict Noah's bloody corpse, complete with a bullet hole through his eye. In the background, Claire is embracing and kissing a shadowed figure. Quickly shrinking the image down when Claire comes in the room, he greets her briefly. After she leaves, the episode ends with Noah still contemplating the ominous painting on his computer screen. ===== Ann Collins, a painter, and her husband, David, are expecting a baby. What confuses the couple is that David has had a vasectomy, and Ann is not supposed to be pregnant. Even though David suspects that Ann has been unfaithful to him, he stays with her. Because Ann had pregnancy troubles in the past that put her health at risk, David wants Ann to get an abortion, but every time the two try to go to get the procedure done, Ann experiences extreme labor pains and is unable to go through with the procedure. Throughout the course of her pregnancy, Ann has strange cravings for black coffee, raw meat and massive amounts of salt. She also exhibits personality and physical changes, including wanting to read books constantly, enduring freezing temperatures, developing acutely sensitive hearing, taking long and strenuous walks in the mountains, an inability to listen to other people, and healing her injuries within minutes. David wants Bob, a hypnotist, to see if he can obtain any information about why Ann is acting so strangely. Ann does not say a word, even when she is hypnotized. One day when Ann comes home from one of her walks in the mountains, she finds David, Bob, and Ann's friend Phyllis, waiting for her. She quickly drinks boiling hot coffee to catch her breath, and David notices that the coffee makes her drunk. Bob tries hypnotizing Ann again, and an extraterrestrial being starts speaking through her. The being says that his father banished him to this warm planet (Earth) and that he wants to go back to his home where it is "cool". He says that Ann was impregnated while she was painting in the mountains. After the alien stops talking through Ann, she finally falls asleep. During the night, Ann sneaks out to an abandoned house in the woods, where she gives birth. She walks into the woods, where many other women are also walking with their alien babies. David looks at one of Ann's paintings, depicting the alien being's home planet. The painting starts to smoke. David looks out the window and screams Ann's name, as he watches a spacecraft take Ann to the alien's home planet. ===== 12-year-old Santiago Cruz, a Kekcíhi campesinos indigenous, escapes from his destroyed village, Dos Vías, Guatemala, on May 18, 1981, with his four-year-old sister, Angelina, at midnight, after his mother pushes her into his arms and wakes him up. His entire family has been killed by soldiers, and he runs as far away as he can. His Uncle Ramos gives him a map and compass and instructs him to sail away in his cayuco to the United States, to escape the civil war and hopefully find a better life. The boy and his sister (Angelina) find a horse and ride it into the nearby village of Los Santos, where everyone has also been killed and burned. They continue into a city and sneak a ride in a maize truck. They then sneak a ride on the back of a manure truck that a drunk rebel soldier is driving. To keep the truck from crashing because of the intoxicated driver, they put horse dung into the gas tank and escape when the truck breaks down. They then walk down to Lake Izabal and sleep at their Uncle Ramos's house. In the morning, Enrique, a friend of Ramos, finds the children. They tell him what has happened, and Enrique and his wife, Silvia, give them food for the journey. Enrique tells them everything he knows about the dangerous journey, and ride in the cayuco with them until they reach the opening to the sea. At the entrance to El Golfete, they sneak beside the shore past a military boat. Enrique leaves and Santiago and his sister sail into the ocean. They have little food, and soon go hungry and thirsty, with itches and blisters all over their bodies. They encounter tourists, pirates, many violent storms, and a shark. They encounter a river of garbage, which Santiago uses to make an amateur windshield among other spare parts to fix his cayuco, and finds Angelina a broken plastic doll. They once nearly sailed into an inland bay on the border of Belize and Mexico, and then sailed into the open Gulf. Santiago makes notches in his cayuco every dawn with his machete, as it should only take twenty to make it. They attempt to catch fish, but often fail or have to steal fish from fishing nets from a ship. They encounter a large storm, which causes the mast to fall directly on Santiago's head, and makes them lose the water pail. They experience diarrhea and sores, and almost lose hope of making the journey. They had expected to arrive in twenty days, but several more pass with no land in sight. One day, a tropical storm's eye passes over them, and they lose everything except the cayuco. As the storm passes, they land in a large city in Florida and are taken to a hospital. They tell a nurse who can speak Spanish about their journey. They are bandaged, Angelina's doll is fixed, and they are shown on television and are fed food. They are told they will not be deported because they are children and the media has widely publicized how they have suffered so much. ===== Norman Puckle (Norman Wisdom), a well- meaning but clumsy grocer's assistant, cannot seem to do anything right. After being rejected by Marlene, the love of his life, he attempts suicide, but cannot even do that. He is saved from jumping off a cliff at "Lover's Leap" by a Royal Navy petty officer. He persuades Puckle to join the Royal Navy, where he will meet "lots of girls". Life in the Navy proves not to be as rosy as described, and Puckle fails at every task during basic training. But despite this, he is regarded by the Admiral in charge of a rocket project to be a "typical average British sailor", and chosen to be the first man to fly into outer space in an experimental rocket. Puckle fails at every stage of his training and is court-martialled, but successfully pleads for a final chance to prove himself. By accident, he takes the place of an astronaut and leaves Earth in the rocket. Equally by accident, he manages to return. He crash-lands on a Pacific island and ends up in the arms of a compliant local maiden. ===== The story begins at the Suarez home, where Betty is sitting down at 2AM eating empanadas. As she goes to get the milk from the refrigerator, she is spooked by seeing the head of Bradford Meade inside. After she closes the door, Bradford is standing behind her and tells her that he is her subconscious and that he asks her why she turned down Daniel's offer to return to work. Betty tells him that she doesn't think she's ready to return. He then disappears after he tells her to think about what Bradford told her before he died. The following day at the burial of Bradford at the cemetery, Claire is allowed to attend but arrives wearing an orange prison jumpsuit and is in shackles. Amanda ponders about whether she would be next in line to take over at the company, but Sheila, who arrived late and hears this exchange, tells her that two years as a receptionist doesn't qualify. As Betty is delivering a eulogy, Wilhelmina and Marc show up, hoping to make her last remarks. After Wilhelmina comments about Claire's uniform, Claire trips Wilhelmina, causing her to fall into Bradford's empty grave. Wilhelmina is fired by unanimous decision of Claire, Daniel, and Alexis. Fumed by her termination from the company, Wilhelmina returns to her office at MODE to remove her belongings but before she goes, she deploys a computer virus called "Medusa X", featuring a motif similar to the Versace logo, but with Wilhelmina's head replacing Medusa's, that removes all files pertaining to the upcoming issue. When Henry notices the virus in his office, he calls Betty, who was helping the family plan their annual Christmas tree decorations at home, to inform her about what happened. As she leaves, she gives directions to Hilda, Justin and Ignacio on how it's normally decorated, although Hilda and Justin think that they should make changes to the tradition. Daniel and Betty lead the effort to resurrect the issue with an all-nighter work session. Betty says she is back just for the night. But before they can start on the emergency issue, Wilhelmina and Marc interrupt the work session to announce their new magazine, SLATER, and recruit many MODE staff. Wilhelmina also makes her feelings known about Daniel and Alexis, prompting Alexis and Betty to try to contain their desire to knock her out. As Wilhelmina leaves, Marc tempts Amanda to defect, but she turns him down, thus ending their partnership. In the all-night chaos, Daniel places Sheila in charge and in turn finds replacements to do new articles, with Henry being tasked with writing a food column and Amanda volunteering to write the "Hot or Not" section. Unfortunately Sheila is not happy about having Amanda on the team, even as she sees the receptionist eating at her desk and not giving her an article. When Amanda sees a pizza delivery guy's uniform, she finally comes up with one, but as she shows off her design, Sheila walks up to her and tells her that she actually knew, worked and "made out" with Fey Sommers, and that Amanda is "No Fey Sommers," and scraps Amanda's article. At the love dungeon, a distressed Amanda tells Christina that she hopes that when she finds her father, maybe she'll know what type of talent that she might actually have. Meanwhile, at the Suarez home, the family decoration plans start to go awry when Hilda trips on a string of Christmas tree lights, knocking the tree over and starting a small fire. As Betty is scrambling to help Daniel at work, she calls Hilda about its progress until she figures out what has happened after hearing Justin and Ignacio in the background. Alexis takes on the task of getting the printers to extend their hours, but as she goes to the printer's office in an effort to charm him, she discovers that he has left the business to a dwarf-like successor, Harvey Milfree. After the two bicker and bluff all night, they end up discussing how both are 'different' and how their fathers treated them. Once the conversation is over, Harvey agrees to keep the presses open, much to the delight of Alexis. The deleted magazine issue also erased the cover spread featuring Cameron Ashlock, a famous actress and singer who has been making a lot of headlines. When Daniel decides that he is going to break her out of rehab, Betty tags along. At the centre where Cameron is staying, the two find her among candles and chanting and after much persuasion, they succeed in convincing her to do a reshoot. Unfortunately, that doesn't go as well as planned as Cameron goes ballistic on the set after Daniel told Betty the only way to do it is by giving her alcohol, which Betty thought was a bad idea. As Cameron is escorted off the shoot, Betty learned that Daniel never gave Cameron a drink, which is how she lost control in the first place. Daniel told Betty he couldn't do it. Unable to reshoot the cover, Daniel opts for a solid black cover in tribute of the late Bradford Meade with an "In Remembrance of Bradford Meade" theme. Betty and the staff are impressed with this cover as a way to honour the late publisher. Betty then tells Daniel that she will return to MODE permanently, and as Daniel walks away, she sees the spirit of Bradford for one last time by sending him to his final "resting place." Later, at Wilhelmina's apartment, she tells the defected MODE staff that she will have the new magazine up and running soon. After they leave, Wilhelmina meets with her father, Senator Slater, to ask for a loan to get her new magazine established. He refuses, saying that the daughter he once knew and loved as Wanda has changed into someone else. After he leaves, Wilhelmina and Marc ponder other options on how to get the financial backing. Finally, knowing that Christmas is a time for family, Betty buys a pink artificial tree to replace the burned-up one. As they finally decorate the new tree, Ignacio places the angel on top as a remembrance of his late wife. ===== ===== The book opens with Jane Margaux and her imaginary friend, Michael, spending a Sunday at the St. Regis Plaza in New York City eating ice cream together, which they do every Sunday. Michael is an imaginary friend who is randomly assigned to children who need extra support and guidance. However, he is called away from the children when they become nine years old, at which point they will forget about the existence of their "friend" by the next day of their ninth birthday. Jane needs extra attention because her mother, Vivienne Margaux, a Broadway producer, spends too much time with work and shopping for her many new husbands, but spends every Sunday at Tiffany's with her daughter. The next day is Jane's 9th birthday party, which coincides with her mother's production's opening night. The cast and crew sing "happy birthday" to her, but her mother forgets about her and her father leaves quickly with his girlfriend. Jane is comforted by Michael, who tells her he must leave now that she is nine. He promises her that she will forget about him. Twenty-one years later, Jane, who is now in her thirties and has not yet forgotten about Michael, lives in New York and works closely with her mother, who is now very controlling. Jane has produced a small, low-budget play called "Thank Heaven", based on her childhood with Michael. The play was an overnight hit, and now Jane is in the works of making a movie based on it. Her boyfriend, Hugh McGrath (who played Michael on Broadway), wants the leading role in the movie. Jane isn't happy in life, though. She knows she is too dependent on her mother, and she is unwilling to face up to the fact that Hugh is an egomaniacal jerk. One night, he stands her up for a dinner date, and she returns home rejected and hurt. Michael, now on break from being an imaginary friend, catches sight of her walking into her hotel and instantly recognizes her. It's the first time he has ever seen one of his "kids" as an adult. He begins following her to work and home, but she never catches sight of him. A day later at work, Hugh McGrath comes and apologizes to Jane for missing dinner. Jane realizes he is just using her to get the film role. Vivienne thinks that the role would be good for him, and she pushes Jane to accept his apology. Later, Vivienne infiltrates a "Thank Heaven" meeting and controls all aspects of production, despite the fact it is Jane's project. Jane goes out to dinner with Hugh, who flirts with another woman while Michael watches, unseen. A few days later, Hugh and Jane go to a museum exhibit together, and she learns that he set up the whole date as a way to con her into giving him the part. When she refuses, he yells at her and leaves. She retreats to a bar where she thinks she catches sight of Michael. Later, Hugh apologizes and proposes to her in Brooklyn, making an ultimatum: a ring for a role. She finally realizes that he's scum and demands he take her home, at which point he leaves her stranded in Brooklyn. Michael is at the St. Regis when he sees Jane, and she sees him. After they recognize each other and re-introduce each other, they decide to take a walk together. They realize how much they've missed and need each other. They spend the rest of the day together. The next day, Vivienne controls Jane at work and Jane finally stands up for herself. She storms out and meets up with Michael. They soon meet every day and go out every night, becoming closer and closer, while Jane's professional life becomes more and more hectic. Vivienne reveals to Jane that her grandmother died of heart failure at age 34. Hugh makes one last attempt to win Jane back, but after he explodes and insults her, she punches him in front of Vivienne. Vivienne takes his side and Jane storms out, vowing never to return. Michael feels an impulse to go and meet Jane, but on his way he stops at a cathedral where he gets his message: Jane is going to die and it's his mission to help her out of life. Michael meets with Jane and they run away to spend a week in Nantucket, where they are happy and carefree. However, Michael becomes increasingly worried about Jane and her health. After she loses much of her appetite, he decides that he is the thing that's keeping her from living out her life. He leaves without notice in an effort to save her. Jane finds him gone and is devastated that he has now left her twice. She goes home to New York where she collapses from stomach pains. The phone rings, and she can barely get up to answer it. Michael is out in New York when he gets a sudden impulse to go to the New York Hospital. He realizes that Jane must be there. He sprints there, but when he arrives, he finds Vivienne in the hospital bed. He realizes that it was Vivienne whom he was sent to protect, not Jane. Jane soon arrives and lovingly reconnects with her mother before Vivienne dies peacefully. After Vivienne's funeral, Michael collapses and is taken to the hospital. Since imaginary friends never get sick, he and Jane realize that he must be human now. He soon makes a full recovery and vows to spend the rest of his life with Jane. In an epilogue, Michael and Jane have married and have two children. ===== A tuna is caught in the Bahamas. Inside the tuna is a Coca-Cola bottle with a note inside stating the Dunnes are alive. The book flashes back to the beginning as the Dunnes are about to set off on a two-month boat trip, a trip that hopefully will bring them closer together, despite the fact that the stepfather, Peter, is staying behind on land. Katherine, a heart surgeon from New York City had lost her first husband, Stuart, a stock investor in a boating trip several years ago. But only an hour into the trip they're already falling apart. The teenage daughter Carrie plans to drown herself, and the teenage boy Mark is high on drugs. Ten-year-old Ernie is near catatonic. But their mother Katherine, with the help of her brother-in-law Jake, is insistent on pulling everyone together, once and for all. Just when things start to take a turn for the better, disaster strikes. A storm hits the sailboat. To make matters worse the boat explodes. The boat vanishes without a trace and the family are lost, presumed dead - until now, when a message in a bottle is found. It becomes apparent that there must have been at least one survivor. Who has survived and just what happened to the boat? As it transpires there may be more sinister powers at work, the race is on to rescue the family and discover what happened aboard the luxury yacht. It turns out that Peter has hired a former CIA operative, turned private contract killer, Gerard Devoux, to kill his family. He hopes to inherit the more than 100 million USD that Katherine was worth. Also, Jake dies from wounds with the boat's explosion. Peter knows his plans to gain the Dunne fortune will be ruined if someone else finds the family. He & Devoux set out the Bahamas to find them and kill them before they are found. Peter is a licensed pilot and rents an airplane to find them. He discovers that the family washed ashore an empty island. That night he sneaks onto the island, he plans to shoot Katherine first, so she doesn't have to watch her kids die. His plans are interrupted when his stepson Mark hits him over the head, knocking him out. There is a murder trial but Peter is eventually acquitted. He sues Katherine for defamation and she settles out of court for 16 Million USD. Peter though is betrayed by Devoux and killed. In typical Patterson style, not everything is as it appears. Throughout the story we discover that Peter was having an affair with a young law student. It turns out that she was working with Devoux and is the one that shot Peter in the gut. Devoux then kills her to ensure there are no loose ends. We discover that she was a high end prostitute from Las Vegas. Devoux gets his at the end from a rogue DEA agent he had tried to kill earlier in the book. It is also revealed that, because of an affair had by Jake and Kate, Ernie is Jake's son. ===== Most of the adventures occur in the absence of Mr. and Mrs. Lane from the household. Mr. Lane is a successful stockbroker who always try to pry (but never successful) into the source of Richard's financial means. Mrs. Marion Lane (née Duffy) ran a health food store named "Oh Nuts!" Things usually happened when both parents went together on weekend business trips (either his or hers). They left Richard to babysit Stephen, expecting nothing more than a prosaic time together for the uncle-nephew duo. However, almost as soon as they left the house, someone or something from Richard's past appeared and sent the duo flying across the world (most of the time), to solve some difficult problems. Invariably, there would be a beautiful woman involved, sometimes from Richard's past, sometimes someone new. The eponymous title of the series came from the time limit the duo had to reach their destination, solve the problem and be back at home before Stephen's parents return, without giving away the slightest hint of what they had been up to. Crucial to their success, apart from Richard's skills and experience as an adventurer, was his practically unlimited finances, and their special Kronom K-D2 watches with technology far more advanced than was actually available in the 20th century. The series was published by Dell (NY) for the US editions, and Armada (London) for the UK editions. ===== After Elvis Presley's death and stressful exams, a teenager organises a beach party during the summer. ===== Lakhan Singh (Sonu Sood), a.k.a. Lucky, is the king of the Australian underworld. He is accompanied by his Sikh mafia associates, Julie (Neha Dhupia), Mika (Jaaved Jaffrey), Pankaj Udaas (Yashpal Sharma), Raftaar (Sudhanshu Pandey), Dilbaugh Singh (Manoj Pahwa) and Guruji Gurbaksh Singh (Kamal Chopra). In a small village in Punjab, the birthplace of Lucky, there lives another Sikh, Happy Singh (Akshay Kumar). Happy, though good at heart, has unintentionally caused many problems in the village, and the villagers are fed up with him. They decide to send Happy on a long trip to Australia with his friend Rangeela (Om Puri) to bring Lucky back to Punjab, which will keep Happy out of the village for some time and bring peace to the village. But at the airport, Happy's and Rangeela's tickets to Australia are accidentally exchanged with those of Puneet (Ranvir Shorey), who was to fly to Egypt. In Egypt, Happy meets Sonia (Katrina Kaif) and falls deeply in love with her. But he does not express his love to her. Leaving her behind, he heads to Australia to meet Lucky. Lucky refuses to return to his hometown and throws Happy and Rangeela out of his house. Penniless, Happy finds warmth and affection in an elderly lady (Kirron Kher) who provides him with food in spite of being a stranger. Lucky winds up in hospital, paralyzed, after a series of violent incidents that Happy has caused. (In one of these incidents, his head is bumped severely, and the trauma from the resultant concussion is what paralyzes him.) Unexpectedly, it is Happy who is given the position of the "Kinng." The lady who helped Happy is obviously worried and depressed, as her daughter is returning from Egypt with her wealthy boyfriend, Puneet. The daughter does not know that after the death of her father years ago, her mother had become poverty-stricken and been reduced to work as a flower seller. Happy gives her Lucky's spacious house and makes all his mafia associates work for her. The lady's daughter arrives; to Happy's horror, she is none other than Sonia. Heartbroken, Happy is forced to make a show of happiness to Sonia. Puneet says that he too would have had a good time with Happy and Sonia in Egypt had his ticket to Egypt not been exchanged in the airport, because of which he had ended up in Australia. Puneet had always been jealous of Sonia being with Happy; however, he doubts something is going on between them. Meanwhile, Lucky's gang members spend enough time with the kindhearted Kinng for most of them to be reformed and give up lawless lives in favour of law-abiding ones. In spite of herself, Sonia falls in love with Happy and the truth becomes difficult to hide. Puneet sets his heart to marry Sonia. Sonia gets trapped in an emotional tug-of-war between Puneet, who loves her, and Happy, whom she loves. In the confusion, Happy's associates reveal to Puneet who they are, and that Happy is the Kinng of the Australian underworld, not a manager as Puneet had believed him to be. Puneet, in turn, reveals this to Sonia, who has become aware of her own poverty. Soon Puneet meets Mika, Lucky's other brother, who agrees to kill Happy. Puneet's motives to kill Happy, however, differ from Mika's: Puneet wants to kill Happy to keep Sonia away from him, whereas Mika wants to kill Happy to make himself Kinng. On the dawn of the wedding day, the sound of gunshots firing can be heard. Happy takes Sonia in order to save her—and unknowingly, both run around the fire seven times, essentially getting married. (During all this, Lucky's head is bumped, and the trauma-induced paralysis he had suffered from is relieved.) Suddenly, Mika turns up on the spot, ready to kill Happy, armed with a gang and his new special glasses and hearing aid. As he is about to shoot, Lucky steps up and stops him. Then a dialogue ensues between Mika, Happy, Lucky, and the associates of the Kinng. Then Happy tells him that being the "kinng" is not as great as it may seem and explains him the characteristics of a true Sikh. Lucky confesses that he had always found being Kinng a source of misery, because a true kinng fights for others, not for himself. Overcome with remorse, Mika drops his gun. The movie ends with Happy's and Sonia's marriage and the returns of Lucky and his gang members to their homes in the village. ===== Unlike other books in the series, this one does not take the adventuring duo (Stephen Lane and Richard Duffy) into exotic places faraway from the United States. It is the only time when the events take place wholly in their home city of New York. This is also the only instance when the day of the action can be dated - on Saint Patrick's Day, March 17. Richard received an urgent plea from an old acquaintance for a meeting at the Central Park Zoo on Saint Patrick's Day. The acquaintance was introduced only by his first name, Ralph, was a gentleman con of the old school who was described as having a rich imagination and leave his victims "still feeling good" because of the fortune they almost made. Stephen had gone along with Richard to the zoo, but his presence distressed Ralph who was alarmed at the thought of a kid getting involved as the matter was very serious. Before Ralph could reveal more, he was shot and was incapacitated, and his assaillant disappeared among the crowd. The only clue was a business card where Ralph listed himself as President of a company named Secucomp, Inc.. Ralph carried a lot of business cards listing his first name with different last names, with impressive designations for a variety of companies. But Secucomp stood out because it had a real corporate address. As it was set in their home city, this book had Stephen's mother and father playing greater roles in the story, including aiding them in their investigation. Along the way, they discovered their nemesis was only other possessor of the Kronom K-D2 watch in the world. Known as the Mole, or as the Money Master when he made threat in the New York Stock Exchange, he hacked into the Stock Exchange's computer systems and demanded submission from all world banks around the world. Too late, Richard realised that he is up against the only person in the world who knows how to use the Kronom better than himself, perhaps even better Karl Wolfmann, the Kronom's inventor. The Mole had been Wolfmann's assistant, but his active participation in the final refinements of the Kronom gave him an intimate knowledge of its capabilities and a definite edge over other users of the Kronom. ===== Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner) is a quiet and shy boy who comes from a family that belongs to the strict Plymouth Brethren church. Will is forbidden from watching films or television and is made to leave his classroom when the teacher puts on a documentary. In the corridor, he meets Lee Carter (Will Poulter), the worst-behaved boy in school, thrown out of another class for bad behaviour. They accidentally break a fish bowl in the corridor; Lee volunteers to take the blame, pretending that the punishment is torture, in exchange for Will's watch, which belonged to his dead father. Moreover, Lee demands that Will performs the stunts in a film Lee is making with home video equipment owned by his bullying older brother, Lawrence, which Lawrence uses in his video bootlegging enterprise. He intends to enter the Screen Test Young Film-Makers' Competition. Will accepts, after accidentally seeing the film First Blood at Lee's house while hiding from Lawrence. He becomes very enthusiastic, and plays several dangerous action scenes, culminating in the two boys becoming 'blood brothers' after Lee saves Will from drowning. Lee finds Will's sketch book, full of colourful and glorious ideas, and starts to incorporate some of them into his film script. The two become best friends, but Will has to keep it secret from his family and the increasingly interfering Brother Joshua of the Brethren, who clearly has designs on his mother. French exchange students arrive and one of them, the suave Didier Revol, becomes very popular. After finding Will's sketch book, he asks Will if he and his acolytes can play in the film, and Will agrees. Didier reveals that he has always wanted to be an actor. This mushrooms into the whole school being part of the production, and Will being included with the cool sixth-formers. Lee does not like this, as he is no longer in control, and finally quits after a fight with Will during filming of the last sequence, which takes place at a disused power station. After Will becomes trapped when part of the unstable structure collapses due to Didier's carelessness, and the entire school/crew run away, Lee returns to rescue his friend, but uses the excuse that he has come to collect his brother's camera. He too gets hurt, and has to go to hospital. Lawrence visits him, but is angry about the fact that the camera is broken. Will's mother, from whom he has struggled to hide his activities, finally realises that her son must be allowed to be himself and her family leaves the Brethren. The film is never submitted to the competition as they miss the deadline. The French students leave, and while Didier was popular and worshipped in Britain, his own school-mates mock him, and he is actually lonely and isolated. When Lawrence looks at Lee's footage he is impressed, and he sees Lee's rant at Will defending Lawrence's neglect and bullying, which was accidentally filmed. With Will's help, he adds a part in which he acts himself — including a reply message for his brother. When Lee leaves the hospital, he is brought to a cinema by surprise. His film is shown before the main feature (much to the enjoyment of the audience) and the two boys reunite. ===== Madhavi was the daughter of a dancer, Chitrapahti, who was a dancer too. They were believed to have a long ancestry starting with Urvashi. Madhavi was rigorously trained in music, dance and composition of poems. Kovalan, the son of a wealthy merchant and the husband of Kannagi, met Madhavi in a performance in Chozha king Karikalan's court. Enamoured of her beauty, he fell in love with her. Eventually, Kovalan left his wife and moved in with Madhavi, with whom he stayed for a year. Madhavi bore him a daughter Manimekalai. However, after spending all his money on Madhavi, he realised his mistakes and returned to his wife Kannagi. ===== Set in 1967, the series begin with events following the end of the 1989 miniseries, The Women of Brewster Place. Mattie Michael (Oprah Winfrey) is fired from her job as a beautician, and agrees to purchase a neighborhood restaurant with her best friend Etta Mae (Brenda Pressley). Kiswana (Rachel Crawford), Abshu (Kelly Neal), and Miss Sophie (Olivia Cole) are still residents of Brewster Place, and various other individuals move onto the block as the series progresses. The series was filmed entirely in Chicago, on the lot of Winfrey's Harpo Productions. It failed to capture the audience and critical acclaim of the miniseries, and was cancelled after a month. However, the full season of 11 episodes has since been released on both VHS and DVD. ===== In an attempt to protect the welfare of Clem's wife, Ballarat Bob takes Clem's savings and puts them in safe keeping with Clem's wife. This causes Clem to think his wife is having an affair; he goes on to shoot up the town and eventually ends up in a confrontation with Bob.http://www.fandango.com/thecommitteeoncredentials_v218970/summary Kyne said of his novel, "I have at last finished writing "The Pride of Palomar." It isn't at all what I wanted it to be; it isn't at all what I planned it to be, but it does contain something of what you and I both feel, something of what you wanted me to put into it. Indeed, I shall always wish to think that it contains just a few faint little echoes of the spirit of that old California that was fast vanishing when I first disturbed the quiet of the Mission Dolores with infantile shrieks—when you first gazed upon the redwood-studded hills of Sonoma County."https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16674/16674-h/16674-h.htm Of the silent films in the early 20th century, Peter French says calls it a dramatic tale of "personal crimes, moral tales, and the place of crime in public life".French, P: Westerns: Aspects of a Movie Genre, page 76. Oxford University Press, 1977. ===== Having recently moved, 27-year old Lori Bancroft inquiries at a small urban apartment building about an advertised vacancy. The landlord and building superintendent Karl Gunther, an older German man, hospitably gives her a tour of the apartment, telling her that its last tenant was a young woman who disappeared without paying rent. During the tour, Gunther secretly performs a masochistic ritual, holding his hand over an open stove-top flame. Outwardly normal, Gunther leads a double-life as a sadistic, self-loathing psychopath, abducting and torturing his young female tenants and locking them in attic cages, where he removes their tongues and leaves them alive so that he can "have someone to talk to." Once a respectable doctor, he made his living performing euthanasia ("mercy killing") and being ashamed when he learned that his father, a Dachau concentration camp doctor, used the same justification when killing Jewish prisoners in human experiments. Besides regular self-harm, Gunther plays Russian roulette with a loaded handgun, hoping to one day kill himself to end his killing spree with what little morality he has left. After murdering one of his tenants and removing their eyes, Gunther is visited by Josef Steiner, who has been searching for him for three years. Steiner tells Gunther that in the five years he was chief resident at Buenos Aires hospital, 67 people in his care all died, including Steiner's own brother. He confronts him about his familial history among Nazis, including how his father was executed for crimes against humanity and a photograph of young Karl in a Hitler Youth uniform. Karl begins spying on and murdering his tenants via the reinforced ventilation crawlspace vents, and a series of mechanized traps he controls from his residence. Like his father, he begins displaying signs of a God complex, reveling in the ability to give life and take it away at will. Steiner attempts to assassinate Gunther, but is instead led into his apartment, where he is killed by one of his traps. Gunther proceeds to pose in an SS uniform in-front of a mirror and declaring himself his "own god, own jury, and own executioner." Lori returns home to her apartment to find her refrigerator swarming with live rats and Steiner's corpse in the bathtub, a swastika carved into his forehead. Lori tries to run for help as Gunther sets off security mechanisms that trap her inside the building. Running from door-to-door, she finds her neighbors all killed in similarly brutal fashion. Lori flees into Gunther's attic hideout, where she finds his last surviving caged female prisoner. As Gunther approaches, she manages to sneak through a booby-trapped crawlspace vent. Gunther releases a cage full of rats into the vent after her, but she manages to avoid them and circle back to his room. Gunther pursues her, but appears to inadvertently set off one of his own traps and impale himself with a blade, Lori and the female prisoner taking the opportunity to run away. The gaff, however, is only a ploy. As the two run to Karl's apartment to phone the police, he chases them with a knife. Lori grabs Karl's revolver and fires it at him, it clicks empty several times before finally shooting its only round. Karl accepts his death before expiring, declaring "so be it." ===== Don Diego de la Vega is a young man of high social position from the town of Los Angeles, who fights against tyranny under a secret identity, Zorro. He is helped by Tempest (originally "Tornado"), his black horse, and Miguel, a young swordsman (replacing Zorro's mute manservant Bernardo). Miguel wears a disguise very similar to Zorro’s (but with different colors and without a cape) and rides a Palomino. Ramón, the captain of the garrison, is Zorro’s main foe. Captain Ramón is helped in his task of capturing Zorro by González, a foolish sergeant who is friends with the De La Vega family. Sergeant González was a character from the original Zorro story 'The Curse of Capistrano'. He had been replaced by Sergeant Garcia on the Disney series. The actor who voiced González, Don Diamond, played Sergeant Garcia's companion Corporal Reyes. ===== Harrison Lloyd, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Newsweek photojournalist, travels on his last assignment to the dissolving Yugoslavia in 1991, during the Croatian War of Independence. While there, he is presumed to have been killed in a building collapse. His wife travels to the region to find him, believing him to be in the city of Vukovar. Travelling through the war-torn landscape, she arrives in the city, and bears witness to the massacre which took place there. Back home, Harrison's son Cesar cares for his father's flowers in their greenhouse. ===== ===== Georgia Nicholson is a 14-year-old girl from Eastbourne who worries about her breasts, fears she will never have a boyfriend and is constantly embarrassed by her mother Connie, father Bob, and little sister Libby. On the first day of the new school term, Georgia and her friends—Jas, Ellen and Rosie, known as her "Ace Gang"—spot two fraternal twin brothers, Robbie and Tom, who have just moved to Eastbourne from London. The girls follow the boys, who are exploring town with their friend Dave "the Laugh". Georgia and Jas decide to approach the brothers in their mother's organic foodshop, where they work. Jas is quickly enamored with Tom and Georgia strikes up a conversation with Robbie. However, they soon discover that Robbie is dating Lindsay, the most popular girl in school. After learning that Robbie likes cats, Georgia pretends that her cat Angus has gone missing and asks Robbie for help finding him. Jas has Angus on a leash in the park, but he escapes and Tom rescues him just as Georgia and Robbie arrive. Robbie leaves to spend time with Lindsay and Tom asks Jas on a date, after which they become a couple. Meanwhile, Bob moves to New Zealand for a job, while his family stays behind. During his absence, Connie hires a handsome builder, Jem, to redo the living room, and begins to spend increasingly longer periods of time with him, even going to dance classes with him. Georgia worries about the state of her parents' marriage. In an attempt to impress Robbie, Georgia takes "snogging lessons" with Peter Dyer. He becomes infatuated with her, and when he tries to kiss her at a party the following night, he ends up embarrassing her in front of Robbie, Lindsay, Jas and Tom. In order to evade Peter, Georgia lies to him about being a lesbian. When Tom invites Jas to go swimming with him and Robbie, Georgia tags along. While in the pool, Robbie and Georgia kiss. Robbie then leaves, but promises to call Georgia later. After not hearing from Robbie in a while, Georgia is heartbroken. She reads Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus and decides to make Robbie jealous so that he realises his feelings for her. She invites Dave to see Robbie's band, the Stiff Dylans, perform. Upon seeing Georgia and Dave dancing and laughing, Robbie tries to talk to her but is stopped by Lindsay. At school, Dave confronts Georgia about using him to make Robbie jealous, and so stops talking to her. When Dave tells Robbie that Georgia was using him, he stops talking to her as well. Georgia discovers it was Jas that accidentally leaked this information. After Georgia kicks Jas in the shin during an argument, they vow never to speak to each other again. Shortly afterwards, Robbie tells Georgia he wanted to break up with Lindsay before anything else happened between them, but now he is disappointed with her behaviour. Feeling like there is no point in staying in England, Georgia decides that she would like to move to New Zealand. She goes to her father's workplace and breaks down with a woman who works with him, telling her she does not want her family to be apart from each other. Later on, she goes to the beach, knowing Robbie would be there, and apologises to him. Robbie reveals he dumped Lindsay and admits that he still likes her. On Georgia's 15th birthday, Connie takes her to a club for the first time. The place initially seems empty, but it turns out to be a surprise birthday party which Jas had secretly organised with Connie. She is greeted by all her friends and family, with Jas and Georgia making amends. Bob returns from New Zealand, deciding to stay in Eastbourne for a better job opportunity, after his boss told him about Georgia's breakdown. It is also revealed that Jem is gay and his boyfriend is the owner of the nightclub. The Stiff Dylans are performing the song "Ultraviolet" which Robbie had written about Georgia, when they are interrupted by Lindsay who comes from her own party (to which no one had turned up) and tells Robbie that he would either have to take her back or lose her forever. He tells her that Georgia is the one he wants, and he kisses Georgia onstage. Jas then pulls out Lindsay's breast pads and tosses them into the crowd, prompting a furious Lindsay to storm off the stage. In the final scene, Georgia is content with how she looks and with her crazy family. As she meets Robbie to walk to school together, she also comments that she found a boyfriend who thinks she is perfect. ===== ===== A cowboy called Sky High learns that he has inherited a fortune, but must move to the East to collect and keep it. The only other heir, Landers, conspires with gold-digger Goldie Le Croix to seduce and abandon Sky High, sharing his newfound wealth. The plot fails when Goldie genuinely falls for him. ===== An ancient but still fleshy Chinese corpse is on auction in England. A young businessman (Sam Christopher Chow) purchases the corpse. The corpse is revealed to be the body of his third great-grandfather and he intends to give it a proper burial in Hong Kong. To keep it from becoming an irrepressible vampire, the descendant hires a good-natured Taoist priest (Lam Ching Ying) to maintain control of the cadaver using a yellow talisman. The young descendant and the Taoist priest decide that the best way to get the valued ancestor home is via a direct flight to Hong Kong on a private jet. During the flight, the plane malfunctions and an altercation breaks out between the ruthless pilot and the two passengers. Luckily, they outsmart the pilot and descend from the troublesome plane by using parachutes. The corpse and the two end up separated during the chaos, and they land in Africa. The corpse lands in front of Xixo (N!xau), where he and his tribe are being confronted by a rival clan led by two greedy Caucasians. The corpse's presence scares away the villains. Xixo somehow learns to control the corpse using a bell and he takes it to his tribe. Soon he and his family think of it as a gift from God, as it aids them in various matters, such as bringing down fruit from towering trees. The descendant and the priest land in a vast and dry area miles away from Xixo's home. Confronting an assortment of African animals, they make their way across the foreign land in search of the corpse and rescue. During this time, the corpse forms a strong bond with the compassionate Xixo and his family. Days later, the descendant and the priest meet Xixo and his family. Not knowing they have the corpse, the two nevertheless stay with them, finding food, water, and shelter. They all abruptly form a solid friendship, despite the language barrier, as they all help out each other when in need. Days later, the priest figures that the corpse must be nearby, since he connects the strange lack of birds in the area with the ominous close presence of a cadaver. Using magic, he summons the corpse to his hut. Xixo and his family frantically chase the corpse. After the corpse reunites with his descendant, the priest proves to Xixo that it belongs to them, and Xixo eventually agrees. After a few more days of living together, they prepare to part ways with the bushmen and Xixo leads them to the main path to civilisation. However, the rival clan is still after what Xixo's homeland has as a natural abundance: diamonds, as they invade the huts and threaten the residents. The corpse, feeling obligated to aid Xixo and his family, goes back, with the priest and the descendant following. A battle takes place between the villains and Xixo's people, with the corpse managing to chase away one of the ruthless leaders. The priest even summons the spirit of the late Bruce Lee to aid Xixo, and the villains are finally defeated. The priest uses the radio left in the villains' Jeep to contact a helicopter. Before boarding, the priest, the descendant, and the corpse bid farewell to Xixo and his family. ===== Carol Shelton is a photojournalist who must make a difficult decision: either she can take a new and prestigious position or marry her long-time boyfriend. One day, she meets Kenny, who is a boy she believes has been sent to her by a modeling agency for a photo shoot. They have a lot of fun during the photo shoot, but when he realizes that her focus is entirely on her job and not on him he leaves in distress. Carol decides to take the new job and dissolve her relationship with her boyfriend. Kenny subsequently appears to her in random locations, including the interior of her apartment. He expresses his disappointment in her decision to follow her career instead of her relationship. Carol is confused and demands to know how he found her, how he knows so much about her, and why he thinks they can never see each other again. Kenny panics and runs away. Carol sees Kenny in a park and confronts him. It becomes clear that Kenny would have been her son if she had chosen to stay with her boyfriend instead of taking a new job. He says that he would have been hers if she had only wanted him, and she claims she does want him—but not at this time in her life. Kenny explains that because she chose a different path, she may one day have children but her children will not be him. They commiserate as the boy fades away. Later, Carol discusses her new job over the phone. Photos of Kenny and Carol together are arranged in the apartment. After she ends the call and leaves, Kenny vanishes from the photographs. ===== Visiting a garage sale, Mary Ellen and Janice Hamill stumble upon a golden lamp that is engraved: "Rub me and your wish will come true. Certain restrictions may apply." When Janice rubs the lamp, she is transported to the Department of Magical Venues, a bank-like room where one of the workers begins to write up her three wishes. After overcoming her confusion, Janice requests $10,000,000, to look 10 years younger, and for her ex-husband Craig to suffer moderate sexual dysfunction for 18 months. Her broker gives her a stack of papers to sign and tells her that she will have to pay taxes on the wishes. Then he directs her to stand in a long line at the validation window to get her wishes approved. As she prepares, the broker is notified of something and looks distressed. After finally getting to the front of the line, Janice is told that she is missing a form and is directed back to her broker only to find a supervisor castigating him. The broker then disappears. When she inquires, the supervisor informs her that he has been dismissed for an error he allegedly committed. She confronts the head of the department but he tells her that it is quitting time and everyone disappears. Frustrated, Janice wishes she had never found the lamp in the first place and she is transported back to the garage sale. It is moments before she originally found the lamp, but this time she leaves for a sale at Fashion Square. ===== After a recently widowed father's only daughter is put into a coma after a car accident, he is guided by the apparition of another girl to buy an old wooden bed from an orphanage sale at a convent next door to the hospital. After purchasing the bed, he places it in his daughter's room without knowing why he has performed this action. That evening, he finds that the bed is haunted by the girl who asked him to purchase the bed. She asks him to find "Toby" for her. Returning to the convent the next day, he learns that the girl's name was Sarah and she died of tuberculosis while sleeping in the bed he bought many decades earlier. He also learns that Toby was her teddy bear. The sister at the convent who remembers Sarah is reluctant to part with the bear due to mistrust, but the father convinces her that Sarah is a ghost, and that the bear is the key to bringing her soul to peace. He is given the teddy bear and then takes his daughter home from the hospital and places her into the bed he purchased on behalf of Sarah. His daughter wakes up the next morning and asks for Toby before her father can explain anything. ===== Todd Ettinger discusses buying a new car over lunch with a friend when a woman strides into the diner, and a man, who is in fact Cupid, overhears their conversation. When Todd accidentally runs into her at the cash register, Cupid throws some "magical dust" over him and both Ettinger and the woman look at each other with love in their eyes. However, Ettinger ignores his feelings and goes back to work. Cupid is furious that Ettinger just ignored Cupid's arrow and follows him back to his office. He immediately questions Ettinger about why he ignored hooking up with the woman at lunch, and he gets upset and tries to throw Cupid out of his office. When Cupid shoots three arrows into Todd's heart, Todd asks why he did that and Cupid laughs and says: "Hopefully, I just screwed up your life." He then leaves Todd with a very curious look on his face. After work, Ettinger sees the woman again and gives chase but to no avail as he loses sight of her. That night, he questions what's happening to him, and realizes he is punished by a curse of desperate love for the woman. The next day, Ettinger tries to track down Bacchus and does so, finding him at a party along with Cupid. A drunk Cupid reveals that he himself has fallen into despair over his own lost love. This lost love, according to Bacchus, is a Fury named Megaera and Ettinger begins to formulate a plan to get Cupid and Megaera back together, hoping then Cupid will help him. Bacchus gives him an incantation which will force Megaera to appear to him. She does appear to him and begins ranting about how she would never get back with Cupid because of his diddlings with mortals. After she blows up, Ettinger calls Bacchus and arranges another meeting. Megaera and Cupid both show up at his office and he uses some incantation to keep them from leaving. Cupid apologizes to her and admits he was wrong. Megaera accepts his apology and they fall in love again. Ettinger leaves them alone in his office to make up. Later, he goes back in to find a letter that states they hitched a ride with the window washer. The letter also thanks Ettinger for his work, but he is still upset that he is left with Cupid's curse. He decides to go buy the car he wanted so badly, and after pulling off the lot he is rear-ended - by the woman he was pining after. Soon, Cupid and Megaera drive by, waving and smiling at Ettinger as he and the woman embrace. ===== On a hot summer day in 1936 Kansas, a woman and her nephew are driving along a dusty, country road. They come upon an old man in raggedy clothes who hails them to stop. They pick him up and he says to just go because someone is after him. When they ask who is after him, he tells them the sun. The old man starts talking about the seventeen-year locusts that are on their way and other wild theories about people and evil, more specifically, people who are born evil. When they stop to fix a flat tire, the old man continues telling the boy his strange theories but the aunt is starting to tire of it. She thinks the heat has gotten to him. When she can't take him anymore, the aunt stops the car and throws the old man out. They try to laugh it off and head for a lake, where they stop and enjoy the day. The boy begins to worry about the evil the old man was talking about when they come upon a boy in a bright white suit. He claims he was at a picnic and got separated and then lost. They pick him up and soon it becomes dark. The boy in the white suit leans forward and says something to the aunt, and the car comes to a stop and dies. The aunt and nephew look back at the boy. Smiling, the boy in the white suit says "Have you ever wondered if there was such a thing as genetic evil in the world?" From a long shot, the headlights of the car go dark. ===== A group of friends are playing a game of poker when they start to think that Nick - who has replaced their friend Norman - may be the Devil. After many hands won by Nick, Jake begins to ponder why he always has three sixes in his hand when he wins each round. Nick, meanwhile, has left the table to get a drink of water, while one of the card players named Marty heads to the bathroom. The guys become convinced that Nick is the Devil when they call Norman and discover he isn't sick. When Nick rejoins the table, they tell him their theory and he admits that they are right - he is the devil. He also informs them that one of them is to be "collected" tonight. The three friends debate over who it is to be collected but Nick suggests they make a game of it. The game is for high card and the winner wins a trip with Nick. The friends want to wait for Marty but the Devil says that some people are too innocent to corrupt and he would pick the low card. Tony picks an eight, Jake picks a seven, and Pete picks a jack. After Pete begs the Devil not to take him, Tony suggests that in order to be fair, Pete and Nick should play one-on- one. Pete puts up his immortal soul and Nick puts up eighteen dollars (6 + 6 + 6), but Pete demands he put up nineteen to break the weird chain of events. They play lowball, where the worst hand wins. Marty rejoins the group, and Jake and Tony explain what is happening. It looks as though Pete is about to lose, and the Devil turns over the last card. It is the Tarot's Death card. The Devil, having won, begins to take Pete away with him. Before the Devil and Pete leave, Marty touches the card, failing to understand what it signifies. Because of Marty's innocence, the card reveals itself to be the fourth six. That means the Devil loses and Pete wins. The Devil waves his hand and claims that he does not normally make amends, but this time he feels he owes them. The Devil leaves, thanking Pete for his hospitality and hopes to host the next game. The friends go into the kitchen to find a grand feast along with a refrigerator filled with beer. As the friends start another poker game, they resolve to be better husbands to their wives and start going to church regularly. ===== Maddie Duncan (Helen Mirren) is a timid thrift store employee. One day at work, she finds a pair of expensive-looking high-heeled shoes in a box of donations. After trying them on, her personality changes and she becomes more confident and assertive. She storms out of the store and catches a cab to a mansion where she is strangely comfortable. When the maid asks who she is, she claims that she is Susan Montgomery, the wife of Kyle Montgomery, a wealthy lawyer and the owner of the house. In the opening scene, Kyle was shown donating his widow's clothes to charity, where they ended up at Maddie's thrift store. She then shares tales of the maid’s life which a stranger could never know. She tells the maid she is having a bath and runs up to change. When Maddie takes off the shoes, she turns back into a timid girl. The maid proceeds to run her off, but once the shoes return to her feet Maddie regains the confidence and knowledge she had when she first entered the house. When Kyle returns home, he finds Maddie sitting on his couch dressed in his dead wife’s clothes. Maddie, as Susan, retells the events of her death, revealing how Kyle killed her. She then picks up a gun and begins shooting at him. After a bit of a chase, Maddie’s feet begin to hurt. She takes off the shoes and returns to her usual personality. Panicking when she sees the gun in her hand, she drops it and dumps the shoes in a garbage can, running off in her stocking feet. Afterwards, Kyle decides to close the house for the season, but not before telling the maid her services are no longer required. The maid, stunned by what has transpired, asks Kyle if he believes in ghosts. At a neighbor’s house near where Maddie ran off, the maid notices Susan’s shoes in the trash can and claims them for herself, and picks up the dropped gun. This woman suddenly feels the need to cross the street to the Montgomery manor, where she enters the access code and goes inside. A gunshot is heard, presumably resulting in Kyle’s death. ===== Betsy (Bea Alonzo) and Michael (John Lloyd Cruz) are only two of the people who ride the Manila Metro Rail Transit System Line 3 every day. Betsy is a hopeless romantic, while Michael is a non-believer when it comes to love and romance. Betsy is overcome with excitement when her best friend (Nikki Valdez) and her boyfriend set Betsy up on a date with Michael. However, when they finally meet, Michael turns out to be the exact opposite of her ideal man. But Betsy doesn't let herself become disheartened, instead she allows herself to fall in love with the real Michael. ===== In the Spanish countryside, a middle-aged man named Héctor and his wife Clara live in a home that they are renovating. Héctor scans the forest behind their house with binoculars and sees a young woman take off her T-shirt, exposing her breasts. When his wife goes shopping, he investigates and finds the woman on the ground, naked and unconscious. He is stabbed in the arm by a mysterious man with pink bandages on his face. Fleeing and breaking into a mysterious nearby building, Héctor contacts a scientist by walkie-talkie, who warns him of the bandaged man and guides him to his location, promising safety. The scientist convinces Héctor to hide from the bandaged man, who is just outside, in a large mechanical device. However, when he leaves the machine, Héctor discovers that he has traveled approximately an hour back in time. The scientist explains that the machine is an experimental time travel device, and refers to Héctor as "Héctor 2". The scientist tells him that they need to stay where they are and let events unfold. Despite the scientist's warning, Héctor 2 drives off in a car, passing a cyclist, only to be run off the road by a van, cutting his head, which he wraps using the bandage from his arm wound. The bandage turns pink from absorbing the blood. The cyclist approaches to see if he is all right – it is the woman he earlier saw in the forest. He proceeds to replicate events by making her undress in view of Héctor 1. When she runs away, he catches her, inadvertently knocking her out. He lays her out naked on the ground and then stabs Hector 1 in the arm when he arrives. The woman escapes. Héctor 2 returns to his home, where he hears a scream and chases a woman through his house and onto the roof. When he attempts to grab her, she slips and falls to her death. Seeing the body from the roof, Héctor 2 is horrified, believing he has killed his own wife. Héctor contacts the scientist over a walkie-talkie and convinces him to lure Héctor's past self to the lab with warnings that he is being pursued. Driving to the lab, Héctor 2 insists that he must travel back one more time, despite the scientist revealing that there is a Héctor 3, who told him he must stop Héctor 2 from doing just that. After removing his bandages, Héctor 2 convinces the scientist to send him back several seconds before he initially appears. He finds a van and runs Héctor 2 off the road, but crashes as well, knocking himself out. Upon waking, he informs the scientist he has failed to stop Héctor 2 by any means. He encounters the woman again, startling her into screaming, though she does not recognize him as her assailant. Since Héctor 2 has heard her scream, Héctor 3 and the woman flee to Héctor's house. They become separated. Héctor 3 finds and hides his wife, then realizes what has to happen / will happen / has already happened. He finds the woman, cuts her ponytail off, gives her his wife's coat, and tells her to hide upstairs. Héctor 2 chases her onto the roof. Héctor 3 sits on his lawn with his wife, as Héctor 2 accidentally kills the woman, then drives off. Emergency vehicles are heard approaching in the distance. ===== The novel is substantially concerned with violence and death. According to Levi Stahl, it "is another iteration of Bolaño's increasingly baroque, cryptic, and mystical personal vision of the world, revealed obliquely by his recurrent symbols, images, and tropes". Within the novel, "There is something secret, horrible, and cosmic afoot, centered around Santa Teresa (and possibly culminating in the mystical year of the book's title, a date that is referred to in passing in Amulet as well). We can at most glimpse it, in those uncanny moments when the world seems wrong." The novel's five parts are linked by varying degrees of concern with unsolved murders of upwards of 300 young, poor, mostly uneducated Mexican women in the fictional border town of Santa Teresa (based on Ciudad Juárez but located in Sonora rather than Chihuahua) though it is the fourth part which focuses specifically on the murders. ===== From the January 1917 issue of The Moving Picture World: > Sheriff Crane's wife and child are preparing for a little journey with their > wagon and team. On arriving at the store, the wife, on attempting to get > out, stumbles and startles the horses, which causes them to run away, the > child hanging on to the wagon. This is seen by Harry, who gives chase, > captures the runaway horses, and returns the child, unhurt, to the mother, > she returns home to tell her husband of the bravery of the stranger. Harry > stops at the saloon kept by Vesta, which is patronized by rough Bill and his > gang. While there a poor old man enters accompanied by a dog. He begs for > something to eat for himself and the animal, saying that the dog, will do > tricks in payment. After the performance Bill abuses the dog. Bill strikes > the old man and is called to account by Harry. There is a struggle and the > gun explodes, killing the old man, but before dying, the latter gives his > dog to Harry, begging him to care for it. Harry leaves with the dog and a > threat from Bill. Later, Harry returns and there is a general fight. The > gang get after Harry but escapes. Later he is shot and falls from the horse. > The latter races on and crawls in the brush. The gang, misled, ride on. They > meet the sheriff and tell him of the affair. Vesta is called away by one of > the men. The dog enters, sneaks the bacon Vesta was cutting and takes it to > Harry. Vesta cannot understand how the bacon has disappeared. The following > day the same thing occurs but the dog is seen by Vesta, who shoots, wounding > him in the leg. He follows and sees him take the food to Harry. He returns > to the saloon and tells the gang. Harry is captured and brought to the > saloon to be lynched. He is seen by the sheriff's wife. She explains to her > husband that he is the man who saved their child's life. The sheriff gives > Harry his horse and allows him to depart. ===== ===== In a small village having mostly aged people, there has not been any rainfall for the past 3 years. A youngster wanting to be the leader of the village (Sanjay Dutt) has to free the village people from this calamity. The people of the village beg a rich master for water, but in vain. So the hero has to go to the city to buy a water tube. In the city all his belongings including his money has been stolen. Then he rescues a guy who was getting beaten up by thieves. They become good friends and they help each other. ===== As described in a film magazine review, John Gregg (Witting) and his daughter Mary (Du Brey) become lost and accept the guidance of Miguel Hernandez (Steele), a good-looking bad man. Mary takes a liking to the bad man and will have nothing to do with Cheyenne Harry (Carey), a bad-looking good man. Miguel robs John of his gold and takes Mary to Burro Springs. Henry follows and kills Miguel to protect Mary, and takes John's gold off the body of Miguel. Mary realizes that looks can be deceiving. ===== As described in a film magazine, Noisy Jim (Corey), a British officer, is anxious to purchase Cactus Peter, the horse belonging to Cheyenne Harry (Carey), but Harry refuses to sell. Harry meets Flora Belle (Astor) one night at the dance hall. Since its pay day, Harry spends all of his money on her, and when he runs out she looks around for someone else who still has money to spend. Angered, Harry goes out, sells Cactus Pete, and returns with more money. When he awakens the next day from his drunken stupor and realizes what he has done, he is consumed with regret and goes to recover his horse. He steels his horse, but is ordered shot for the act. When the fatal hour nears, the British officer relents and Harry is allowed to go free. ===== The film is set during the blitz in London. Peggy (Vera Lynn) is a young dancer in a London music hall. When the audience are invited to stay in the hall during a raid she is invited to sing to entertain them and is praised for her singing voice. Peggy's best male friend Frank Foster is an aspiring song-writer and they work together on new tunes, largely in the big band style. Meanwhile she encourages the young boy in the family to leave London as part of the evacuation plans. Although she's reluctant at first to sing, she finally does, debuting with a song "After the Rain". An old school friend, the kilt-wearing Bruce McIntosh, returns on leave from the Scots Guards and starts to seeing Peggy. However, he confesses his love is for Peggy's friend, Ruth. Peggy reunites them and sings Ave Maria at their wedding. Peggy and her friend record a demo of a tune they wrote and it accidentally gets played on BBC radio. Frank gets a letter inviting him to the BBC but they explain they are interested only in the singer. Peggy insists, successfully, that they give Frank a contract too. She quickly becomes a star. She makes a special radio broadcast on St Andrew's Day. She makes a dedication to Bruce and tells him he is a father, but she later is told he did not hear it as he was on patrol and is now missing in action. However it turns out he was only wounded. Peggy and Frank give an open air concert to several hundred RAF crew, singing "Sincerely Yours" and "We'll Meet Again" and the film ends. ===== At the end of the 19th century in the Far West, a farmer is fighting for his right to plough the plains. In order to expel the farmers, the ranchers try to control access to water.Review and synopsis ===== When Richard Bellamy is unable to go with his wife to an opera because he has to attend a political meeting, adding to the friction which has already developed between them over Richard's political stance, he asks Charles Hammond, a friend of his son James, who is fanatical about opera, to go instead. They greatly enjoy the opera, and each other's company. They meet again a few days later in a bookshop, and Charles asks her to read him "Ode To A Nightingale" by Keats. They go to his house, where she reads and plays the piano for him. Charles admits that he loves her, and she admits that she cares for him as well. They begin to have an affair, which the servants get wind of, in spite of Lady Marjorie's attempts to hide it- she burns the note that comes with the bouquet of roses which Charles sends her. They discover a boxful of letters. We see Charles and Marjorie in bed together, and dancing to a gramophone together. Charles wants to make the affair public, and badgers Marjorie to divorce Richard. Marjorie insists that the affair be kept secret a while longer. James and Charles plan to attend a regatta. Hudson, the Butler, sees news of a regatta accident in the papers, and goes to tell Marjorie. She bursts into tears, and Hudson and Richard assume that she is worried about James. Charles comes to tell Marjorie that he is alright, but Richard walks in on them as they are embracing- they break apart just in time, and Richard assumes that Charles is there on James' behalf. But James returns and reveals that he was unable to attend the regatta after all, because he had to stand in court in place of a friend, who "got the collywobbles" at the last minute. Richard is angry with James for not informing Marjorie, but James insists that he phoned her at lunch. Richard begins to piece together what has happened. Rather than losing his temper with his wife, he tells her that he has changed his political stance, as it is a question of loyalty. Marjorie realises he is right, and she must also be loyal- she sends a note to Charles, asking her to meet him at the opera, and there, she ends the affair, bidding him a tearful farewell. He gives her a pendant, and she dissolves into sobbing after he has left.Updown.org.uk - Magic Casements - Upstairs, Downstairs ===== As described in a film magazine, Cheyenne Harry (Carey) escapes from prison and while escaping comes upon the body of a young girl (Janes) that was thrown by a runaway horse. He picks her up and is proceeding on his way when his horse is frightened and bolts down a steep hillside. Harry, realizing the danger the girl is in, gives himself up so that she can receive care. Her mother Molly (Sterling) has secretly married Harry Beaufort (Foster) and it is her mother's brother who arrests Harry. The mother has been told that her little girl is dead and she loses her reason. At a church bazaar the girl is to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Mother and daughter recognize each other and the mother's mind is restored. Through the assistance of Harry, the mother and her husband are reunited. The sheriff is happy to find that the girl Annabelle is his niece and in appreciation of Harry's kindness allows him to go free. ===== As described in a film magazine, Cheyenne Harry (Carey), in his search for food, breaks into the home of Grant Young (Rattenberry) and his daughter Molly (Malone), who recognizes him as the man who held up the train she was traveling on but then allowed her to keep a brooch, a gift from her mother. Grant gives him a chance to make good by becoming an employee on the ranch. Harry enters a horse race contest to get enough money to visit his mother, but Ben Kent, a road agent and an old friend of Harry, cuts his stirrups. Grant forces Harry to assist in holding up a stage coach, and after Kent kills the driver of the coach, both he and Harry are arrested. A message announcing the pending arrival of Harry's mother (Townsend) results in the postponement of Harry's hanging for a couple of weeks, and Harry is allowed by the sheriff (Steele) to make use of Grant's ranch and daughter to deceive Harry's mother, as Harry had stated in his letters to her that he was an honorable man. After his mother's departure, a telegram arrives that exonerates Harry, and he rushes to see Molly. ===== Thirteen years ago, on Valentine's Day at the local lovers lane, Dee-Dee (Diedre Kilgore) and Jimmy (Carter Roy) are making out in their car when a maniac wielding a steel hook attacks them. The pair escape the car and find another couple, Harriet and Ward, slaughtered in the car next to theirs. Soon after, psychiatrist Jack Grefe (Richard Sanders) arrives, along with Sheriff Tom Anderson (Matt Riedy), who is distraught to find his wife, Harriet, is one of the lovers who has been murdered. The killer, Ray Hennessey (Ed Bailey) is caught, and revealed to be one of Jack's patients who had an obsession with Harriet. Ray is incarcerated in a nearby state institution for the criminally insane and gains the nickname "The Hook". In present day, Jack's popular daughter Chloe (Sarah Lancaster) and Tom's socially awkward daughter Mandy (Erin J. Dean) attend the local high school together. During a class, Chloe hears her boyfriend Michael (Riley Smith) is planning to break up with her. In a fit of rage Chloe attempts to drown Michael in the pool. Jack is quickly called into the school about his daughters actions where he meets with Principal Penny Lamson (Suzanne Bouchard). Chloe is suspended from the school, while Michael is grounded by his mother, Principal Penny. Soon after, "The Hook" retrieves his weapon and escapes the mental institution. Upon hearing this news, Sheriff Tom warns Penny, as her husband had been having the affair with Harriet and was murdered along with her. Later that night, Michael sneaks out of his room to meet his friends, including Chloe, Mandy, Bradley (Ben Indra), cheerleader Janelle (Anna Faris), joker Doug (Billy O'Sullivan) and couple Cathy (Megan Hunt) and Tim (Collin F. Peacock) at the bowling alley. Also there is Deputy David Schwick (Michael Shapiro), whom Sheriff Tom has put in charge of keeping Chloe and Mandy safe. After a while, Chloe, in an attempt to make Michael jealous, leaves with Bradley to go to lovers lane. As the pair travel in their car, Chloe enters a store, not realising the owner is murdered as she departs. Deputy David also enters the shop, only to be killed as well. Meanwhile, Penny discovers Michael is missing from his bedroom and alerts Sheriff Tom. Meanwhile, Mandy, Michael, Janelle, Doug, Cathy and Tim arrive at lovers lane. The group find Bradley's car, only to discover he and Chloe have been murdered, before the hook arrives and stabs Tim to death. As the others try to escape in their car, Doug crashes into a tree, knocking everyone unconscious. After waking up, Mandy and Michael find the others gone. They travel to a nearby farmhouse where they arm themselves with a gun and find Janelle and Doug, who has broken his leg. While Janelle tends to Doug's injury, Mandy and Michael go to the barn to retrieve the missing owners car. Back inside, Janelle begins to hear noises before the hook smashes through a window. Janelle runs upstairs and barricades herself in a room, but the hook gets in and slaughters her. The hook then kills Doug. In the barn, Michael and Mandy manage to get the car started. As Michael begins to drive he accidentally runs over Cathy, killing her. The pair re-enter the house and find Doug and Janelle dead before the hook attacks them. They lock themselves in the kitchen, and turn the gas on, before escaping out a window. As the hook opens the door, a match is sparked and the house blows up. Sheriff Tom and Penny go to Jack's house where they find a shrine devoted to Mandy, before rushing to lovers lane. At the farmhouse, Michael and Mandy take the owners car and begin to travel into town. On the way, they find Chloe still alive, who urges them to return to lovers lane as Bradley has also survived. Upon arrival, Mandy leaves Michael and Chloe in the car, only to find Bradley is actually dead, before she is dragged away into a bush. In the car, Chloe attacks Michael with a hook, revealing herself as the killer. Michael escapes, but as Chloe exits she is slaughtered by an unseen figure. Mandy is forced into a car by her attacker, revealed to be Jack who tells her he was the one that had killed Mandy's mother, Harriet, and had survived the explosion at the farmhouse. Michael saves Mandy, and as a fight breaks out, Tom and Penny arrive and shoot Jack before Mandy kills him with a hook. The next day at lovers lane, Mandy and Michael are medically checked before they leave. Tom and Penny enter a police car, that is revealed to be driven by Ray, "The Hook". ===== Kurogane tells the tale of "Hitokiri Jintetsu", a boy just in his teens who has become renowned for his swordsmanship and his proficiency in killing, despite his young age. After getting revenge on his father's murderer, Jintetsu is forced to constantly flee from bounty hunters who wish to collect the price on his head. Despite the skill of these killers, none are capable of besting him in combat, and he's consistently victorious. The deaths that lay in wake earn him the "Hitokiri" moniker. Unfortunately, as fate would have it, he ends up meeting his fate not by someone of equal or even greater skill, but rather by a pack of wild dogs. Though he eventually slays them all, he is fatally wounded. A ronin named Genkichi finds him in his final moments, and he tells the man that he is ready to die so he should hurry up and finish him off. Genkichi informs him that he has no intention of killing him since his wounds will take care of that anyway. When Jintetsu finally dies of blood loss, the former samurai brings him back to his home and actually manages to revive him. However, there is a horrible catch. A great portion of the boy's body was destroyed, so in order to compensate, Genkichi constructed a partially mechanized body of steel and wood (though there is an inconsistency where the first chapter of manga shows him with a fully mechanical body, while the end of the manga portrays him as only be partly mechanicalVolume 1, Chapter 1Volume 3, Chapter 9). Although he also managed to repair most of the killer's nerves and motor functions, he is unable to repair his vocal cords and right eye, slightly impairing the swordsman's abilities and making him mute. Jintetsu does not take to his revival kindly, but is forced into inaction since he isn't used to his body just yet. He is then given new clothes to hide his appearance, and a new sword that Genkichi also notes as being mechanized. Eventually, Jintetsu comes to accept his existence, though he later finds out Genkichi only built him to prove to his former master his ingenuity. His creator then dies after getting his revenge on the said master, apologizing to the assassin for using him before succumbing to his wounds. Jintetsu, surprisingly, seems to forgive him, burying him rather than leaving his corpse as it lay. He then uses the sword he had given him as a grave marker, and begins to walk away from the scene. However, before he can leave the area, the sword speaks and implores Jintetsu to not leave his equipment behind and to take him with him. Though surprised, he obliges, and the sword reveals his name to be Haganemaru, and that he can read Jintetsu's thoughts since the two share a mind. Therefore, not only is he his weapon, but can also speak for him on his behalf. The manga then follows their adventures as Jintetsu works as an assassin-for-hire and Haganemaru as his instrument of death. All the while he is trying to throw away his past, and escape from the various people who are seeking vengeance for what he had done. Along the way he meets a particularly determined young girl named Makoto, who wants to avenge the destruction of her family, and subsequently ends up becoming a makeshift companion. He also earns the nickname of "Jintetsu of Steel" for his metallic face, which many assume is a mask despite it actually being an irremovable part of his body since his revival. ===== Alec of Kerry, a young hunter who has recently been orphaned, is taken prisoner under the false charge of spying. He ends up sharing a cell with Seregil, a seemingly youthful spy and noble from the exotic city of Rhiminee, who has the ability to assume various guises and trick his way out of tight situations. The two escape together, and Seregil, motivated by something he does not entirely understand, takes Alec on as his apprentice in thieving, spying and trickery. They head south towards Rhiminee, where Seregil will report on his mission to the wizard Nysander, the head of a covert group of spies known as "Watchers." But along the way, Seregil falls ill under the influence of a mysterious magic. Alec is forced to navigate their way south on his own, testing his limited resources and knowledge of the world outside his rustic homeland. When the cause of Seregil's illness finally becomes known (an ordinary wooden disk imbued with a powerful curse) it is almost too late to save his life. In his unconscious state, Seregil experiences visions of a dark entity known as the "Empty God," foreshadowing the designs of the evil Duke Mardus, who wishes to obtain the god's power for himself. In Rhiminee, the capital of Skala, Nysander heals Seregil and takes possession of the disk. Once recovered, Seregil reassumes his role as mentor to Alec, teaching him how to be a successful thief and spy. Alec meets Beka Cavish, a friend of Seregil's and member of the Queen's elite Horse Guard, and he and Seregil carry out odd jobs for the scandal-ridden nobles and citizens of Rhiminee under the guise of the "Rhiminee Cat." Seregil learns of a prophecy in which he is to become "father, brother, friend and lover" to Alec, and Alec discovers that Seregil is Aurenfaie, a race of long-lived peoples inhabiting the distant and exotic realm of Aurenen, from which magic originates. After Seregil is thrown into jail for supposedly writing treasonous letters against Queen Idrilain of Skala, it becomes clear that a plot is underway to overthrow the queen. Seregil briefly switches bodies with Thero, Nysander's apprentice, in order to assist Alec and Nysander in discovering the perpetrators. Their hunt eventually leads them to Lady Kassarie, a supporter of the "Lerans," a group of anti-Aurenfaie nobles who object to Idrilain's queenship (she is a distant descendant of Lord Corruth, an Aurenfaie consort). Alec manages to seduce a young servant of Kassarie's, allowing him and Seregil to break into her stronghold. Their discovery of Lord Corruth's decomposed skeleton, which Kassarie has set up for display like a trophy, reveals that the Lerans were behind the consort's disappearance, which had so strained the relations between Skala and Aurenen. A fight breaks out between the Skalans and the Lerans, but Nysander is able to transform Seregil and Alec into birds, ensuring their escape from Kassarie's stronghold. Kassarie is killed and Idrilain's place on the throne is preserved, but the novel ends with Nysander experiencing a vision of death and the Empty God, foreboding more dark times to come. ===== The Stooges are three hapless tramps. After nearly destroying a farmer's (Richard Fiske) pile of firewood, and destroying some of his equipment, they hit the road on foot. Curly wishes they had a car after they stop for a break. By accident they think they've found a car for free and take it. After driving around for a bit, and in their distraction nearly having a few collisions, the boys come to the assistance of the farm Widow Jenkins (Eva McKenzie) and her three daughters. Just as Curly had wished, she graciously gives them a huge meal and in return they offer to fix her broken outdoor water pump. As the Stooges attempt to fix the pump, they discover oil hidden under the farm when the pump turns into an oil geyser, staining their clothes and spewing Curly high in the air. They are happy for the lady and her beautiful daughters, until she regretfully tells them she had just sold the farm. The Stooges realize she was cheated out of her land by a trio of swindlers (Dick Curtis, Eddie Laughton, James Craig). After a hair-raising road chase with the swindlers, they manage to retrieve the deed to the land before it is recorded at the court house, and are allowed to marry the now wealthy Widow Jenkins' daughters. ===== Anne Provoost's novels are invariably related from the point of view of a young person caught up in problems of adult making which they have difficulty comprehending. In this case, the teenage Lucas is taken on a long summer visit to his late grandfather’s home in the Ardennes by his mother. He has been brought up by her in ignorance of the fact that during World War II his grandfather had informed on the nuns in the local convent who were harbouring Jewish children. He is therefore at a loss to understand the conflicting attitudes he encounters in the town. He is particularly targeted by the political activist Benoit, for whom his grandfather was a hero, and persuaded to take reluctant part in a couple of right-wing actions against the Moroccan immigrants who have taken over a run-down quarter of the town. In the meantime he has befriended the young American-born Caitlin, who dreams of becoming a dancer. She is in fact the daughter of one of the children betrayed by his grandfather, all of whom had survived Auschwitz. She also stands for liberal attitudes and as an outsider too is not tainted by the small-town narrow mindedness from which Lucas has to suffer. Just as he is preparing to commit himself to Caitlin and what she stands for, she is involved in a crash and Lucas is only able to rescue her from the burning car by sawing off her trapped foot. At first he is treated as a hero, but Benoit, fearing denunciation by Lucas, uses his position as a journalist to question his actions.The book is discussed at greater length in The Babel Guide to Dutch and Flemish Fiction (ed. Theo Hermans), Oxford 2001, pp.152-4 The plot of the novel has three times been adapted for theatre: in Brussels (1997), Hamme (2003) and Amsterdam (2006). In addition it was made into an English-language feature film in 2001 by Hans Herbots.A trailer and three excerpts are available online Among the liberties taken with the text was the decision to move the scene of action, rather more credibly, to the south of France and the hint of a resolution through forgiveness not present in the novel.International movie data base ===== While shopping in a toy store, Cartman sees a boy named Thomas who continuously shouts obscenities, as his mother and other shoppers try to explain to Cartman that he has Tourette syndrome (TS). Cartman decides to pretend he has the disorder as well so he can get away with shouting obscenities himself, and successfully convinces his mother and a doctor, who diagnoses him with TS and notifies the school. Kyle quickly deduces that Cartman is faking; Cartman admits the truth to him but continues to enjoy the deception. When Kyle complains to Principal Victoria, a visiting representative from a TS foundation misinterprets his statement as an allegation that all people with TS are faking. Kyle is sent to a meeting of a local support group for children with the disorder, who explain that they truly cannot control their various tics and outbursts. Realizing that Cartman has manipulated everyone else around him into believing the scam, and seeing no way to disprove it, Kyle reluctantly apologizes to the group and to Cartman. However, Cartman takes advantage of the situation to scream vulgar anti-Semitic remarks at Kyle's parents. Thomas soon realizes that Cartman is faking the disorder. Cartman decides to appear on Dateline NBC and be interviewed by Chris Hansen, with the intention of making an anti-Semitic hate speech while being commended for his bravery in living with TS. However, at a congratulatory dinner beforehand, he inadvertently blurts out embarrassing true details from his past and realizes that he has lost the ability to censor himself, after saying whatever comes to his mind for so long. He tries to cancel the Dateline interview for fear of humiliating himself, but Hansen intimidates him into going ahead with it by telling him about a pedophile who tried to back out of appearing on the series To Catch a Predator. He shot himself after the production crew tracked him down; Hansen insinuates that the man was actually murdered and that the same will happen to Cartman if he backs out. Realizing that he has no way to avoid going on Dateline, Cartman prays for a miracle while at the same time blaming God for his predicament. Meanwhile, Kyle teams up with Thomas, who is worried that Cartman's appearance on the show will make others think TS is fun and copy him. Not knowing that Cartman has already given up on his plan, the two boys use the Internet to solicit multiple pedophiles to visit the television studio. The pedophiles all shoot themselves upon entering the studio and seeing Hansen on stage, causing the audience to panic and flee. Outside, Craig offers to hang out with Thomas and do his laundry. As Kyle gloats to Cartman over foiling his plan, Cartman tearfully thanks him for preventing him from having to humiliate himself on live television. Kyle realizes that he has lost a chance to see Cartman brought low and exclaims "Ah, shit!" at the same time with Thomas. ===== The vivacious 11-year-old Siss lives in a rural community in Norway. Her life is changed when the quiet girl Unn moves to the village to live with her aunt after the death of her unmarried mother. Siss and Unn can't wait to meet. They finally do, at Unn's house. They talk for a while, Unn shows Siss a picture from the family album of her father, then Unn persuades Siss that they should undress, just for fun. They do, watching each other, and Unn asks whether Siss can see if she is different. Siss says no, she can't, and Unn says she has a secret and is afraid she will not go to heaven. Soon they dress again, and the situation is rather awkward. Siss leaves Unn and runs home, overwhelmed by fear of the dark. Unn does not want to feel embarrassed when meeting Siss the next day, so she decides to skip school and instead goes to see the ice castle that has been created by a nearby waterfall. Ice castles are normal in cold winters, when the water freezes into huge structures around waterfalls. Unn climbs into this ice castle, exploring the rooms baffled by its beauty. In the 7th room she gets disoriented and cannot find her way out. She dies of hypothermia. Her last word is "Siss". When the search for Unn remains fruitless, people wonder if Siss knows more about the disappearance than she lets on. They wonder what had passed between them the night before. Siss on her part is overwhelmed by loss and loneliness, and makes a promise that she will never forget Unn. Therefore, Siss takes upon herself the role Unn had: standing alone in the school yard refusing to play or speak. Thus, she has to find her way out of her own emotional ice castle, before she can continue on the road towards adolescence and adulthood. ===== Ross Harte, publicity writer, is investigating the person behind a classified ad seeking a haunted house for sale. When it turns out to be his old friend The Great Merlini, Harte drops by his store, The Magic Shop, looking for an explanation. Harte and Merlini are soon swept up into a complex and bizarre plot involving the death of Linda Skelton, an agoraphobic heiress, at her home on Skelton Island, a tiny island in the East River of New York City. The plot soon expands to involve a psychic researcher and his favourite medium, a group of treasure hunters seeking a sunken treasure, counterfeit golden guinea coins, a man with blue skin (argyria), a gangster named Charles Lamb, a second murder by "the bends", and a murder scene with a set of neat footprints marching across the ceiling. Merlini survives more than one attempt on his life before he can call in the police and conclusively bring the crimes home to the guilty. ===== Beautiful young Pauline Hannum, daughter of the late Major Hannum and a performer with his circus, enters The Magic Shop run by The Great Merlini and is suspiciously willing to pay much more than the going price for immediate delivery of a "Headless Lady" illusion. Merlini and his writer friend Ross Harte decide to investigate, drawn by Merlini's love of circuses. They soon learn that Major Hannum's death was probably a murder, and that the killer seems to have unfinished, and deadly, business that involves a real headless lady whose head has disappeared. Merlini, Harte and a new associate, detective writer Stuart Towne, soon learn a number of interesting background facts about goings-on at the circus—including why it's bad luck for the circus orchestra to play Suppé's Light Cavalry March, what the mummified body of John Wilkes Booth is composed of, and how to create fingerprints that have no loops or whorls. Merlini must use his magic skills to escape from an "escape-proof" jail, assemble the suspects, and identify the murderer in a surprising final scene. Category:1940 American novels Category:Novels by Clayton Rawson ===== Ross Harte, newspaperman and friend to The Great Merlini, has finally fallen in love—with Kathryn Wolff, daughter of irascible millionaire Dudley Wolff. Dudley decides to put huge obstacles in the path of Kathryn's romance, including disinheriting her. But most of his life is taken up with his investigations into the nature of death. To that end, he's filled his country estate with his second wife (a former medium), an experimental biologist, and a number of other odd characters. When a private detective decides to blackmail Wolff, he won't stand for it; he strikes the man, who falls to the floor dead. Wolff forces his hangers-on to help him bury the little man—who comes back to haunt Wolff, and forces him to call in The Great Merlini to explain the situation. Merlini has to explain a spirit photograph, a vase broken by ghostly means, Dudley's shooting, the identity of "Zareh Bey, the Man who Could Not Die", a murder by dry ice, why Ross should have been tied hand and foot and thrown into Long Island Sound, and where a professional medium can conceal a gun that no one else can. Finally Merlini works out the causes of the ghostly apparitions, identifies Dudley's murderer, and makes it possible for Harte and Kathryn to get married. ===== The episode starts when Homer, dressed as a dragon, tries waking up Bart to go with him, Lisa, Marge and Maggie to the midnight sale of the last book in the Angelica Button series. The whole family then goes to stand in line (together with most of Springfield residents). At midnight Homer cannot wait; he bursts into the bookshop, followed by the rest of the people in the line. In the car on their way back home Lisa reads the book, announces there is a happy ending, and then the Simpsons throw the book away from the car. When they get back home, they decide to watch TV. While watching TV, Marge sees a commercial for the Chazz Busby Ballet Academy, and reveals to Lisa that she had always wanted to become a ballet dancer. Lisa tells Marge that she can still achieve her dream as an adult, and encourages her to audition for the ballet academy. While Marge does stumble at first during her audition, she is able to prove herself as a talented dancer, and Busby lets her become a student at his school. Meanwhile, Homer takes Bart to the basement and introduces him to a secret room in which Homer has been making beef jerky. When Marge suffers a leg cramp during her dance routine, Busby throws her out. When Lisa argues with Busby about his decision, he notices that Lisa has naturally perfect posture, and asks her to join his academy, and Marge accepts the offer on Lisa's behalf. However, no matter how hard she practices, Lisa soon turns out to be a poor ballet student. While on break, Lisa accidentally inhales smoke from the other students' cigarettes. When the break is over, Lisa enters the studio and performs better than ever, and deduces that second hand smoke is what makes her excel. Meanwhile, Homer and Bart offer to sell Apu their beef jerky to increase Kwik-E-Mart revenues despite Apu's Hinduism — but it is a lost cause, as Homer and Bart discover their beef jerky room is completely empty, and Apu leaves in frustration, refusing to do such business with them ever again. Homer discovers that a family of raccoons has made off with their jerky. That night, Lisa hallucinates of a cigarette-smoked shaped older version of herself, who convinces her to continue smoking. Lisa doubts the veracity of such a vision, until she is convinced by her feminist heroines by also seeing visions of them, all of whom were smokers. While driving Lisa to ballet practice, Marge — who is proud to have a ballerina as a daughter — starts glowing about how she sees herself in Lisa (even mistaking Lisa for herself), and Lisa starts suspecting that her mother's living her dream of being a ballerina through her. Homer follows one of the raccoons into the family's home under a tree stump and prepares to take them out, despite Bart warning him that he always loses fights with animals, as his battle with the earthworms proved — but Homer claims that that was phased withdrawal, but after seeing that their family is basically the raccoon version of his family, Homer cannot bring himself to do it. During a windy break, Lisa cannot inhale any smoke. She realizes her only alternative is to actually smoke a cigarette, and picks one up. Right as she is about to smoke it, her father arrives and takes it away, throws it on the ground, squishes it with his foot, and then shoots it with a gun several times, and he is shown to be putting the gun away into his jacket (which is also filled with other guns and weapons). Appalled, he goes to tell Marge that Lisa needs to be taken out of the ballet academy, but discovers how proud she is of Lisa; Homer cannot bear to destroy Marge's happiness. He does, however, order Lisa to quit smoking — including second hand — and decides to have Bart keep an eye on her. When Bart informs Homer that Lisa is still addicted to cigarette smoke, Homer creates a plan involving one of the raccoons. On the night of Lisa's ballet recital, which is Sleeping Beauty, the raccoon breaks into the changing room and steals all the cigarettes and money. On stage, all the ballerinas soon go out of control, and Lisa tells the annoyed audience that ballet is something America has forced onto children, and quits (although she implied that she was going to talk about smoking, which was the main message of this episode, she states that she takes full responsibility for her decision to smoke instead of the usual "blame tobacco companies"), prompting Busby to also quit. Lisa finally manages to overcome her smoke addiction using children's 'Hello Kitty' nicotine patches. Marge also learns her lesson: parents should not try to achieve their dreams through their children, but Homer proves that he has yet to learn that moral, as he is forcing Bart to become a Mexican wrestler called El Guapo, which means "good looking" in Spanish. ===== The novel is based on a story of a Muslim girl named Tanaya Shah; a young Indian girl mesmerized by western culture. She was raised by her mother and grandfather, as her father abandoned Tanaya's mother when Tanaya was a young child. Tanaya's grandfather treated Tanaya with the utmost respect. He treated her like his own daughter, but Tanaya still felt that she was neglected. Because Tanaya's mother was abandoned, Tanaya's grandfather (Tanaya's mother's father) would remain extremely cautious of Tanaya's roundabouts. This became difficult for Tanaya, as she wanted to explore the world outside of Mahim; place she Tanaya was born and raised. Adding to this, Tanaya was born in a family where women had the best facial features. This was true for all women in her family, except for her mother. As the story progresses, we learn that Tanaya's mother was thought to have been abandoned because of this lacking feature. Unfortunately, Tanaya's mother was well aware of this fact, and thus hated Tanaya. Over the years, her mother had become sarcastic and cruel towards Tanaya. This was one of the reasons that Tanaya was more attached to her grandfather. Getting back to Tanaya's fantasy of the western culture; like every young girl, Tanaya was also amazed by the glossy magazines that portrayed women in a stylish way. Tanaya with her best friend, Nilu, would read all western magazines, especially, Teen Cosmo. In private conversations with Nilu, she would often confide about leaving Mahim to Paris. She wanted to become like one of the models. However, modeling was not her passion. All she wanted was freedom, and a new change in her life. Her grandfather saw it a bit differently. He attested this new change with her married life. Call it a fortunate event, but Tanaya received a proposal. He happened to be the son of Tanaya's grandfather's friend. His name was Tariq Khan, who happened to live in Paris. Tanaya saw this as an opportunity to see Paris. Fate of luck strikes, and her grandfather allows her to visit Paris, where she became part of the modeling industry. (The book has a detailed account of the difficulties she faces to become a model). In the end, Tanaya finally marries Tariq Khan, and realizes that she was pursuing rather a mere image of herself. ===== ===== As described in a film magazine, Dave Bland (Steele), head of a band of cattle rustlers operating in Paradise Valley, is defied by Cheyenne Harry (Carey) who has driven his heard into the valley to graze. Bland calls his phantom riders together, routes Harry's cattle, and then seeks their owner intent on taking his life. The Unknown (Pegg), an influential member of the gang who has a grievance against Harry, claims the right to settle with him and this is agreed to. In the meantime, Molly Grant (Malone) prevails upon her father Pebble Grant (Connors) to warn Harry of the danger. The rustlers discover this and hang Grant, and Molly is forced to marry Bland. Hearing that Harry is in a nearby saloon, the gang rushes the place. A gunfight follows and Harry and his partner inflict many casualties. Rangers who were notified by Molly arrive and route the gang. The film ends with the distant chimes of wedding bells for Cheyenne Harry and Molly. ===== As described in a film magazine, Cheyenne Harry (Carey) and his pals, bent on helping their friend Rawhide Jack, attend a rodeo with the intent to win the prize for roping steers and to hand the winnings over to Jack. Harry wins, and after the rodeo the boys go to a cafe where they imbibe too freely in the flowing wine and fall asleep. Harry finds himself robbed and with the others shanghaied and aboard a ship. They mutiny and Harry becomes the captain. A shipboard fire results in them landing on a desert island, where the Queen (Mattox) of the Blackanwhites falls in love with Harry. He dodges her and runs off with her daughter the Princess (Malone). Just as he starts making love to her, he awakens from a dream, the product of Harry's legendarily prodigious drinking, and discovers that he is holding one of the sleeping cowboys. ===== Cheyenne Harry tries to help his outlaw friend Padden evade arrest after Padden has drunkenly shot another man. In the end, the two mismatched friends fight it out, leaving Padden dead. In a romantic subplot, Harry's fiancée Alice leaves him, but finally returns. ===== As described in a film magazine, "Kaintuck" Ridge (Carey), refused admission to the local militia to fight on the side of Union in the American Civil War, joins a gang of marauders and at the end of the conflict finds himself a fugitive with a price on his head. He goes west and becomes a bandit. Marley Calvert (Pegg), who kept Kaintuck out of the army, also goes west and takes up mining. Betty Calvert (Schade) is taken captive when Kaintuck holds up a stage coach. His hatred for the Calverts is overcome by his admiration for Molly (Malone) and later, when her honor is attacked by a former suitor, he defends her and wins her love. ===== The story deals with two European men, named Kayerts and Carlier, who are assigned to a trading post in a remote part of the African Jungle. There they take part in ivory trading, hoping to financially benefit the company as well as themselves. With no specific tasks or important things to be done, they both become increasingly isolated and demoralized as time goes by. At one point in the story, the native Makola, serving as Kayerts's and Carlier's bookkeeper, initiates an exchange of slaves for ivory. Initially Kayerts and Carlier are stunned and scandalized by the idea, yet eventually they accept the deal and aid Makola for his huge profit. Both men are plagued by disease and grow very weak physically towards the end of the story. Finally, a seemingly trivial matter – sugar – sparks an irrational, uncontrolled and violent conflict between them, and ends tragically as Kayerts accidentally shoots and kills Carlier. At the end of the story, just when the company steamboat approaches the station two months later than it should have, Kayerts hangs himself out of desperation. ===== As described in a film magazine, Bess Thurston (Gerber), whose no- account brother Jack (Pegg) is unable to support her, obtains employment in a dance hall. This shatters the illusions of Cheyenne Harry (Carey), who has fallen in love with her. When he rescues her from the advances of Beau Ross (Harris), Cheyenne's confidence in her is restored. Her brother then aids Beau in an attempted robbery and Harry allows them to escape. Beau takes Bess with him into the desert. Harry follows and a duel ensues in which they are both wounded. Bess rides the only horse left out of the desert, while Beau and Harry struggle along on foot. A sandstorm results in the death of Beau, but Harry lives to find happiness with Bess. ===== As described in a film magazine, Lin McLean (Carey), a cowboy, is a fool where women are concerned. He befriends Katie Lusk (Schade), a Denver "biscuit shooter", only to be rejected. Dishearted, he picks up a homeless boy, Tommy Lusk (Pegg), off the Denver streets and makes a pal of him. He learns that the boy's mother is none other than the woman who rejected him. Katy comes back into his life, vowing that she really loves him, but Lin has met Jessamine Buckner (Malone), the new station agent in the small town near where he works, and Lin realizes that she is the right woman. Katy commits suicide and Lin, Jessamine, and the boy start a new life together. ===== As described in a film magazine, Cheyenne Harry (Carey) is promised his liberty from prison if he will capture "dead or alive" Buck Masters (Harris), a worthless and desperate character. Harry agrees, and in short order he has won the confidence of the bad man and they agree to hold up the night stage coach. Harry tips off the sheriff and the tough is caught. Harry then finds that this has robbed a poor girl, Lola (Gerber), and her mother (Lafayette) of their only support. Harry relents and, with his two pals, they kidnap the thief from the sheriff's automobile and make off with him. Harry rides off to begin life anew with Lola, the desperado's sister. ===== Cheyenne Harry is a wealth ranch owner. After his cowboys put an ad in the newspaper trying to find him a wife, Harry marries Aileen Judson-Brown. A year into their marriage, Aileen gives birth to their first child. The new family live with Aileen’s status seeking mother, Mrs. Judson-Brown. Mrs. Judson-Brown tries everything in her power to break up the marriage so her daughter can marry the wealthier Ferdie Van Duzen. Mrs. Judson-Brown steals Harry and Aileen’s baby and tells Harry that Aileen no longer loves him and their baby has died. Heart broken, Harry moves out west. Harry receives news from Mrs. Judson-Brown’s butler that his baby is still alive. Harry finds his child and Aileen confesses her true love. The film ends with the reunited family heading West together, leaving Harry’s hateful mother-in-law behind. ===== As described in a film magazine, Cheyenne Harry (Carey) has a sheriff and posse on his trail because of his knowledge of a cattle rustling incident and makes a dash for safety across the Canada–US border. When the posse stops at the border, he calmly waves his gun and rolls a cigarette. The sheriff, however, has contacted the Canadian Mounted Police, and they are soon watching Harry. He finds refuge with a band of Indians, but then clashes over an Indian girl (May) with Black Michael (Harris), leader of a gang of whiskey runners. Harry's real love is with Kate (Gerber), daughter of local trader Angus McDougal (Fenton). However, his rival here is also Black Michael. Michael kills an Indian and abducts Kate, but Harry follows and rescues her. Harry beats Michael in a terrific fight, with Michael confessing to his crimes before dying. ===== Harper Flute is an adolescent girl living with her family in Australia during the depression. Harper Flute's little brother Tin was born on Thursday and he has far to go. Harper starts out by saying how she and Tin go out to the creek, and start watching fish. Harper soon catches one out of the creek, and she tries to search for Tin to let him see it. She notices that he's gone and starts crying out to her house. Her dad, whom she calls Da, comes out and starts searching all over for Tin, and they eventually find him in the mud. Harper notices that he dug his way out, but she won't tell anyone about this special event. Back at the house, Audrey, her older sister, scolds Harper for letting him get away like that. Mrs. Murphy, the neighbor, starts worrying about Tin and starts talking about the new baby. Later on in the book, her mother, whom she calls Mam, is pregnant and gives birth to a new baby boy named Caffy. Tin is considered Da's "little pet", and Harper notes how she, her older brother, Devon, and Audrey aren't pets, but they aren't nothing. She remarks how Caffy is nothing to Da though. Harper notices how Tin loves to dig and he spends most of his time under the house. She sees how he's digging tunnels, and spends most of his year there. Mam is worried and distressed about Tin because her neighbors are asking why he doesn't come out, and how he needs to, and Da supports Tin because it reminds him of the war and how they dug tunnels. People at school come to see Tin's tunnels. Mr. Cable, a "friend", comes over and notes how they need a farm. Da fights back, but Mr. Cable asks Devon if he can work for him for a week's wages. Devon agrees, and decides to travel the next day so he can get there sooner. Harper notes how much she misses Devon, and guesses that Caffy misses Tin, but Mam and Da argue that Caffy doesn't know Tin and he can't miss what he never had. Devon comes home a week later, and starts crying. He notes how Mr. Cable sent him home without a penny and an hour's instruction to build the fences. His dream to own a pony named Champion was ruined and he ignores everyone for a whole week. Da tries to talk to Mr. Cable, but he notes how Devon made two of his sows run away with his "lousy" fences. Da apologizes and goes back, saying "Mr. Cable has no heart, you can't talk him out of it." Soon, Da's father dies and in his will, Grandpa gives the money to Devon. Devon wants to buy a pony and he rubs it in Audrey's face. Audrey gets very upset and asks him not to. Devon decides to buy what they need, not what he wants. He is willing to sacrifice his dream pony, but Da suggests not, and decides to buy the pony. Devon is not very optimistic about this, so when they come home, Mam starts arguing how Harper never got new clothes in her life. Devon screams out, "I told you so!" and Mam slams the door and starts crying. Da says she'll get over it. One day, a seventeen-year- old boy named Izzy moves to their town, and Audrey begins to have a crush on him. Audrey tells Harper she's going to marry Izzy one day, but Harper wonders what it feels like to get married. One day going to school, their house collapses. Da had wanted to start a farm, just like Mr. Cable wanted them to. Harper runs back, and tries to find Tin, while Audrey and Devon try to find their parents. Da screams out in rage how this is all Tin's fault. Mam argues that it's not his fault, they'll just rebuilt it. Da is so upset that he's biting his fingernails and digging them into his skin. Harper is so upset to see Da like this, so she tries to stop him from doing that, but he slaps her. Mam gets very upset and cries out, "Don't you dare slap this child! Get to your feet, you disgust me. How dare you take your misery out on a poor infant." Harper doesn't care, she wants her Da to stop digging in his skin. Mam tells Da to build the house while she finds a place to stay for the while. Mr. Cable comes back, complaining about how Tin keeps eating all the honey of his beehive. He complains and Da apologizes, and sees Tin wounded. Mam goes and gets clean rags to clean the wounds off. After that, Tin leaves the rags on the dirt and runs away. Mam sighs and wants Tin to talk to her, to be part of her family. When Mam finds the rags outside, she folds them neatly and puts them in a box. She keeps Tin's things in there. She put a lock of hair inside and what she can find from Tin. One day, Caffy falls into a well, and they try to save him, but he sadly dies. Audrey is sent to work for labor and Harper is very upset with the death. Da soon rebuilds the house, but Harper feels that Tin is growing farther away from the family. He keeps on digging and digging, and won't talk to anyone, not even Mam. Harper is worried, but she doesn't talk about it. What's even worse is that their chickens and cows were stolen by some salesmen. Mr. Cable had offered Audrey to work for him as a housekeeper. She said no, then the next morning their chickens and cows were stolen. Audrey asks Harper if she's sick of eating rabbit, and Harper says yes, but she doesn't mind. Audrey doesn't want to see her family suffer so she decides to tell yes to Mr. Cable to be his housekeeper. Harper follows Audrey when she leaves, and Audrey goes to Izzy. She tells Izzy that she has decided to work for Mr. Cable, but Izzy tells her that people have been saying that Mr. Cable paid the salesmen to take the animals away so that Audrey would say yes. Audrey doesn't believe him at first, but then she does, and she decides to tell Mam and everyone that she is leaving. That is the last that Harper sees Audrey this month. Audrey comes home one day from Mr. Cable's, and bursts out crying. She tells her mother, that she had been raped by Mr.Cable and had run back home. Da, who is so upset, takes his rifle and charges to Mr. Cable's house. Mam begs Harper to chase after him and bring him back. Harper tries, but Da argues that she should go home and walks away, looking for Mr. Cable. Harper suddenly falls into one of Tin's tunnels, and she starts thinking of Caffy while crawling. Suddenly, she starts saying "sorry" and Tin helps her out. Harper thanks him, and finds her Da. They go on home. The next few months, Mr. Murphy tells Da that people said that Mr. Cable ran away after hearing that Da was going to defend Audrey, and that he was the most admired man in the town now. It is also strongly hinted that Mr Cable was killed by Tin. The family then parade around the small town to soak in the fame. A few days later, the Flute family is given a chunk of gold that Tin finds in one of his tunnels. They dance around, happy, and thinking that Tin was digging to find something to help his poor family all along. However, Harper still thinks that Tin dug because he loved to do so. Harper and Audrey move to a new house near the beach, and Mam and Da moved to find more gold. Harper proclaims that Da got bit by the mining bug. She says she misses Devon, who moved to the front, and Izzy, Audrey's sweetheart, who went to war. She misses Caffy, she misses her past, and she misses her Mam and Da. She says she misses Tin. "It was Tin, who was mythical, and he looked just that way. He looked nothing like the boy he was supposed to be, ten going on eleven. He seemed to hover above the earth somehow, the curious glow of his flesh illuminating him. I would not have been surprised if wings had opened up behind him…… he looked into the room at us. He looked first at Mam, then Da, then at Audrey, then me. When his eyes settled on mine I felt something inside me shake free, and go to him. I didn’t give it—he wanted it, and it went to him. Then he smiled, only slightly, but enough so we agreed, afterward, that we had seen it done. With that he turned and vanished…" -Quote from the book, Thursday's Child. ===== Seven-year-old Anwell lives in a prestigious but coldly distant family with a mother who is always sick and a father who punishes him with physical abuse. Anwell has no friends and is on a very tight leash. He is sitting in the back yard one day when he meets wild boy his age named Finnigan, his alter-ego or second personality. Anwell now named Gabriel is never ready to be angry and never to fight. Finnigan always ready be angry and to fight. If Gabriel (Anwell) wants revenge or anything bad done, he asks Finnigan to do it for him. Finnigan becomes Anwell's only friend, and Anwell confides in him what he has never told anyone else, of how he accidentally killed his handicapped older brother Vernon. His brother, though he was three years older than Anwell, "was never the elder of us". His parents, disgraced and humiliated by Vernon, refuse to take care of him, leaving Anwell to do the job at the young age of seven. Enjoying his task, Anwell routinely feeds, washes, and entertains his brother. One Sunday, while his father is out to church and his mother is sleeping due to a migraine, Anwell is again taking care of Vernon. When Anwell is trying to feed Vernon, he refuses, would not stop crying, and scratches Anwell on his cheek, drawing blood. Out of frustration, and anxiety their mother will wake up and be irate, Anwell puts fabric in Vernon's mouth to quiet him and throws his brother in a refrigerator. Finnigan becomes the town arsonist, lighting the town aflame piece by piece in an act of revenge for Gabriel, but Finnigan is soon out of control and the only way for Gabriel to stop Finnigan is for Gabriel to kill himself at the young, "martyr's age" of twenty by condemning himself to a mentally caused illness. ===== In Teneke, Kemal depicts the tragic conditions, under which the landowners (aghas) in the region Çukurova in southern Anatolia of Turkey live and the way in which the rice planters exploit them. A young and idealistic district governor (), who is newly appointed there, tries to back the landowners struggling against oppression and injustice by a rice planter. ===== The film takes place in a lawless town in southwestern Kansas during the era of outlaws and cowboys. After the marshal is killed while breaking up a saloon fight, his son, Cheyenne Harry avenges his father’s death by killing two of the men involved. His mother pleads with him to never carry a gun again and Cheyenne Harry agrees. Harry is wooing the beautiful Conchita. Conchita is also being wooed by the devious Boone Travis. In order to eliminate his rival, Travis murders a man and frames Harry. Harry is sentenced to die, but is allowed one last visit to see his mother. During this trip he is told that his brother Bud was attacked and branded by cattle thieves. Harry escapes custody and punishes the men who attacked his brother. He is also cleared of the charge of murder. ===== Harry's bride is murdered at their wedding along with Harry's mother and father, and the good-hearted outlaw turns grimly malevolent. He leaves town, only to return one year later. One by one he stalks his wife's killers, dispatching them all until he finally sets his sights, mistakenly, on Sheriff Gale Thurman. The lawman bests Harry and keeps him hiding outside town in the wilderness. Straying into the same wilderness, the Sheriff's girlfriend is first overtaken by highwaymen, then rescued by Harry, only to be taken captive by Harry when he realizes who she is. At first threatening to harm the girl, Harry slowly falls in love with her, all while hostile Apaches attempt to kill them both. By the time the Sheriff tracks them down, a full-scale assault is under way, and the two men join forces. Harry realizes the Sheriff's innocence, but it is too late: the lawman is dead from his battle wounds, but he has saved his girlfriend - and Harry. ===== As described in a film magazine, Square Shootin' Harry Lanyon (Carey), proprietor of a gambling hall in Arizona, is in love with his ward Ruth Watson (Hope). However, he believes that she is in love with his pal Billy Lanyon (Landis), and intends to let the youth have the girl. While in this uncertain mind about his own love affair, Harry begins to read Bret Harte's story "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" and begins to liken himself to John Oakhurst in the story. Oakhurst (Carey) befriends a girl named Sophy (Hope) on a riverboat. The girl is being deserted by a gambler named Ned Stratton (Harris), who had promised to marry her, and Oakhurst saves her from self- destruction. Oakhurst brings Sophy to the questionable neighborhood of Poker Flat, and encourages her to marry some youth who loves her, although Oakhurst also cares for her. Stratton reappears and Oakhurst makes it his business to rid the camp of him. Later, the Vigilantes swoop down upon Poker Flat and, in a reform movement, send Oakhurst, Mother Shipton, the Duchess, and others into the hills. Sophy and her young husband follow. They are all caught in a violent storm from which only the latter two emerge alive. Harry Lanyon is impressed with the Bret Harte story, and vows that he will not repeat the mistake of Oakhurst and in sacrificing his love for another. Harry then discovers that Ruth loves him and not Billy after all. ===== Tambrey "Tammy" Tyree (Debbie Reynolds) is a seventeen-year-old girl living in a houseboat on the Mississippi River (within sight of Louisiana) with her Grandpa, John Dinwitty (Walter Brennan). She runs around barefoot, dreaming of life outside of the swamp, and talking to her best friend, Nan, a goat. One day a small airplane crashes in the swamp. Tammy and her grandfather go to see what they can salvage from the wreck, and find the unconscious pilot, Peter Brent (Leslie Nielsen). Tammy and her grandfather help Peter recover at their home, during which time Tammy falls in love with Peter. However, he must return to his own home, but tells the grandfather that, if anything happened to the grandfather, Tammy would be welcome to come and stay with Peter at his spacious house. Several weeks later, Tammy's grandfather is arrested for making moonshine. With no one else to stay with, Tammy sets off for Brentwood Hall, Peter's home. She arrives during a dance rehearsal and sees Peter with his friends. When Peter's friend Ernie discovers Tammy outside of the party, Tammy tries to explain her grandfather's imprisonment; however, Peter misunderstands, and tells Mrs. Brent (Fay Wray) that Tammy's grandfather has died, leading the Brents to take her in. Tammy learns that Peter is busy with "Brentwood #6", an experimental tomato he is growing in hopes of making Brentwood Hall self-sustaining once again. After Tammy finally tells everyone that her grandfather isn't actually dead, Mrs. Brent is upset over Tammy announcing to everyone that she has a relative in jail. However, Peter and his Aunt Renie convince Tammy to stay, leading her to sing of her love for Peter ("Tammy"). Peter's love interest drops by Brentwood Hall. Her uncle wants Peter to stop experimenting with tomatoes and offers him a deal to come to work with him in the advertising business. Peter turns down the offer. That week is also Pilgrimage Week, which includes a ball and tours of Brentwood Hall, all while in costume. Renie gives Tammy the dress Peter's great-grandmother wore. Mrs. Brent and Renie suggest that Tammy pretend to be Great-Grandmother Cratchett for the evening. At the Ball that night, Tammy tells a story for the guests, and enchants everyone, even Mrs. Brent. That night, a hail storm hits Brentwood Hall and destroys all of the Brentwood #6s. The next morning, Peter announces that he is going to accept the advertising offer, leading Tammy to run away. Peter realizes he loves Tammy, finds Tammy's grandfather, and returns to the houseboat, where he kisses her. ===== As described in a film magazine, Cheyenne Harry Henderson (Carey) owns a cattle ranch on the border of two counties, with Yucca County controlled by outlaws and Pinkerton County law abiding. After the Yucca sheriff (Harris) refuses to help stop the cattle rustling, he goes to Pinkerton Sheriff Faulkner (Lee), who is unable to help him because he lives in Yucca County. Harry meets and becomes romantically involved with Sheriff Faulkner's daughter Madeline (Barry), who is also loved by the Yucca sheriff. Because she hates guns, Harry gives up using them. While Yucca County may be lawless, no man may be shot unless he is armed, so the Yucca sheriff devises a scheme place an unloaded gun in Harry's hands and then have him killed. Harry sees through the ruse and uses the sheriff's gun to kill two men before they can shoot him. Harry then moves his house over the county border onto Pinkerton County, and with the aid of Sheriff Faulkner two rustlers are captured. Before the rustlers can be hanged, the Yucca sheriff frees them and also kidnaps Madeline. Harry then gets his guns and goes to rescue her. ===== The film focuses on a new resident, Joe Blackburn, who is 21 and begins the documentary weighing over 30 stone (190 kg, 420 lbs) and with fears for his health. The plot follows his struggle to integrate with existing members of the home. The second resident that the documentary focuses on is Tamara Allwood, who was at one point close to death from overeating but by the time of filming has gained enough autonomy to gain the rights to visit her mother in London. 27-year-old Tamara has become estranged from her mother, who has never properly understood Tamara's illness, which was diagnosed relatively late in her life. The meeting is unsuccessful. However, Tamara is hopeful by the end of the documentary, as she gets back together with an old boyfriend, who vows to protect her from her desire to eat. They get engaged and she has high hopes for the future. ===== As described in a film magazine, ranch owner Cheyenne Harry (Carey) is the victim of a plot engineered by land speculator John Merritt (Sherry), who uses a doctored title to deprive Harry of his land holdings. Powerless in the face of his opponent's superior knowledge of the law, Harry is forced to retaliate by appropriating Merritt's payroll. Later he abducts Merritt's daughter Helen (O'Connor) and holds her pending settlement of their dispute. A settlement is effected in due time, but not before Harry has won the heart of the young woman. ===== When Michael Scott (Steve Carell) learns that the Scranton branch's participation in a Dunder Mifflin television commercial is limited to five seconds of the staff waving at the camera, he dismisses the advertising consultants sent to the branch, and convinces the company's corporate headquarters to consider an alternative version that he will produce himself. Michael asks Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer) to design an animated logo, and she works all night on it."TV Recap: The Office – Local Ad". CinemaBlend. October 25, 2007"The Office: Add TV Producer to Michael’s Résumé". People magazine. October 26, 2007. Phyllis Vance's (Phyllis Smith) mission to enlist visiting author Sue Grafton to appear in the ad is unsuccessful. Headed by Darryl Philbin (Craig Robinson), a group of employees write and perform a jingle for the commercial, which Michael ultimately rejects. Andy Bernard (Ed Helms), meanwhile, struggles throughout the day to recall the product name from an advertising jingle that contains the lyrics "Gimme a break. Gimme a break. Break me off a piece of that..." Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) has largely removed himself to the online virtual world of Second Life. Dwight has created an avatar named Dwight Shelford, also a paper salesman, patterned after his once-perfect real life. He now uses Second Life as an escape from his real-life troubles, even going as far as creating a virtual Second Life, called Second Second Life. Jim Halpert (John Krasinski), on the other hand, has created an avatar named Jim Samtanko, a guitar-playing Philadelphia sportswriter, and enters Second Life in order to spy on Dwight. Dwight has also reluctantly become Andy's confidante regarding his relationship with Angela Martin (Angela Kinsey), Dwight's former girlfriend. Dwight's spirits are lifted when he learns that, during a makeout session with Andy, Angela cried, "Oh, D!". Though, Andy is oblivious to the fact that Angela was referring to Dwight. After the corporate headquarters rejects Michael's ad, the office employees gather at Poor Richard's Pub to watch the professionally filmed commercial, which Michael refers to as "the world premiere of corporate crapfest." After the commercial, Jim plays Michael's version of the ad on the bar's television set. Over the theme from Chariots of Fire, as Michael narrates "trite catchphrases", a sheet of paper is depicted making a journey around the world, carrying a variety of messages meaningful to the recipients; as Pam's animated whirling sheets of paper coalesce into the company logo to end the ad, the employees as well as the other patrons of the bar show their approval. The episode ends with Andy doing an interview, still trying to recall the product name from the jingle. On the basis that it has to rhyme, he incorrectly concludes that it promotes Fancy Feast cat food. ===== The film starts out on a rainy night with a conversation between four cops in a police van, patrolling the streets of Mumbai. A car narrowly misses, colliding into them on the road, brakes and then continues on towards a house with iron gates. A man in a jacket gets out from the car, heads towards the garage, and opens the roller shutter door when he is shot from behind multiple times. At the same time, the cops in the van receive an alert on the radio that gunshots have been heard somewhere in the vicinity and they ask the driver to head towards the location of the gunshots. The entire movie is then shown as a flashback, building up to the present shooting, and scene of the cops in the van. The story is about a gang of five that run a gambling club and conduct other underhand deals. The five members are Vikram, Seshadri, Shardul, Prakash, and Shiva. When one of Seshadri's police contacts from Bengaluru, Kalyan informs him, on the phone about "French furniture" (code word for drugs) worth Rs. 5 crore that he can offer him for Rs. 2.5 crore, Seshadri calls for all five members to contribute Rs. 50 lacs each to set the deal in motion. Based on Shardul's promise of being able to sell the furniture for more than Rs. 5 crore, each member anticipates a profit of a further Rs. 50 lacs each, at least. They agree that Shiva is to take the money to Bengaluru by train, meet Kalyan, make the exchange and return on the same train. Vikram, who is dating Shardul's wife Mini and desperately wants to emigrate to Canada with her, plans to steal the money from Shiva in the train by using chloroform to make him unconscious. In the pretext of going to Goa for business work, he goes about his plot, driving to Pune (where he uses the name Johnny G to check into hotel) then takes a flight to Goa. In Goa, he meets advocate Gomes who is Seshadri's friend, to get his work done and to serve as an alibi later, if required. He makes sure the work is half done, flies back to Mumbai and checks-in to a hotel before boarding the train that Shiva takes, the train to Bengaluru enroute Pune. But plans go wrong, and Vikram ends up killing Shiva, who unmasks him before going unconscious. Now Sheshadri, Kalyan, Prakash, and Shardul one-by-one, find out Vikram's truth and are killed by him in cold blood. Finally, Vikram is killed by Prakash's wife Varsha, who mistakes him for Shardul, who she believed was Prakash's killer. ===== Married to Indihar, though from his perspective in name only, Marîd Audran gets invited to a reception at the palace of the amir of the city. Shaykh Mahali, the amir, thus wishes to end the rivalry between Friedlander Bey and Reda Abu Adil, two of the most powerful men in the city. Both Audran and Bey, or "Papa" as he's known in the Budayeen, become suspicious when their sworn enemy Abu Adil designates Audran as an officer of the "Jaish", an unofficial militia working for Abu Adil. However, it is not until after the party that Abu Adil's scheme unfolds: Audran and Bey are put under arrest by Lieutenant Hajjar and charged with the murder of a police officer named Khalid Maxwell. They're sentenced on-the-spot into exile, never to return to the city under pain of death. Left to die amongst the burning sands of a vast desert, their luck finally turns as they are rescued by a Bedouin tribe of Bani Salim, allowing them to start planning the vengeance they'd exact upon Abu Adil and prove their innocence— if they ever make it back to the city alive. ===== While vacationing on the Greek Isle of Love, a repressed 30-year-old Stefania reluctantly plays chaperon to her precocious and sometimes annoying 14-year-old niece, Meggy, who plans to lose her virginity before the summer is over. Unbeknownst to Stefania, Meggy's chosen man is in fact Stefania's ex- boyfriend. Amidst a mélange of sun rash, broken diets, nervous girls, sleeping bags, orgasms, '80s music, and a little ginger and cinnamon, the two women discover themselves and their sexuality. ===== Accio (Elio Germano) and Manrico (Riccardo Scamarcio) are working class brothers who live in Italy in the 1960s. While his brother becomes drawn into left-wing politics, Accio, the hotheaded younger brother, is taken under the wing of a market trader and while under his influence, joins the Fascist party. Accio ("Bully") is a nickname he is proud of because it makes him seem tough. Manrico and their sister Violetta are alarmed to hear their brother listening to Benito Mussolini's speeches in his room. Manrico often physically torments his brother, including stuffing his head in the barrel under the drain pipe of their house. Accio once runs away from home because his mother voted for the Houses Party. Their house is falling apart and she thinks the Houses Party will help them rebuild it. As Accio and Manrico get older they start demonstrating as members of the Fascist party and the Communist movement respectively. (There are scenes of a factory occupation, and the occupation of the Rome conservatoire, where the sister is studying the cello.) The film is relatively even handed in its treatment of politics. If the young fascists seem absurd with their chanting of 'Duce! Duce!', and their actions constantly tending to violence, the communists are hardly less so: Schiller's words in the final movement of Beethoven's choral symphony are replaced by a hymn in praise of Mao Zedong, Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin; a meeting of activists consists of a room full of bearded men all shouting at once and only agreeing when the time comes to shout a slogan. Francesca, Manrico's girlfriend, becomes Accio's friend. Accio secretly likes her and thinks that she should not stay with Manrico because "he can't be depended on". The viewer is in little doubt that Accio is also attracted to Francesca himself. At the same time, he has himself become sexually involved with the wife of his fascist friend, the market trader, who has been imprisoned for his violent political activities. She buys him a car through an installment plan. Eventually Accio ends up leaving the Fascist party and tearing up his membership card when party members burn his brother's car. He also breaks up with his older lover, telling her that he cares for someone else, but not replying when asked if he is loved in return. But while Accio largely pulls out of political activism, his brother is drawn deeper into revolutionary violence. After disappearing for two years, he calls home. Accio travels to meet him and telephones Francesca, who twice quickly hangs up on him. When they meet in a cafe, Manrico sees Francesca arriving unexpectedly, but also the police who have perhaps been tailing her or tapping her telephone. He flees but dies in an exchange of (handgun) fire with the pursuing police. Accio then breaks into the corrupt and inefficient housing office to seize the waiting keys and the records of the homeless. He distributes keys and a party of homeless families take possession in the middle of the same night. The film ends with Accio living with his family, including his brother's small son. ===== The series follows Tori Vega, a teenage girl who is accepted into Hollywood Arts, a performing arts high school for talented teens. The show follows Tori and her friends as she finds her place within Hollywood Arts, completing school projects that usually involve musical and theatrical performances, and overcoming unusual and absurd challenges. Other students at Hollywood Arts (and the students who make up Tori's group of friends) include the musical prodigy Andre Harris, the socially awkward Robbie Shapiro and his ventriloquist dummy Rex, the sweet but dim-witted red-head Cat Valentine, the sarcastic and mean Jade West (who serves as Tori's frenemy), Jade's handsome down-to-earth boyfriend Beck Oliver, and Tori's untalented and self-absorbed older sister Trina. Other characters include Erwin Sikowitz, the performing- arts teacher for Hollywood Arts; Lane Alexander, the school's guidance counselor; and Sinjin Van Cleef, an odd and often unsettling classmate that handles audiovisual. ===== As described in a film magazine, Overland Red (Carey), a "knight of the road," and his young pal Collie (Goodwin) find a prospector dead in the desert. On his body they discover papers giving the location of a gold mine. The sheriff of a western town and his accomplices are seeking the mine. Overland and Collie are arrested but the papers are not found on them. The sheriff plans on charging Overland with murder, hoping that he will then disclose the location of the mine. The two knights of the road escape, however, and are found on the Alacarme ranch by Louise (Vale), whom they had seen from the observation car of a train. Collie is in love with Louise and at her suggestion remains at the ranch. Overland is sought by the sheriff, but her evades him until one day Collie is shot by the sheriff's accomplices. A fight ensues and the sheriff is killed. Collie and Louise are happy in their love, and Overland departs, happy that he brought the two together. ===== Peaches (Mo'Nique), a hair stylist from Baltimore, and her estranged sister, Angela (Kellita Smith), the owner of an upscale salon in Beverly Hills, get reacquainted when Peaches decides to attend a celebration for Angela in Los Angeles. The reunion is bittersweet and worsens when Angela finds out that Peaches is on the run from the IRS and only has 60 days to pay $50,000 in back taxes. After some hilarious moments and passionate exchanges, the two sisters join forces to fight off a pesky rival salon owner Marcella (Gina Torres) and save Peaches from her troubles by competing for a lucrative cash prize and bragging rights at the city's annual hair show. ===== While attending a party thrown by one of their English professors, six college students use a Ouija board to contact a spirit that identifies itself only as 'Butler'. Butler promises the six a treasure if they will go to a remote mountain location called Calamity Peak. The professor, who knows from experience that messing around with the supernatural can be dangerous, attempts to dissuade them, but the kids steal the board and set off for the mountain anyway. Once they arrive they are menaced by a machete-wielding killer, and soon begin to wonder if Butler might be trying to harm them. After discovering that the Ouija board is missing, the professor, along with her lover, sets out to rescue her. Soon, it was revealed that Butler is actually the mother of one of the students, Angela. The book contains frankly supernatural elements alongside the more realistic horrors common to Laymon's work (including homicidal maniacs, rape, and childhood sexual abuse). Category:1991 American novels Category:Novels by Richard Laymon ===== Vera Warrington and Tom Welsford enter the narrative while floating and flirting on the Saint Lawrence River. Years later, Vera is engaged to the wealthy William Lawson and has not heard from Tom. Shortly before the explosion, Tom returns to Halifax, Nova Scotia, for orthopaedic surgery for a war wound. Tom is still in hospital when the disaster occurs. As a volunteer with the Voluntary Aid Division, Vera darts to the hospital only in time to witness Will's death and her liberation from the marriage which was to occur later that day. Now free, Vera finds Tom in a hospital bed and accepts his proposal: the last line of the book belongs to Vera, agreeing to marriage. ===== Todd and Terry are identical twins. One night at a drive-in theater in 1974, young Terry sees his mother Maddy and her date begin kissing inside the car. Upset that his mother is "back at it again", he wakes his brother and they sneak out of the car. Apparently triggered by his mother's promiscuity, Terry takes a hatchet and murders a teenager having sex with his girlfriend in the backseat of their car, and frames Todd by smearing blood onto him and placing the hatchet into his hand. Todd, too traumatized to speak in his own defense, is found guilty and committed to an asylum. Ten years later, in 1984, a now-adult Terry lives happily with his mother in a sprawling but secluded apartment complex called "Shadow Woods". On Thanksgiving Day, Terry's long dormant murderous rage is revived when his mother gets engaged to her fiancé Brad, who owns the complex. Terry also learns that twin brother Todd, whom he framed for murder a decade earlier, has escaped from his mental hospital and may be heading home. Terry murders Brad by chopping his right hand off with a machete before splitting his head. He plans on again framing twin brother Todd. Dr. Berman and her assistant Jackie arrive at Shadow Woods in search of Todd. Terry greets Jackie before murdering him with his machete, and soon after cuts Dr. Berman in half with the machete in the woods. He discards his bloody T-shirt and changes into a vest. He then visits his neighbor Andrea, who is babysitting. Andrea attempts to seduce Terry but he seems uninterested, before her mother Julie and her date Bill arrive home. Meanwhile, Terry's friend Karen bumps into Todd, who has arrived at Shadow Woods, and she believes he is Terry. When Todd reveals his true identity, she flees to tell her friends. She also tells Terry, who immediately disappears into the night in search of his twin brother, while Karen and her friends Gregg and Artie to go to Andrea's house to party. Upon learning that son Todd has returned to Shadow Woods, Maddy begins to panic and drink heavily. Todd comes across Dr. Berman's body and becomes emotional. He takes Dr. Berman's gun and goes off in search of his mass murdering twin brother. Back at Andrea's, Bill has been decapitated by Terry, who then stabs Julie to death. Terry spies on Gregg and Andrea playing tennis, before he murders both of them by the swimming pool. Artie finds the bodies of Gregg and Andrea, before being held at gunpoint by Todd, who tries to convince him that it is not him but actually his brother Terry who is murdering everyone. Todd flees when Terry sees him, leaving Artie with Terry. As Artie and Terry search for Todd, Artie is suddenly stabbed in the neck with a carving fork. Karen soon discovers the truth about Terry and Todd, and Terry chases her around Shadow Woods to kill her. Karen flees to Julie's house and discovers her dead body, and takes the baby with her. After a very drunk Maddy contacts the police, she finds Terry's bloodied T-shirt in the garbage bin before making the horrifying discovery of Brad's body with his head split open. At the swimming pool, Terry has found Karen with the baby. Todd arrives and fights his brother inside the pool. As Todd is pulled out of the pool by Karen, Maddy appears and shoots Terry, killing him. She thinks she has killed Todd, not Terry. Upon realizing that she has killed Terry and not Todd, she becomes distraught, while Karen flees with the baby. As the film concludes, a hysterical Maddy commits suicide by shooting herself in the head while Todd watches. Police sirens are heard in the distance, while Todd's fate is left unknown. ===== Vijayendra and Suhasini Bhosle have raised their two daughters Disha and Rano as equals - well almost equals. However, a dark secret from the past threatens to create a rift between the two sisters. When Suhasini realizes that Rano is in love with Inder, while Inder is keen to marry Disha, she lets the cat out of the bag. She discloses that Disha is not their biological child but their servant's child. Dushyant Sehgal aka DK, a powerful diamond merchant, asks Disha to pose in the nude for his jewellery advertisement. Disha refuses the proposal. However destiny has something else in store for Disha. Vijayendra Bhosle meets with an accident and dies, leaving the family in dire straits. Disha is left with no choice but to accept DK's proposal; however, she poses the condition hat DK will have to marry her. The relationship, which had started on a sour note, takes a turn when DK realizes that he loves Disha. Jealousy and possessiveness adds spice to the growing relationship between Disha and Dk. Gargi, DK's step mother, is a cunning and shrewd lady who wants to grab DK's business empire for herself. Disha and Dk manage to survive through all the odds. However, DK meets with an accident, which leaves him paralyzed waist down. DK is so devastated that he wants Disha to move on in her life. He encourages disha to marry someone else; however Disha chooses to be DK's for all her life. She ends her life before she can be forced to marry someone else. Before dying, Disha makes DK promise to get on with life. DK gets well and does as promised. He marries a simpleton named Kamna and has three children—Dhan, Veer and Dhruvi. Dk still lives with the memories of his first wife Disha. He pampers his children and completely ignores Kamna. When the children grow up, Dhan gets engaged to Surily, who is a very shrewd and cunning person. DK starts receiving threats to stop the wedding, but keeps ignoring them. The day of the wedding arrives. DK gets kidnapped before the wedding... ===== The novel is based around the Hensman brothers, Robin, John and Harold, who spend eight months living as outlaws in the forest of Brendon Chase. As in much British children's literature of the era, their parents are absent, living in India, at the time part of the British Empire. They are cared for by their Aunt Ellen, a strict and somewhat cold spinster. At the end of the Easter holidays, Harold falls ill with the measles, so Robin and John are unable to return to boarding school. They decide to run away and fend for themselves, taking some food from their aunt's house, and also taking a rifle and ammunition so they can survive in the wild. Despite continued attempts to catch them, usually by Police Sergeant Bunting and the Reverend Whiting, the three brothers - Robin and John are joined by Harold when he recovers from his illness - prove sufficiently quick-witted and ingenious to evade capture for eight months, surviving on what they can kill and on supplies occasionally taken from other sources. In the book Robin is known as "Robin Hood", John as "Big John" and Harold as "Little John". In the later part of their time living in the wild, the boys - who by this time have long been wearing rabbit skins, their clothes having worn out - encounter an eccentric elderly charcoal burner called Smokoe Joe, who becomes a close friend. When Smokoe Joe is seriously injured, one of the boys saves his life by running for the doctor, thereby risking capture. After a Christmas spent with Smokoe Joe in his hut, the boys are 'run to ground' when the doctor, who has kept their secret until that moment, arrives with their father who has returned, and the story ends there in the forest. The bear that had escaped in the forest near the end of their adventure settles down to hibernate for the winter in the hollow oak tree where they had lived. ===== In the TV series their mother has died and it is only their father who is abroad. The year is specifically said to be 1925. The boys' nicknames are not used and Christmas is not specifically referred to. A recurring subplot only in the TV series involves the brazenly cynical journalist Monica Hurling from a fictional newspaper called The London Planet (clearly based on the more populist papers of the 1920s, such as the Daily Express), who has written a number of stories stirring up public interest in the Hensman boys, while the paper has offered a £50 reward to whoever can find them. She represents an amoral, sophisticated London, and the conflict between her and the conservative rural community where she is reporting has wider resonance in terms of social history. This character, however, does not appear in the book. ===== Lauren (Sacha Horler) doesn't want to have a baby. She just wants to change the world into something different... the computer world. But to make changes, you sometimes have to break the code in order to make a computer that everyone can use. ===== A young pilot witnesses the unintentional murder of her two sons (by a rich, drunken couple driving carelessly) and, following a court's decision not to press criminal charges, she decides to get her revenge. ===== A young girl named Rahzel is abruptly sent off to see the world by her eccentric, doting father. She is alone on her travels until she meets Alzeid, an attractive, mysterious loner on a mission to avenge his father's murder. After aiding Alzeid in retrieving his stolen gun from a thief, Rahzel decides to follow Alzeid promising that she would make his "lousy and boring" life "more interesting and fun!" Alzeid grudgingly acknowledges that Rahzel will be traveling with him from now on. Soon after, a womanizing acquaintance of Alzeid's named Baroqueheat joins in their adventure. ===== Mr. Toronto starts his journey in Hamilton after he sees a billboard boasting "Toronto Sucks" as an advertisement campaign. He finds out that some fans of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats put on bags over their heads because of the shame of losing to Toronto during the Labour Day CFL game every year. He decides to go around Canada on a fake "Toronto Appreciation Day" tour. Mr. Toronto visits St. John's and Halifax, where Atlantic Canadians spit on his "Toronto Appreciation Day" banner. Then he travels to Montreal where local comedy troupe The Dancing Cock Brothers sing "Goodbye Toronto, Bonjour Montreal"CTV.ca | Filmmaker takes risk, touting Toronto in Montreal and where his Toronto work ethic influences the city to change the light bulbs on the giant cross atop Mount Royal. Next, he skips the Prairies (because "every Torontonian does"), and lands in Calgary and Vancouver, where he learns that resentment towards Toronto runs very deep. During the 2006 NHL Stanley Cup Finals, he visits Edmonton where he risks his life by wearing a faux Wayne Gretzky Toronto Maple Leafs jersey during the Edmonton Oilers’ Stanley Cup run. Let's All Hate Toronto then presents a list of the top ten reasons why Canada hates Toronto, including envy, violence, pollution and The Toronto Maple Leafs. In the end, Mr. Toronto is so discouraged that, like the Hamilton Tiger Cats fans, he puts a bag on his head and wanders into the fog at Toronto's Nuit Blanche art event, where, after admitting that Toronto does suck, he receives over 1,000 hugs from the Torontonians at the event, including the mayor of Toronto. This makes Mr. Toronto believe that his native city does not suck as the rest of Canada seems to think. Throughout the film Mr. Toronto does several television and radio interviews and is frequently asked, "What city in Canada hates Toronto the most?" At the end of the film he realizes that Toronto hates itself the most. ===== As the novel begins, William Laurence is gaoled aboard , imprisoned against Temeraire's good behavior. Whilst aboardship, he joins the crew in fighting off the Grande Armée, who supported by the Armée d'Air are attempting to invade Great Britain. They succeed, and Laurence is reported to have been killed in action when Goliath is sunk. Temeraire, languishing at the breeding grounds at Pen y Fan, receives this intelligence and loses any desire to remain quiet and well-behaved. Instead, fired partially by patriotism and partially by vengeance, he organizes the many unharnessed dragons of the breeding ground into a militia, using promises of prizes as an enticement. Enlisting the breeding grounds' (human) supervisory staff as logistical support, he and the other dragons strike south to do what they can against Napoleon Bonaparte. This, of course, results in a merry chase: Laurence, who did not perish aboard Goliath, is mustered by Tharkay, now commissioned in the Aerial Corps, to bring Temeraire back under harness, and he arrives at Pen y Fan perhaps half a day after the dragons move out. The two are reunited outside of Harlesden, where Temeraire has already staged and won a decisive victory against a group of Marshal Lefebvre; in fact, Laurence is intercepted by a courier who is seeking out the commander of the militia (that is, Temeraire) with a colonel's commission. Laurence, Temeraire, and Temeraire's militia, almost instantly supplemented by Iskierka and her flock of Turkish ferals, regroup with the British Army at Harpenden, accepting his commission. General Arthur Wellesley, more freewheeling than most of the British high command, accepts the idea of Temeraire as an officer in his own right, treating Temeraire thereafter with all the rights and responsibilities of any colonel (including chewing him out when his command goes wrong, which to Temeraire's credit he takes to heart). Sir Hew Dalrymple Ross commands the defense of London, though Wellesley dismisses the effort as a lost cause, now that Horatio Nelson and his twenty ships have been sent to Copenhagen. Regardless, the effort is made, augmented by tactics created by Temeraire and Perscitia, a violence-abhorring but very clever dragon who (amongst other things) has been entrusted to operate the militia's artillery. Both sides involve about thirty thousand men, but this leaves the question of where Marshal Davout has got to; after the battle is joined, he is discovered outflanking the British with an additional twenty thousand. Only a brilliant action by Wellesley allows the British to escape. While helping the British Army in its withdrawal, Laurence and Temeraire speak with Wellesley about their notions of draconian equality. Laurence describes his own experiences abroad, visiting societies where dragons are treated as equal members instead of being harnassed and controlled by humans as British dragons are, societies that are materially enriched by this approach; and Admiral Jane Roland submits her theory that Napoleon has bolstered his own aerial corps by extending similar privileges to the ferals of the Continent. Wellesley agrees to open coverts to general use, and that the dragons might be paid directly the cost of their upkeep (around 400 pounds) to spend as they will. He also steals a page from Napoleon's book by using dragons as mass transportation for his soldiers; the dragons must leap-frog an hour back and forth, but a regiment can now move an extra twenty miles a day. Finally, Laurence and Tharkay must handle a distraction when Iskierka, impatient with the retreat, hares off into the arms of the French and becomes captured; the two sneak into London to exfiltrate her and Granby. This is an especially painful exercise for Laurence, as during the escapade he is detained by Bertram Woolvey, a man known to him from childhood, and his wife Edith Galman, with whom Laurence had once shared a serious but unofficial betrothal. Woolvey, for reasons he chooses not to share, helps them sneak into Kensington Palace and is slain during the escape. After regrouping at the Aerial Corps training grounds at Loch Laggan, Scotland, Wellesley and the British high command try to decide on their strategy, including the question of how best to safeguard King George III, who is not well. Roland announces that she and Adm. Collingwood have jointly repulsed another landing at Folkestone and sealed the English Channel against further incursion, stranding Napoleon on the British Isle. Wellesley promises victory and is given command. He then details Laurence, Temeraire, Iskierka and eight talon-picked dragons (mostly of Temeraire's former formation) into the English countryside, there to attack French foraging parties with the intent of starving out the Grand Armée, particularly the ever-hungry dragons, and reducing Napoleon's zone of control. Laurence's orders specify that no pitched battles are allowed, and no quarter is to be given, despite the British guerrillas having clear superiority in military strength; Laurence, understanding, demands that the rest of the formation receive written orders that they follow Laurence's commands without specifying what those commands may be, thus protecting the formation from culpability in war crimes. The mission is instrumental in accustoming the citizens of Britain to the presence of dragons, who are now defending them against the depredations of French foraging parties; despite the larger size of these resistance fighters, the British countryside becomes as protective of them as any other. Despite this, however, Laurence eventually decides to disobey orders and communicates this to Wellesley. Fortunately, Wellesley has judged the time ripe for battle and misconstrues Laurence's reply as an attempt to pass responsibility back up the chain of command. The British Army is deployed out to the southern bank of the mouth of the Thames, a questionable position which Wellesley knows Napoleon will not be able to resist. He commands the Coldstream Guards and Scots Greys to hold the center, whilst other elements support and, when the time is right, encircle Napoleon's forces. On the day of battle, the field is shrouded in mist, and Bonaparte presses his advantages. He has almost seized the day when the fog finally lifts, allowing Admiral Nelson and his considerable fleet, secretly returned from Copenhagen and waiting now in the Channel, to attack the onrushing French with full broadsides whilst the artillery pins them in place. As men and dragons are pounded into the earth, Lien takes wing for the first time, and uses the divine wind to stir up a tsunami which destroys the fleet, sinking every one of the ships, and killing almost all of the men, including Nelson. This serves to buy time for Napoleon to retreat, carried by Lien, but utterly defeated. In the aftermath of the battle things change for the better for the British dragons: using treasure won on the field they are funding the construction of their own pavilions. Wellesley, now in his familiar title as the Duke of Wellington, commutes Laurence's sentence to Transportation to the Colony of New South Wales (Australia); he is also to bring three dragon eggs to give the colony some aerial forces. The novel ends as he and Temeraire, accompanied by the irrepressible Iskierka, who demands an egg from Temeraire, are on board the Alliegance, sailing to their new fate. ===== In 1987, James Brennan plans to have a summer vacation in Europe after graduating with a degree in comparative literature from Oberlin College and enrolling in journalism graduate school at Columbia University after receiving his acceptance letter. A few days after his graduation, his parents advise him to seek a part-time job rather than going to Europe when they unexpectedly announce that financial problems have taken a toll on them and they would be unable to financially support him. After being rejected from every other job he applies to due to a lack of any real work experience, James gets a job at Adventureland, a local amusement park in his hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where his childhood friend Tommy Frigo works. Assistant manager Bobby assigns James to the games section, despite James' preference of working on rides. He later meets his new co-workers: the sarcastic college student Joel; Bobby's wife and park manager Paulette; siblings Pete and Sue O'Malley; friendly nerd Munch; the alluring but vapid rides worker Lisa P.; and the park's technician, Mike Connell, a part-time musician who claims to have once jammed with Lou Reed, James' musical idol. Another games worker, Emily "Em" Lewin, saves James from being stabbed by a lying, cheating customer. That night, Em offers him a ride home and they begin to get to know each other a bit. With her father and stepmother out of town, Em throws a party and continues befriending James, who discovers that they both share a similar taste in music. During their conversation, Em persuades James to join her in her swimming pool. After fooling around for a bit, Em leaves the pool to get a drink. James follows only to learn that he has an erection. Not wanting Em to see, he tells her he'll join her shortly. When she leaves, he begins to climb out when Frigo appears and announces James' erection to the other party-goers, prompting them to laugh and James to jump back into the water in humiliation. After the party has broken up, Connell, who is married and has been having an affair with Em, comes over and they have sex. Later that week, James gives Em his mixtape of "J's Favorite Bummer Songs" and asks her out for a drink. At the local Stardust Lounge she is surprised to learn James has never had sex. They listen to his mixtape and share a first kiss on the way home. The following day, James tells Connell about his strong feelings for Em, which Connell reports to her. After spending a night at a dance club with James, Joel and Sue, Em tells James that she wants to take things slow due to problems in her life, leaving James confused and upset. Meanwhile, Sue drunkenly makes out with Joel in the back of Em's car, but rejects him the next day after he attempts to bring her a gift, using the excuse that her Catholic parents would not allow her to date a Jew, despite Joel's claim that he's actually an atheist. After learning of this, an outraged Em calls Sue an anti-Semite in front of other staff members in defense of Joel and declares that they are no longer friends. Lisa P., who is being hit on by Sue's cocky brother, Pete (who also works at the park), asks James out on a date in front of him, but James has mixed feelings because of his relationship with Em. After Connell talks him into going, he accepts Lisa's offer. After the date, during which Lisa and James kiss, James learns that Em had called to say she regrets having rejected his feelings. Joel later sees James and Em walking together and, irritated by the recent chain of events, quits. James unsuccessfully tries to talk him out of it, and Joel reveals that he's angry at James for dating Lisa P., when James is already in love with Em. James, riddled with guilt, confesses to Em about his date with Lisa P. After hearing of this, Em goes to Connell's mother's home to end their affair. The park's mentally challenged parking attendant, prompted by Frigo, tells James that one night he saw Em and Connell doing "pushups without any pants on" in the back of Connell's car. Frigo drives James to Connell's mother's house, which is where Lisa had earlier told him that Connell takes girls to have sex. James already knows the location of the house after heading there with Connell some time before. Shortly after arriving, he witnesses Em leaving. Shocked to see James, Em becomes tongue-tied. After a brief confrontation, James leaves angrily, and Em cries. James tells Lisa about the affair and asks her not to tell anyone, but she tells her friend Kelly and soon afterwards the news spreads throughout the park. Upon noticing that all of the park employees know, Em quits and decides to move back to New York. A heartbroken James drunkenly crashes his father's car into their neighbor's tree and passes out. The next morning, his mother angrily wakes him up and tells him he has to pay to repair it with his summer earnings. On top of that, James' friend from Oberlin, Eric, whom James had initially planned on moving to New York with, calls to let him know that he will not be going to Columbia and instead will be attending Harvard Business School, thus canceling their living arrangements. Now without enough money for graduate school or a place to live, James nonetheless heads to New York City with his parents' blessing and waits outside Em's apartment in the rain. Upon her arrival, she is reluctant to talk to him, feeling that she has ruined everything between them. James tells her that he sees her in a different way than she sees herself. Touched, Em brings James up to her apartment. James reveals that he'll find a job, work out, and try to attend Columbia University next year. After taking off his rain-soaked clothes to let them dry off, Em offers him an Adventureland t-shirt, something James never wants to see again. They kiss and begin to take their clothes off ready to have sex. James then asks, "Are we doing this?", to which Em replies, "I think so." ===== While having a seizure, a 24-year-old funeral-home cosmetician named Irene (Azura Skye) hallucinates that she's being raped by one of the corpses she's working on. The fellowship applicants think it might be Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (the human form of mad cow disease), caught from one of the corpses at her job. They dig up the corpse and biopsy its brain, but the result is negative. The applicants soon discover that the patient acts as if her dead mother is in the room. She also claims to see the ghost of Stark, the patient from the previous episode who died due to Thirteen's error, which unsettles the young doctor. Meanwhile, House begins to go out of his way to harass the Mormon doctor, Cole, and makes a bet with Dr. Cameron that he won't physically or verbally retaliate. House says he's probably going to fire him next as he can't take his constant "turning of the other cheek"), so Cameron advises Cole to stick up for himself more as the only way to earn House's respect and be in with a chance. Elsewhere, Cuddy asks Foreman to return to her hospital, and offers him a raise, but he refuses. Foreman interviews for other jobs only to find that no one will hire him because he's too much like House with his egocentricity and risk-taking ways. Henry points out that Irene isn't just suffering hallucinations; it's also a delusion if she doesn't realize that her mother is dead. Although the doctors don't have access to her family's medical records (since they were probably lost in Ukraine), Henry suggests that they ask the patient to ask her mother about her mother's symptoms. Irene doesn't acknowledge that her mother has died, but she realizes that there was a time in the past when she was sick, and she is able to remember the symptoms from that time. Based on her mention of frequent falls and odd hand tremors, House diagnoses her with probable hereditary Parkinson's disease. The doctors run more tests based on the assumption, but Irene soon develops lesions on her arms, an enlarged spleen, and a necrotic liver. As they continue to test her, Thirteen finds Stark's dog's collar in one of the labs. However, she soon realizes that Dr. Amber Volakis was behind it all, taking advantage of the situation to attempt to unsettle her and throw her off her game. Meanwhile, an extended tirade by House (in which he badgers Cole by accusing Mormon founder Joseph Smith as merely a "horny fraud") causes Cole to punch him in the nose; consequently, a surprised House loses the bet to Cameron. Amber deduces that Irene's symptoms might result from ergot poisoning from mold in the organic rye bread that she's eaten, causing LSD-like hallucinations, worsened by the bromocriptine they gave while assuming Parkinson's Disease, and that the reason Irene kept requesting milk is that it is a natural treatment for the contamination of the bread - a natural evolutionary craving by the body to attempt repair itself. The team treats her, and it works, though Irene is sad to realize her cure means losing her mother once again. In the end, holding a bunch of peonies and much to everyone's surprise, House fires Henry in a Bachelor-inspired elimination - the remaining candidates each receiving a stem. While he admits that Henry has a lot of excellent ideas and they seem to share exactly the same wavelength - that's precisely the problem; House needs people with a different approach from his own. Henry accepts with grace and takes his exit as a compliment of sorts. After other job rejections, Foreman tells Cuddy that he has rethought things and will accept her offer if he gets an office, an assistant, and the pay raise she promised him, plus a further five percent. Cuddy says she's not going to give him any of those requests, she's not even going to give him the raise she offered and he originally rejected. When he asks why, she says that he hasn't rethought things - he just got blackballed because he was "House-Lite," i.e., simply a version of House and his doctoring style, and had no choice other than to return to the administrator who hired "House Classic." The episode ends with Foreman nevertheless agreeing to come back. ===== A young socialite named Sally Wilkerson and her wealthy husband named Carl are throwing a party. While they give the outward appearance of still being happy, poison has crept into their relationship. During the party, Sally runs into her apparent lover Joe Farrell and they discuss murdering Carl. Joe claims he may not be able to go through with it but Sally tells him he must commit to their plan, as the following day is the opening day of duck season. After rejoining the party, Carl and Joe talk about hunting together the next day. The next day, Carl and Joe go duck hunting, and Carl tells Joe how much he appreciates his friendship. He especially likes that there is no money, no greed, no games or hatred between them. When Carl turns to shoot at some ducks, Joe slams his rifle butt into Carl's head, knocking him into the lake. Joe repeatedly hits Carl until he is dead. The police arrive, but Joe avoids suspicion. After returning to Sally and Carl's house, two kids enter and calls Joe "Daddy." Sally, too, treats him as she treated Carl. In fact, he starts acting like Carl. During a party similar to the night before, Carl shows up in an outfit like Joe's and follows Sally into the kitchen. Joe is apparently reliving the night before and the morning after at the duck shoot in Carl's shoes. Joe, instead of being knocked into the lake, actually falls in and Carl truly tries to help him, but Joe panics and drowns. Carl goes to tell Sally what happened, and she comforts Carl, telling him "I'm glad it wasn't you," then looks at the framed photo in which Joe's image has been replaced again with Carl's. ===== The story opens with a young doctor named Dennis Barrows driving along a dirt road in wild backcountry. His car breaks down and he decides to walk to the nearest town. He encounters a barbed wire fence blocking the road with a sign on its front that reads: "Private Property – Keep Out." With no way to signal for help, Dr. Barrows decides to cross the fence anyway. He arrives at what looks like a painting of a coastal town. All the houses are dark, with the only light coming from a lighthouse, causing Dr. Barrows to think he may have stumbled upon a ghost town. Desperate, he bangs on the door of a general store. A light comes on and the shopkeeper says this is a small town with no telephone service or connections to a state legislature. A small boy named Teddy then comes to store on behalf of his mother, wishing to buy aspirin. After introducing himself as a doctor, Teddy quizzically responds with "what's a doctor?" Confused, Dr. Barrows listens to their odd conversation about the boy's ill sister. The boy offers their spare room to Dr. Barrows for the night, although the proprietor and his mother are both wary. Dr. Barrows offers to help the sick girl but the mother refuses. Suddenly, the lighthouse casts its light throughout the town and rests on the girl's bedroom. The mother and the boy are terribly upset. Teddy asks to talk to Dr. Barrows. He explains that his sister may die since the light picked her room and begs him to help. Dr. Barrows gives her medicine but Teddy explains that whenever the beacon picks someone to sacrifice it takes them. Dr. Barrows begs Teddy to take him to the beacon in order to reason with Seth, the owner of the lighthouse. The townspeople find out that Dr. Barrows made the girl well, but they feel that she still needs to be sacrificed. The proprietor and the mother find Dr. Barrows and Teddy at the lighthouse. The mother and Teddy leave while Dr. Barrows demands explanations of the proprietor who tells him that Seth is the founder of this town and the ancestor of all residents. When the town stopped being a waypoint for merchant ships, Seth kept the town's economy alive. Seth's spirit controls the lighthouse and it protects the town in exchange for doing what they are told. The proprietor explains that years ago, a person chosen to be sacrificed was spared and the town fell on hard times. Now the lighthouse wants a substitute or the hard times will come again. Dr. Barrows shouts that the residents of the town are all inbred crazies and seeks to flee, but is surrounded by a chanting mob demanding he atone for healing the little girl selected for sacrifice, or else the hard times will return. Dr. Barrows screams as the people converge on him (presumably lynching him) as the lighthouse goes dark. ===== Appa Rao (Krishna Bhagavan) is a career-oriented fashion designer who is in his 40s. He is still a bachelor due to lack of opportunities and career orientation. That is when a posh lady, Pravallika (Simran), approaches him and makes him fall in love with her. She offers him a new career and great business in the UK. Meantime, it is revealed that there is a dreaded ISI agent called John Alias Mastan (Krishna Bhagavan) who looks just like Appa Rao. The rest of the story is all about what happens to Appa Rao when his look-alike John spots him. ===== Gus is an angry middle aged man who is dissatisfied with his life. One day, a toy soldier of his breaks and he realizes he must travel to his old house in Ohio to bury it. While Gus sits under a tree he is transported back to the 1940s where he views himself as a child, and he finds himself dressed in a suit like those worn by men of that era. Gus follows his younger self and saves him from bullies. They strike up a friendship and he tries to act like a go-between for young Gus and his father. He tells young Gus how he decided he would be successful and famous when he grew up, and he helps young Gus become interested in reading. Young Gus's dad Lou eventually confronts Gus and tells him he is jealous of the relationship he has with his son. Lou tries to explain that he can't understand young Gus, and Gus tells him he only need to listen to his son and let him know that he loves him. Gus explains to Lou that he and his father didn't have a good relationship and his father died early. Gus admits that he wanted to give young Gus a chance. Lou tells him that he is a good man and that he is happy he has been a part of their lives. Gus tells his younger self that he has to leave and go back to his life in Los Angeles. He tries to explain that he cannot return as he is ill. Younger Gus becomes angry and runs away, cruelly pronouncing that he will become "a big something" when he grows- up and spit on Gus if he is ever reunited with him. Gus recalls in a predestination paradox he was once angry with a man just like his full-grown self. Gus is returned to the present, and recalls that he would never be happy until he could show up his father and the bullies. Gus was glad to make peace with his father, and most of the bullies are probably dead by now. Ultimately, it is upon himself to be happy. Gus hails a cab to go to the airport, and recites the name on the taxi license as one of the old bullies. When the driver asks if he knew him, Gus replies "Not anymore". ===== Henry Corwin (Richard Mulligan), a department store Santa Claus, takes his dinner break at a local bar, complaining to the bartender that many families in the world struggle as evidenced by two homeless children outside. Without explanation, two dollar bills appear out of Corwin's pocket and he donates them to the children. When Corwin returns to work visibly tipsy, the store owner Mr. Dundee (William Atherton) fires him. Dundee is already upset that the custom-made coat for his wife was sold to a customer and blames Corwin for ruining Christmas. Corwin rebuffs Dundee and tells him that the kids whose families struggle with keeping the lights on and putting food on their tables will be the ones who will be unable to enjoy Christmas. Depressed, Corwin goes to his apartment and gets ready to take a garbage bag to the street. He hears children caroling and says that he wishes that he had something to give them. Corwin notices that there are now toys coming out of the garbage bag. Mr. Dundee gets home and notices the children on the streets are running around with new toys. At the lobby of Corwin's tenement building, a joyous party is held with kids getting toys, as well as adults and teenagers receiving badly needed items such as eyeglasses or household appliances. Mr. Dundee suspects they have been stolen from his department store. The police interrogate Corwin. Since Corwin lacks proof of ownership, they decide to arrest him. Before they can, receipts start to flow out of the bag, and the police are satisfied everything was acquired honestly. Dundee asks Corwin how he made that happen and he tells Dundee to never question miracles. Reaching into the bag, Corwin pulls out the fur coat intended for Mrs. Dundee and a baseball with the signatures of the 1961 Yankees for Mr. Dundee. Dundee asks Henry if there is anything that he would like for Christmas. Corwin says that all he wants is to be able to be charitable every year. A happy Dundee walks to his car and Corwin enters his apartment. Corwin attempts to get his beard and mustache off but finds they are now real. Realizing the truth, Corwin disappears up the chimney. Near his car, Dundee hears bells and the jolly laugh of Santa Claus overhead. Smiling, he knows that Corwin got his wish, too. ===== Dilipa (Dilip Pai) is a Road Romeo. He hails from a middle class background. His intention is to get a good job according to his education. He wants to enjoy life with the motorbike his father gave him. He is a Good Samaritan too. But that locks him in the problem. After initial pranks he falls in love with Anjali (Ashitha (model)). But it is Anjali who brings out responsibility in him. She asks him what his earnings are, in considering marrying him. She even slaps Dilipa, asking this question in pent-up frustration. Dilipa now changes his attitude. He acquires a job as a salesman and develops innovative ideas within this company. He is posted as manager to the Chennai branch. Anjali is still waiting for Dilipa to come forward and marry her. Dilipa is no longer interested. What guarantee is there that you can be happy with Rs.10000 salary per month, he hits back at Anjali. He rejects her outright, explaining to Anjali that she had expressed the belief that life is more important than love. ===== Gerold Geronimus Goblynch, the ruthless new leader of the Great Christmas Council, is determined to turn the holiday season into his personal moneymaking scheme. He wants to end children's joyous wishes by outlawing all of the old magical ways. Under his leadership, Snowmobiles are to replace reindeer; elves and angels are banned; and Santas who go against these policies are turned into chocolate. Niklas Goodfellow, a spirited, humorous young Santa, emerges as the last, and thus real Santa. He and two angels named Matilda and Emmanuel, an invisible reindeer, and a bunch of elves go into hiding from the Council. Two children named Ben and Charlotte and Charlotte's dog, Mutt, join forces to save Niklas from being turned into chocolate. ===== At the start of the book, Seeker is hunting down the last two savanters. He chases them through a mountain, through a mysterious valley and through the Glimmen. He finds Echo Kittle, who helps track them to a place called the Haven (which is an expensive refuge for fleeing people). He fights briefly with one of the savanters, who he does not manage to kill, instead becoming possessed by her. The other savanter flees, and manages to escape on a boat to other lands. Meanwhile, the Wildman is head of the spiker army which formed at the end of Jango; Morning Star is there too. There is restlesness in the Spiker camp, and the Wildman is forced to kill Snakey, his childhood friend, in a leadership battle. Morning Star, sickened by the events, leaves and returns to her home village. When she arrives there, she finds it mysteriously empty. Soon she finds where everyone has gone; a huge assembly of people who call themselves 'the Joyous'. The leader of the Joyous is a young man called the Joy Boy. He claims to be leading people to the 'Great Embrace', which is when all his followers will become God. Morning Star is suspicious of the Joy Boy, especially because he has no aura, but he infects her with joy, and she complies to find Seeker for him, under the premise that the Noble Warriors need joy more than anyone else. Soon after Morning Star leaves, the Wildman and the Spiker army join the Joyous. Seeker moves through the garden, crossing a long bridge, and finds a chair in which he knows his God is sat. Seeker fears his God's nonexistence, but Jango appears, and reveals that he and Seeker are one and the same person. Jango tells Seeker to look with 'the eyes of faith'. Seeker looks at the chair and sees the All and Only. Then Noman, who has now also entered the Garden, tells Seeker to look with his own eyes. Seeker returns to Radiance which is now ruled by the Spikers and Orlans. The Wildman hands over the Spiker army to Shab, and Caressa (who became the next Jahan when Amroth died near the start of the book) gives the silver whip of the Jahan to Sabin (the last living son of Amroth). The next day, Seeker, Morning Star, The Wildman and Caressa set off on Wildman's old ship down the river and to other lands. ===== In Conan, the hero is on a quest to recover his lost armor and defeat an evil wizard. The game takes place in the world of Hyboria, a creation of Robert E. Howard for his stories about Conan the Barbarian. Conans developer, Nihilistic Software, chose several Hyborian locations, such as Kush, Stygia, and the Barachan Isles, to establish a link to the literary world. Hyboria was designed to be a fantasy version of Earth around , and its civilizations were based on those from the Stone to Iron Ages. Nihilistic portrayed the plains of Kush, a fictional Africa, as savannahs with villages of straw huts. Stygia was illustrated as a land filled with structures resembling Egyptian tombs and the Barachan Isles as lushly jungled islands. ===== July 1920 newspaper ad for the film As described in a film publication, to avenge his father's death Pierre Winton (Carey) turns outlaw and joins a band of bandits headed by Jim Boone (MacDonald). McGuirk (McKim), a lone bandit, is the object of his search and war is declared between the lone rider and Boone's band. Pierre goes to a masquerade ball one night and returns to find every member of Boone's band dead except for Jim's daughter Jackie (Burnham). Pierre gets on his horse to ride his enemy down to earth and see that vengeance is executed. ===== Bombay-based Young Raja witnesses his parents commit suicide after being cheated and defeated in a game of cards by an unknown male. He grows up under the mentor-ship of Madanlal, who witnessed the cheating incident, with only one motive - to avenge his parents' death, and becomes an expert at cards. Enroute to Mahabuleshwar, He meets with wealthy Renu, both fall in love and get married. Her widowed father gives him full control of his business as well as much money. Raja opens up a gambling den and hopes to attract the unknown gambler. It is this move that will result in bitterness and turn his life upside down. ===== "Sundown Slim" Hicks (Harry Carey) leaves his life of hobo-poet and starts in as ranch cook at the Concho cattle ranch owned by Jack Corliss (J. Morris Foster). The adjoining sheep ranch is owned by David Loring (Duke R. Lee). Fadeaway (Charles Le Moyne), a bad cowboy, insults Anita (Mignonne Golden), daughter of the chief sheepherder, and Sundown exacts reprisal. Billy (Ted Brooks), Sundown's pal, is induced by Fadeaway to rob a bank. Sundown takes the blame and goes to jail. In the feud between sheepmen and cattlemen, Billy is nursed by Anita. The two learn to care for each other, and when Sundown is released from jail and goes to Anita, he sees the situation and surrenders her to Billy, again taking up to lone trail. ===== The Stingiest Man in Town is the tale of Ebenezer Scrooge, told in the 1978 version through the perspective of the insect B.A.H. Humbug (voiced by Tom Bosley), obviously a word play on Scrooge's catch phrase, "bah humbug". Scrooge (performed by Walter Matthau) is portrayed as the tightwad Charles Dickens intended him to be with his consistent resistance to assist the poor or even have Christmas dinner with his nephew Fred (performed by Dennis Day) and his family. In hopes of resuscitating the goodness of his one-time friend, the ghost of Jacob Marley (voiced by Theodore Bikel), Scrooge's former business partner, visits Scrooge in his mansion, exhorting him to change his ways. Scrooge deems this to be madness and soon prepares for bed. Nevertheless, Scrooge's attitude soon changes after a fateful night wherein three ghosts also visit him and take him through his past and present, and show him what his future would be like if he does not change. Scrooge sees a younger caricature of himself, voiced by Robert Morse and realizes how greedy and miserly he has become. The Ghost of Christmas Present (performed by Paul Frees) proceeds to take Scrooge to the home of his diligent employee Bob Cratchit and discovers just how much poverty Cratchit and his family wallow in. Cratchit's crippled son Tiny Tim (voiced by Bobby Rolofson) touches Scrooge's heart and instigates a transformation within his personality. The production concludes with Scrooge assisting those less fortunate than himself. ===== Vibrant Chand is a young bride leaving her home in Ludhiana, Punjab, India, for Brampton, Ontario, Canada, where her husband Rocky and his very traditional family await her arrival. Everything is new and unfamiliar to Chand including the quiet and shy Rocky who she meets for the first time at the Arrivals level of Pearson Airport. Chand approaches her new life and land with equanimity and grace, and at times the wide-eyed optimism of hope—her first snowfall is a tiny miracle of beauty, and the roar of Niagara Falls creates the excitement of new beginnings. But soon optimism turns to isolation as the family she has inherited struggles beneath the weight of unspoken words, their collective frustration becoming palpable. No one feels the pressure more than Rocky, weighed down by familial obligations. Maji, his controlling mother, won’t let him go; Papaji, is a sweet but ineffectual father; Aman, his sister, who feels the embarrassment of living in the same house with her unemployed husband Baldev, their teenaged son Jabir and younger daughter, Lovleen. All live with Rocky and Chand in a two-bedroom house in the suburbs of Toronto. To make matters worse, Rocky is expected to find the money to bring more of his new extended family to Canada. Unable to express his anger, he finds other ways to release it and it’s Chand who bears the brunt of his repressed rage. Trapped in a world she cannot comprehend and unable to please her husband, Chand is desperate. Hope comes in the form of Rosa, a tough and savvy Jamaican woman who works alongside Chand in a factory where immigrant women from all over the world clean and press dirty hotel laundry. Rosa sees past the make-up that covers Chand’s bruised face. Realizing Chand has nowhere to turn, Rosa gives her a magical root advising her "to put it in whatever the bastard drinks." The root is supposed to seduce the one who takes it, making them fall hopelessly in love with the person who gives it to them. Chand’s attempts with the magic root lead to surreal incidents and her life gradually begins to mirror an Indian fable involving a King Cobra. As the lines between fantasy and reality converge, Chand and Rocky come face to face with each other and themselves. Eventually, Chand comprehends all the surreal episodes in her life and upon separation from her husband decides to go back to India. ===== Beautiful Radha lives in a small hill-station in India. One day, Mahesh comes for sight- seeing, both meet, fall in love with each other, get intimate, and Mahesh promises to return, marry her and take her with him to live in Bombay. He does not return, Radha continues to search for him in every train that stops at Shampur, in vain. She eventually gives birth to a baby girl, Laxmi, and both are looked after by Shampur's kind-hearted Station Master. Radha does come across Mahesh, but he refuses to recognize her, and she kills herself. The Station Master takes Laxmi to her next of kin, in all two families, but all reject Laxmi, consider her inauspicious, and will have nothing to do with her. He leaves Laxmi with her maternal grandparent, Bhagwanti and her husband, but Laxmi is abused and she runs away to Bombay, where she is befriended and looked after by a blind beggar, Anwar. One day Laxmi and Anwar find that they have won a lottery worth 2.5 lakh rupees, are delighted, and look forward to the positive change in their lives. Laxmi is happy as she feels that she will be able to find her parents with her new-found wealth. Then all of Laxmi's relatives descend on them, their neighbors show their greed by severely beating up Anwar, and Laxmi runs away, followed closely by people with only one motive - steal the lottery ticket from her. Laxmi seeks the help of the police, and Inspector James is asked to look after her. Then a man claiming to be her father comes to take possession of her, but Laxmi remembers him as the man who had refused to recognize Radha and refuses to go with him. Subsequently, Mahesh returns with Radha, much to Laxmi's delight - which only turns to sorrow and heartbreak when she finds out that it is not Radha but a prostitute by the name of Girja - who is assisting Mahesh to get the lottery ticket. Looks like Laxmi is headed for heartbreak upon heartbreak, and may not find the happiness that she is looking for. ===== As summarized in a film publication, Jim Drew (Millett), who is a squaw man (a disparaging term for a white man with an Indian wife), receives word that his wife whom he had long deserted had died and that his daughter was coming by train to live with him. Jim is injured when his cabin catches fire, and dies just as David Brent (Carey) arrives to repay a debt of gratitude. Reading the girl's letter stating that she will meet her father in San Francisco, David decides to meet the girl and tell her of her father's death. But when Lorelei (Golden) arrives, she mistakes David for her father and is so happy with her beautiful home that David cannot bring himself to tell her the truth. She met Gordon Swayne (Braidwood), a surveyor, on the train and retains his friendship, which makes David unhappy. When Gordon discovers that David is not Lorelei's father, he threatens him. When Lorelei learns the truth, David decides to go away and leave the girl as mistress of the cabin. Lorelei stops him and tells him she loves him only. ===== As described in a film publication summary, the Stranger (Carey) comes to town of Broken Buckle to start a gambling hall. The Headlight, the existing gambling hall, is crooked, and the Stranger wants to start a straight one. He meets Zoe Whipple (Ferguson) who is attempting to reform the town and teaches school out of her home. Misunderstandings arise between the Stranger and Zoe that are brought about by Denver Red (Le Moyne), proprietor of the Headlight. After Zoe pleads with the Stranger not to start a new gambling den, the Stranger opens it to the public, but it turns out to be a new library and school. After running Denver out of town, the Stranger wins Zoe. ===== As described in a film publication, John Wesley Pringle (Carey), an adventurer, returns to Gadsden to claim the girl Stella (Golden), only to find out that she is in love with Chris Foy (Steele). Chris has been accused of a murder that he did not commit. Sheriff Matt Lisner (Le Moyne) searches Stella's house for Chris but finds out that he is hiding in the mountains. Sheriff Lisner and his crowd set off for the mountains to get Chris and claim a reward for his capture. John gets to the mountains by a back route and pretends to rescue Chris, but he surprises both the Sheriff and Chris by claiming the reward for himself. John then orders Sheriff Lisner to release Chris, saying that this was all a ruse to rescue Chris and get him safely from the mountain top. John then reveals evidence which shows that Lisner is the real murderer, and Chris returns to Stella, while John goes on his way without ever revealing his love for the girl. ===== In the Dutch city of Groningen, Kees Popinga (Claude Rains) has worked for 18 years as chief clerk and bookkeeper for a 300-year-old trading company, now run by Julius de Koster Jr. (Herbert Lom). Kees's life is comfortable but stodgy; he loves trains but has never traveled farther than Amsterdam. One day a man named Merkemans (Felix Aylmer), who had managed a company that went bankrupt due to another man's embezzlement, pleads with de Koster for a job. De Koster refuses because his own firm has too impeccable a reputation to be connected with such a scandal, and Merkemans had had the responsibility to prevent the fraud. Then a French police inspector named Lucas (Marius Goring) arrives to talk to de Koster about Dutch money that is turning up illegally in Paris; Lucas suspects the de Koster company, but de Koster invites Kees to show him that the books are sound. That night, Kees happens to see de Koster kissing a woman (Märta Torén) goodbye at a station. Later, Lucas questions Kees and de Koster about the woman, showing a picture. De Koster lies; Kees supports him, but now fears that he too has failed to prevent a crime. That night his fears are confirmed when he goes to the office and finds de Koster burning the books. De Koster says the firm will be bankrupt in the morning. Kees follows de Koster to a canal. De Koster shows him a suicide note. Kees is trying to stop him jumping in the water when De Koster's briefcase comes open, revealing 100,000 Dutch guilders in cash. The suicide note was a fake. Enraged, Kees attacks de Koster, who falls into the water and hits his head on a boat. Also in the briefcase is a train ticket to Paris and the address of the woman, whose name is Michele Rozier. Kees takes the briefcase and boards the train, abandoning his family. On board he is surprised to meet Lucas, who makes it clear he suspects Kees. As they approach Paris, Kees jumps off the train. He goes to Michele, but she turns him away, not realizing he has the money. Lucas meets her and explains what has happened. He says de Koster is alive, but Kees does not know this, and Lucas fears he will now do something desperate. As Lucas hopes, Michele wants the money enough to trace Kees, and the police follow her to him. But she helps him get away and stay with Louis (Ferdy Mayne), her lover, who lives in over a garage near train tracks. She tells Kees that within a couple of days Louis will provide Kees with fake papers so he can leave the country. Kees is suspicious enough to hide the money, in an abandoned car near the tracks, before Louis is able to search his effects. Bored with hiding out and tired of belittling remarks about his status, he decides to "live dangerously" and takes Michele out on the town. She seems to warm to him and he is seduced into trusting her. Drunk and infatuated, he phones Lucas to taunt him, promises Michele they will go away together, and then tells her where the money is. She goes there, but Lucas has already found it. He offers her immunity if she helps him find Kees. Kees gets away from Lucas, steals a knife from a shop window, and goes to the garage. At knifepoint, Louis phones Michele and asks her to come. Kees confronts Michele and threatens to prove his worth by killing her--and then he does. With Lucas in pursuit, he runs onto the train tracks and directly toward an approaching train. At the last moment it reaches a switch and crosses onto another track. Kees rambles deliriously as Lucas arrests him. ===== As described in a film publication, Bart Carson (Carey) is in love with Lou (La Marr) and even goes to jail to save Walter A. Walker (Coxen), a man she says is her brother but who is really a husband who has deserted his wife and two children. After he learns the truth, Bart breaks out of jail and trails Walter, who falls off a train trying to escape. Bart then seeks refuge in a cabin with Mrs. Walker (Rich), where he is captured, but the officials have learned the truth and promise him a pardon. ===== The inventor of a burglar alarm (Karloff) attempts to get back at the man who stole the profits to his invention (Hinds) before he goes blind. The device is then subverted by gangsters (Baxter, et al.) who apply pressure to the inventor and use his device to facilitate burglaries. ===== One night at March College, a young couple are making out in a parked vehicle. An unseen assailant harasses them before murdering them both. Meanwhile the nearby Lanier College is preparing for its final exam date. In order to ensure a group of students ace their chemistry final, a fraternity fakes a shooting on campus so that the students can have more time to study. The prank works, resulting in a small number of students remaining on campus until the following day's final. Meanwhile, the murderer responsible for the March College killings arrives on campus in a van and begins stalking the remaining students. Bookish Courtney is studying hard for her exams, while her wealthy roommate Lisa is preparing to leave for her home in New York City. Lisa is also having an affair with one of her professors, Dr. Reynolds. At nightfall, Gary, a pledge for Gamma Delta, suffers from a prank in which he is bound to a tree. The murderer unties him, before killing him with a knife. Gary's girlfriend, Janet, goes searching for him, and mistakes a silhouette in the distance for him. When she realizes it is not Gary, she attempts to flee, but is attacked by the killer and murdered. Another Gamma member, Wildman, is lured into a darkened gymnasium while attempting to steal prescription drugs from the football coach's office. The murderer appears and chases Wildman to the weight room, where he is garroted on a weight-lifting machine. Another student named Mark discovers Wildman's body and is subsequently chased by the murderer into the school's electrical building. The murderer emerges from a barrel and stabs Mark, killing him. Nerdy student Radish discovers the carnage and attempts to alert the police, who do not take him seriously due to all the ongoing pranks. Radish goes to warn Courtney but finds the murderer in her room instead and is also killed. Courtney returns to her dormitory, where she discovers Radish's body pinned to her door. A terrified Courtney attempts to alert her dormitory, but everyone has gone home for the break. Lisa waits for Dr. Reynolds in the school's conservatory but the murderer enters the room and stabs her to death. Courtney goes to the conservatory to alert Lisa, but discovers her body. The murderer chases after her, and Courtney arms herself with a kitchen knife, before taking refuge in the campus's clock tower. Alerted by Courtney's cries for help, a coach arrives and shoots an arrow at the murderer, but he catches it in his hand and impales the coach with it, killing him. The murderer attempts to finish Courtney off but she manages to push him from the top floor of the tower. Thinking him dead, Courtney is seized by the murderer when he grabs her ankle. She stabs him 12 times, ultimately killing him. The film ends as Courtney sits on the front steps of the building and begins sobbing over the events that just took place. ===== The Burai are an intelligent race bent on complete domination of the entire universe. They have seven facilities across the galaxy that produce their troops that are half robot, half animal. Only the unnamed protagonist can save the universe with his proton suit and laser gun. ===== Thomas (Ed Stoppard), a young German, fights unsuccessfully as one of Nazi Germany's Joy Division youth troops after the Soviet Union invades. In the early 1960s, he loses faith in the ideals he was brought up with, and works as a spy and assassin for the Russians during the Cold War. His story is mostly revealed in flashbacks. Tom Schilling plays the younger Thomas, who sees his native Germany destroyed by the Soviet invaders. His family is killed, leaving him orphaned, and with only his girlfriend Melanie (Bernadette Heerwagen) left. His girlfriend Melanie is repeatedly raped by Red Army soldiers and she is eventually killed by a Soviet soldier after having sex with him and two other Soviet soldiers in order to protect Thomas from being beaten and killed by the soldiers. Years later, he falls in love with Yvonne (Michelle Gayle), while on assignment in Britain; she has no idea what he is really employed to do. ===== Shakyamuni is meandering around Paradise one morning, when he stops at a lotus-filled pond. Between the lilies, he can see, through the crystal-clear waters, the depths of Hell. His eyes come to rest on one sinner in particular, by the name of Kandata. Kandata was a cold-hearted criminal, but had one good deed to his name: while walking through the forest one day, he decided not to kill a spider he was about to crush with his foot. Moved by this single act of compassion, the Buddha takes the silvery thread of a spider in Paradise and lowers it down into Hell. Down in Hell, the myriad sinners are struggling in the Pool of Blood, in total darkness save for the light glinting off the Mountain of Spikes, and in total silence save for the sighs of the damned. Kandata, looking up by chance at the sky above the pool, sees the spider's thread descending towards him and grabs hold with all the might of a seasoned criminal. The climb from Hell to Paradise is not a short one, however, and Kandata quickly tires. Dangling from the middle of the rope, he glances downward, and sees how far he has come. Realizing that he may actually escape from Hell, he is overcome by joy and laughs giddily. His elation is short-lived, however, as he realizes that others have started climbing the thread behind him, stretching down into the murky depths below. Fearing that the thread will break from the weight of the others, he shouts that the spider's thread is his and his alone. It is at this moment that the thread breaks, and he and all the other sinners are cast back down into the Pool of Blood. Shakyamuni witnesses this, knowing all but still with a slightly sad air. In the end, Kandata condemned himself by being concerned only with his own salvation and not that of others. But Paradise continues on as it has, and it is nearly noontime there. Thus the Buddha continues his meanderings. ===== ===== Susan Mayer welcomes the new couple, Bob and Lee, to Wisteria Lane. She makes quite a mess of greeting them and ends up getting off on the wrong foot. She tries to make up for it and get the new neighbors to like her by heating up some cookies (since she cannot bake to save her life) and takes them over to their house, where she is greeted by Lee. She and her cookies are not received well, as Lee is allergic to nuts and Susan can't answer if there are any nuts in the cookies since she didn't make them herself, and she ends up with some very rude comments and the door shut in her face. Susan's daughter Julie later finds their dog running around in the street, and Susan decides to take the dog and keep it in her garage so she can be the “hero” and make Bob and Lee like her. When Lee notices the dog missing, Susan helps him look for it, temporarily winning his thanks and apologies for being so rude earlier on. However, when Susan's husband Mike returns home, he opens the garage door and the dog runs out with Susan and Mike's wet paint all over his paws, which not only ruins Bob's very expensive Dolce suit, but leaves a trail straight back to Susan's garage. Mike comes back after trying to do some damage control and tells Susan they have to pay $2000 to replace Bob's suit. Susan starts to figure out another way to get them to like her, but Mike snaps at her and tells her to let it go. Katherine Mayfair's elderly aunt Lillian arrives from the nursing home on her deathbed. She expresses to Katherine that she does not want to take the guilt of what they have done to her grave, wondering if God will let her into heaven, and she pleads with Katherine to let her tell her daughter Dylan the truth. Katherine becomes enraged, stating that they did what they had to do and she will not let Lillian ruin her and her family's lives. Katherine steps out for a bit, and Lillian rings her bell to summon Dylan. She beckons Dylan over to the bed and starts to explain the reason as to why she cannot remember anything about her childhood on Wisteria Lane. Katherine walks in, sends Dylan out of the room, and takes away Lillian's bell. Bree Hodge receives a motorcycle, intended as a present for Danielle. She forbids her son Andrew from riding it and intends to give it away at a church raffle. Her husband Orson disregards her advice and "road tests" it, leading to a minor crash. Bree insists to her friends Susan, Lynette and Gabrielle she does not want a baby shower, citing many reasons why it is either inappropriate or unnecessary, in order to cover up her fake- pregnancy. When Bree walks away for a second, her son Andrew goes over to them and suggests that they throw her a surprise party. Bree is shocked when she walks into the party, and speechless with fury when Phyllis Van De Kamp, her first husband Rex's dreadful mother, shows up. (Andrew indicates to Bree that this was revenge for not letting him drive the motorcycle.) When Bree and Phyllis argue, Phyllis brings up that she even gave Bree her mother's sable coat. Bree tells her that if she wants it back, she can have it. As Phyllis storms out, she asks Andrew where her mother would keep the coat. He told her it was in Bree's bedroom closet, forgetting that this is also where Bree's false pregnant bellies are stored. Bree runs upstairs to stop her, but is too late. Bree begs Phyllis, for the sake of Danielle's reputation, not to tell anyone, and tells her where Danielle is really staying. The conversation escalates into an argument about how Rex really felt about his mother, and Phyllis angrily stomps out of the room, and calls for everybody's attention at the door. When all eyes are on her, she stops herself and just tells everyone how good it was to see them again. Bree thanks her quietly, and Phyllis expresses to her that, “You’re not the only one who would like a second chance”. At the end of the episode, Danielle is in her room in the convent when Phyllis arrives. Phyllis tells her that she does not have to stay there and she can leave with her. Danielle is delighted and immediately packs her things. Edie Britt’s gynecologist tells her that she has crabs, Edie talks with her fiancé Carlos Solis about it, who is pretty grossed out, and they both have to use an awful licorice-smelling shampoo and a fine-toothed comb to take care of it. Carlos realizes as he has been secretly sleeping with his ex- wife Gabrielle, that she must have it, too. He drops by one of Gabrielle’s husband's Victor press conferences to warn Gabrielle, and they both realize that since Gabrielle might have it, Victor stands a good chance of having it, too. When they see him briefly scratch his crotch, they know they have to do something. Gabrielle later dresses up in a sexy nurse’s costume for a night of passion with Victor. She pretends the awful-smelling shampoo is a lotion that she made out of natural herbs, and she seductively rubs the shampoo on him. Later, at Bree’s baby shower, Edie smells the shampoo on Victor, wonders how he came about it and asks about his “cologne”. He tells her Gabrielle rubbed some homemade lotion stuff on him. As she looks around the room at people eating the crab cake entree, she slowly makes the connection between Carlos, Gaby, and Victor, and her suspicion grows strong as she crunches up her crab cake in anger. Lynette Scavo, feeling great about not having to go to chemotherapy for another month, wants to have sex with her husband Tom. When they start making love, however, Lynette's wig slips, and she just takes it off. Tom is uncomfortable with Lynette's bald head, and tells her that he has an early day the next day and he will sleep with her tomorrow. Lynette is upset and confides to Gabrielle about this in the wig shop. Gabrielle advises her that men like variety, and to try different wigs to spice up their sex life and pique Tom's interest. She tries the redheaded wig that night, and Tom cannot run up the stairs after her fast enough. The next night, Lynette is getting ready for another passionate night with Tom, wearing her normal blonde wig, and Tom comes in with a black wig for her to put on behind his back. She is upset, and feels that he only wants to have sex with her when he is pretending she is someone else. He explains that that was not the case at all, and her illness is affecting him more than she knows. They decide that they should just make love as Tom and Lynette, which makes them both happy. Finally, in her last hour of life, Lillian is desperate to tell Dylan of the guilty secret that she has been carrying with her. With all of her attempts blocked by Katherine, her only option is to quickly write it down on a piece of paper, which she folds up in her hand. She dies, and the note drops out of her grasp onto the floor. In the end, Katherine watches as paramedics take away her body. The camera then pans to the other side of the bed where Lillian's dying words lie folded on the floor. ===== On Mars, a battle wages on between the race of mice, known as the Martian Freedom Fighters, and the invading Catatonian Empire. Both sides are fighting for the rights of one important machine: the Regenerator. This machine has the ability to terraform Mars, creating a safehaven for all mice. The Catatonians wish to claim it so they can take over the planet. Freedom Fighter General Stoker is the only one who knows how to build the Regenerator. As a result, he is not present on the battlefield, but is instead on Earth looking for molecules vital to the device's construction. The mice later mysteriously lose contact with Stoker, so another general, Carbine, sends the Biker Mice from Mars. After their arrival, they land in Chicago and meet up with Charley Davidson, who runs and owns the Last Chance Garage, which becomes the Biker Mice's base of operations. Not long afterwards do they realize the Catatonians, led by General Hairball and Cataclysm, have come to Earth in search of Stoker, so that they can ensure their claim of the Regenerator. Evil billionaire Ronaldo Rump (a parody of Donald Trump and Ricky Ricardo with an oversized butt) also seeks Stoker, since he owns a Regenerator of his own, and uses it for his evil money-making schemes, but it is running low on power. Throughout the course of the game, the player takes on the role of either Throttle, Modo, or Vinnie, and maneuvers in and out of boss battles and other such levels. ===== Love is a game for Ben who lies and cheats on his girlfriend Emily, with the greatest of ease. But when he meets the sexy and unpredictable Chlo, the tables are turned. Ben falls head over heels in love, and is astonished to find someone even more immoral than he is.Plot Summary ===== Yokai Academy, the main setting of Rosario + Vampire Tsukune Aono is an average teenager who is unable to get into any local high schools due to his poor grades. As a last ditch effort to secure his education, his parents enroll him in a private school called Yokai Academy, which he discovers is a boarding school for monsters. The school teaches monsters how to coexist with humans, including disguising as them, but any real humans found on campus are to be killed. Although he fears for his life, Tsukune befriends a beautiful vampire girl named Moka Akashiya, who enjoys his company and especially the taste of his blood. During a fight with a school bully, Tsukune accidentally removes the rosario around Moka's neck, and discovers that she transforms into a powerful vampire with a completely different personality. Because of Moka, Tsukune decides to stay at Yokai. He befriends formerly antagonistic students, including a succubus Kurumu Kurono and a child prodigy witch Yukari Sendo. They join the school's Newspaper Club and wind up fighting a variety of students and teachers, who use their monstrous powers to bully or to control one or more of the members for their own selfish or destructive ends. On a club trip to the human world, they meet a witch, Ruby Tojo, who defends a field of sunflowers from being torn down by developers. They meet Mizore Shirayuki, a snow fairy student who becomes Tsukune's "stalker". A group of "Monstrels" harass the club. Ruby, having recovered from injuries, joins the school's staff as the Headmaster's assistant. An evil group called the Anti- Schoolers threaten to break down the barrier between the human and monster worlds. When Tsukune's cousin manages to sneak onto the school grounds, the club has a hard time keeping the monster school a secret. When the school is temporary closed because of damage, Tsukune returns home to the human world only to have Moka, Kurumu, Yukari, and Mizore follow him and hide in his room. In Rosario+Vampire: Season II, Moka's younger half-sister Koko Shuzen enrolls. She, Ruby, and Mizore join the Newspaper Club. On an excursion to Mizore's homeland, they learn of a dangerous organization called Fairy Tale, which seeks to destroy the human world. The Newspaper Club visits the human world where they meet San Otonashi, a former club member, and run into trouble with adversaries from Fairy Tale's 7th Branch office. Chinese transfer student Fangfang Huang tries to recruit Tsukune to join his mafia family. When Moka spends a school day as her inner personality, she is unable to return to the seal, so the Newspaper Club heads to China to get her rosario fixed. At Hong Kong, Tsukune and the gang learn the truth about Moka's identity: she was infused with First Ancestor blood by her mother Akasha Bloodriver, who sacrificed herself to protect them from Alucard, the original First Ancestor vampire. Moka's eldest half-sister Aqua infiltrates the Huang manor and captures Moka to bring to Fairy Tale, which suspects that Moka is the key to reviving Alucard. While his friends train their powers, Tsukune has his body altered by Tohofuhai to handle the upcoming challenges. Tsukune and the gang infiltrate the Hanging Garden: a sky fortress that serves as Fairy Tale's headquarters. They face opposition from their leader and matriarch of the Shuzen family Gyokuro Shuzen, who sends the leaders of the Fairy Tale Branches after them for a series of fights. The group eventually reaches Moka, but must face her half-sisters Aqua and Kalua. Gyokuro snatches Moka's rosario in order to control Alucard. A character called the Masked King reveals himself to be a clone of Alucard's original vampire form. He reveals that he has manipulated both Fairy Tale and its opposition to determine whether the rosario could control him, and then merges with his monster self, who goes on a rampage in Tokyo. Moka is mortally wounded, but Tsukune revives her by removing all his holy locks and transforming himself into a First Ancestor vampire. They beat down Alucard, but he revives and reveals that he has hatched eggs in Japan's major cities. Tsukune's friends and allies, along with the two other Dark Lords, band together to fight Alucard and his clones. Tsukune puts Moka's rosario on Alucard, which awakens Akasha inside his monster body. Akasha tells Alucard to give up the fight, and they cast a self-disintegration spell. Now that the existence of monsters is known in the human world, coexistence is now even harder to achieve, however, Tsukune is confident that he and his friends can do it. ===== The story revolves around pious, young Pierre (Louis Garrel) who has just left a Catholic boarding school to live with his wealthy parents at their villa on the island of Gran Canaria. Pierre's father (Philipe Duclos) dies, leaving his mother Hélène (Isabelle Huppert) to care for him. While in a restaurant, his mother reveals to him that she has been unfaithful to her husband many times with his knowledge and feels no shame about it. She then insists that her son accept her promiscuous ways. Soon after this, Pierre finds a closet full of his father's pornography. His reaction is to furiously masturbate and then to urinate on the magazine pages. Hélène encourages her uninhibited sex partner Réa (Joana Preiss) to have sex with Pierre. She does so in public at Gran Canaria's Yumbo Centrum, a popular shopping and nightlife complex. Hélène looks on longingly as the partially clothed couple copulates with passersby raising no objections. Afterwards, Hélène includes her son in an orgy with her friends, including Hansi (Emma de Caunes). After the orgy, Hélène decides that she must leave her son to travel. While saying goodbye to Pierre, she implies that something taboo has happened between them and that she must leave to prevent it from happening again. Upon Hélène's departure, Hansi enters Pierre's life as a friend. She admits befriending Pierre at Hélène's encouragement but denies receiving a fee from her. Their friendship blossoms into a tender romance and they both fall in love. During their relationship, Hansi reveals that she has participated in sado-masochistic sex many times as a dominatrix with her friend Loulou (Jean-Baptiste Montagut) as the willing masochist. She adds Hélène arranged these encounters as sexual exhibitions for tourists. Hélène returns home with Réa. Upon arriving, she finds her son and Hansi socializing at a bar near the villa. Hélène and Pierre greet each other and chat while gazing into each other's eyes, with Hansi looking on jealously. Hélène invites her son to sleep with her. He agrees. Hélène and Pierre enter the house's wine cellar. Hélène asks her son to cut her abdomen with a razor while he masturbates and as he climaxes she slits her own throat. Paramedics take away her body. Pierre says good-bye to his mother before the cremation. He enters the room where she lies in state and masturbates exclaiming that he does not want to die as he is carried out. ===== There is a world where shinobi (ninja and kunoichi) are recognized. The story centers around Kaede, who enters Princess Yuri School（姫百合学園 Hime Yuri Gakuen）and offers assistance to three girls for one year, who happen to be guardians. The top graduate is given a special privilege to become a freelance Shinobi. After entering, Kaede strives to serve a favorite person for one year. ===== Lou Marazano was once a feared hit man, but his reputation has dimmed significantly twenty years after his retirement. Unable to help his daughter financially after her ex-husband fails to pay child support, he asks the street boss, Lorenzo Galante, for work. Though reluctant to give him the job, Galante sends him to kill several witnesses who will testify against D'Agostino, the mob boss. After Marazano sends flowers to the widow of one of the men he kills, Ray Berkowski, a veteran cop, reopens a case that involved a string of murders from the early 1990s. Though discouraged from investigating, Berkowski and his partner, Ralph Maloney, stake out the second target. Picked up at the scene of the crime, Marazano does not talk, and the police are forced to set him free when his girlfriend and her neighbors provide an alibi. Worried that Marazano may talk in order to avoid jail time, Galante orders him killed. Marazano stays a step ahead of his former friends, and he is able to kill the crew sent to assassinate him. Knowing that he must also kill Galante, Marazano heads to Galante's bar, where Galante threatens Marazano's family. Unmoved by the threats, Marazano kills Galante and offers his gold watch to an elderly man. When the elderly man is taken in by the police as a potential witness, they spot the distinctive watch and realize that they have enough evidence to arrest Marazano. Meanwhile, Marazano collects the money from his job and receives his final target: the police captain. Meanwhile, Maloney takes over the investigation once Berkowski became frustrated with the department's red tape. When their captain says that he has important information to share, Maloney and Berkowski, who has returned to active duty despite his cynicism, meet him in private at a parking lot. Unknown to the others, Mazarano tails the cops. Revealing that he is corrupt, the captain shoots both his subordinates. Before the captain can finish off either man, Marazano kills him. As Marazano turns to leave, Berkowski and Maloney attempt to stop him. In the ensuing gunfight, Berkowski accidentally kills Maloney. Enraged, he chases after Marazano, whom he blames for Maloney's death. When Berkowski confronts him, Marazano kills him. At his daughter's house, Marazano gives her all the money and urges her to leave the city, which he also plans to do. ===== Having just been sent away to live with his uncle and aunt in Indiana, teenager Sparke Thornton (Lon McCallister) has a penchant for trouble. At first, he is not satisfied with the arrangement, and continues to express his rebellious behavior. Already on his first day, he plans on running away, but crossing a harness racing track convinces him to stay in Indiana. The owner, Godaw Boole (Charles Dingle) welcomes Sparke, and introduces him to Char Bruce (Jeanne Crain), a tomboyish girl who loves to race horses. A servant (George Reed) informs him that his uncle Thunder Bolt (Walter Brennan) was once part of harness horse racing as a respected sulky driver. Returning home, Sparke informs his family about his love for horses, but Thunder orders him to put his focus on school instead. The next day, he ignores his uncle's demands and visits the racing track, where his instinctive rapport of a stallion impresses Godaw's seductive daughter, Cri-Cri (June Haver) who is home from private boarding school. She convinces Jed Bruce (Ward Bond) to help Sparke learn how to drive. Even though he performs poorly during his first trainings, Sparke is allowed to come back due to his humility. While bonding with Char and Cri-Cri, he learns how to successfully guide a harness horse. One night, Thunder becomes drunk and reacts violently towards Sparke. Due to his confusion, Thunder's wife Penny (Charlotte Greenwood) explains that Thunder was once partners with Boole, until Boole's harsh treatment of a mare led to a quarrel. Thunder has retired from horseback riding ever since, but still feels an urge to return. Moved by the story, Sparke becomes desperate to help out his uncle and starts collecting documents that helps Thunder's only remaining horse with her delivery. Thunder is initially furious at Sparke for interfering, but he is grateful for the outcome. Meanwhile, Sparke's growing infatuation with Cri- Cri causes him to shift away from the track regularly. Cri-Cri feels that he is too young to take seriously, though, and she prefers the attention of Gordon Bradley (Robert Condon). Sparke is not aware that Char is madly in love with him, and instead considers her as 'one of the guys'. Meanwhile, he continues to train the horse's foal, who, during her first race, is seriously injured. Shortly after her recovery, Sparke realizes how Char feels about him and responds to her love. Thunder has since found out that the foal is going blind, but nevertheless allows Sparke to race her. Through determination and skills, he wins the race. Returning home with the horse, who has convinced Thunder to return to his business, Sparke kisses Char. ===== As described in a film magazine, Ol' Santa Fe (Carey) drops off a fast freight train passing through town. He saves an urchin that had been assisting a beggar with a bear from a severe beating and adopts him as his "Pard" (Eason). Securing a job as a porter at the bank Caliente Trust Company, Santa Fe learns that bank president Rufus B. Coulter (Hale) is in league with a bad gang entrenched in the foothills, who have given Sheriff Mart Fraser (Nichols) much trouble. Coulter receives word through the K.C. Kid (Cooper) that a bank examiner is coming to Caliente, so he sends bank employee Dick Farwell (Harron) on a false errand to cover his tracks. Santa Fe goes out to rescue Dick, who has been captured by the outlaws, and runs into the sheriff lost in a sandstorm. Santa Fe proceeds to the rendezvous of the crooks, frees Dick, and returns for help. With the assistance of some U.S. troops he captures the outlaws, exposes Coulter, and then exposes his identity as The Fox, a special agent of the U.S. government sent out to round up the lawless gang. He also wins the love of the sheriff's daughter Annette (Clarke). ===== Dean Murdock, the owner of the Starlite Theater chain, purchases an abandoned theater that was once the site of a horrific massacre perpetrated by the disgruntled owner on the theater's closing night. He notifies his employees of the chain's acquisition of the property, and promotes several to renovate and subsequently operate the theater. To motivate his employees, he offers a $1,000 bonus that will go to one of them after a test run, much to the chagrin of his incredulous assistant, Miss Blackwell. Two cheerleader friends of Jennifer, one of the theater's employees, arrive at the abandoned theater to meet her. They find the theater empty, and both are stabbed to death by an unknown man in a tuxedo. During a screening at the main theater, Selena, a disgruntled concession stand employee left out of Murdock's promotion, causes a scene, and is escorted out by Miss Blackwell. Meanwhile, Jennifer, Adrian, and Malcolm arrive at the abandoned theater property and begin cleaning. The three find some old reels of film upstairs, decide to project them. On the reels, they see a filmed stage play, during which the audience flees in terror as the auditorium fills with smoke. The projector catches fire midway through. Jennifer flees, and witnesses a smiling elderly man in a tuxedo who attempts to choke her before disappearing. Jennifer is so frightened by the incident that she refuses to return until the opening night. Selena and Darcy request to be transferred to the theater, which Murdock agrees to. Adrian, while at the theater alone, witnesses a typewriter begin typing by itself; the message reads: "Don't be hasty. This theater could be yours." Meanwhile, Lisa and Dee-Dee, two other Spotlite employees dropping off the contents of Jennifer's old locker, are attacked in the auditorium and stabbed to death. The next day, while Jennifer, Adrian, and Malcolm are in the office, Darcy becomes locked inside the auditorium and is attacked and dragged underneath the stage. The others hear her screams, but upon entering the theater, there is no sight of her. On the theater's opening night, the three await Murdock's arrival, but he is nowhere to be seen. Selena arrives panicked, looking for Darcy, but Adrian sequesters her in a locked room to avoid a scene in front of a local news outfit doing a story on the theater's reopening. In the projection room, Adrian is attacked by the killer, but fights him off. Malcolm is subsequently electrocuted on the projector, and Adrian is decapitated by a falling window. Locked in the upstairs room, Selena calls Miss Blackwell from a telephone. During the conversation, an invisible force bursts into the room. On the other end, Miss Blackwell hears Selena's screams before the phone receiver inexplicably crumbles in her hands. Jennifer, who had been waiting outside, enters the theater, and finds herself alone in the auditorium, confronted by the killerhe is the original theater owner who perpetrated the massacre years prior, and he envisions Jennifer as his former lover, an usherette from decades ago. He embraces Jennifer, but she stabs him to death. Jennifer phones police from a pay phone outside. Back at the other theater, Murdock belatedly returns from a trip, and Miss Blackwell quits her job. ===== The movie is about two sisters growing up in Philadelphia in the 1870s. They both fall for a Frenchman who has to prepare the pavilion for the Centennial Exposition. ===== Donaldson returns to the Land for the third series of novels based there. We are re-introduced to Linden Avery years after she first encountered Thomas Covenant and was forever changed by the experience. We journey once more to the familiar fantasy world where everything is again under threat. ===== * Plot - events that make up a story, particularly: as they relate to one another in a pattern or in a sequence; as they relate to each other through cause and effect; how the reader views the story; or simply by coincidence. ** Subplot - secondary strand of the plot that is a supporting side story for any story or the main plot. Subplots may connect to main plots, in either time and place or in thematic significance. Subplots often involve supporting characters, those besides the protagonist or antagonist. ** Story arc - extended or continuing storyline in episodic storytelling media such as television, comic books, comic strips, boardgames, video games, and films with each episode following a narrative arc. On a television program, for example, the story would unfold over many episodes. ** Narrative structure - structural framework that underlies the order and manner in which a narrative is presented to a reader, listener, or viewer. The narrative text structures are the plot and the setting. ** Monomyth - the hero's journey; it is the common template of a broad category of tales that involve a hero going on an adventure, and in a decisive crisis wins a victory, and then comes home changed or transformed. ===== Carlos (Alberto Closas) has to work to feed his wife (Amparo Soler Leal), his 15 children and the grandpa (José Isbert). The children dream off having a television. The summer holidays is another trouble for the big family. ===== Divided into five parts, the play details the relationship between Eugene, a very fair-skinned black man, and Alma, a large dark-skinned woman. Their story begins in their youth on the islands off the coast of South Carolina. During their youth, mainly covered in first part, Eugene and Alma deal with different vantages on the issues of race and class. In spite of this they become fast friends. During the second part, as they progress through adolescence and through their respective tragedies, Alma and Eugene's friendship crosses over into a more intimate relationship. The third part has a literal rift between the pair when, after graduation, Alma decides to go to school in New York and Eugene is left behind. Part four leads into the consummation of their sexual relationship when Eugene visits Alma in New York City six months later. The final scene has Eugene and Alma planning to marry. The death of his grandfather, also very fair, propels the story to its climax. Eugene inherits everything from his fair grandfather, which upsets his darker-skinned father. Eugene and his father fight, and Eugene finally kills his father landing himself in jail. Alma is left pregnant, and aborts the baby by pushing furniture at the play's close. Note:The play requires only two actors. All other characters are portrayed by them. They switch between several characters many times in virtually every scene. ===== After picking up her two young children from school, Grace Lawson looks through a newly developed set of photographs. She finds an odd one in the pack: a mysterious picture from perhaps twenty years ago, showing four strangers she can't identify. But there is one face she recognizes--that of her husband, from before she knew him. When her husband sees the photo that night, he leaves their home and drives off without explanation. She doesn't know where he's going, why he's leaving, or whether or not he's ever coming back. Nor does she realize how dangerous the search for him will be. There are others interested in both her husband's past and that photo, including Eric Wu, a fierce, silent killer who will not be stopped from finding his quarry, no matter who or what stands in his way. Her world turned upside down, filled with doubts about her herself and marriage, Grace must confront the dark corners of her own tragic past she struggles to learn the truth, find her husband, and save her family. ===== The story opened with a scene from Ultimate Marvel Team-Up 3, where Spider-Man is confronting a deranged Bruce Banner, who is agitated and tells Spider-Man "it's all connected." General Ross arrives, and despite Spider-Man's attempts to defuse the situation, Banner transforms into the Hulk and escapes. The setting then transfers back several decades, to 1942, at Battle of the Tenaru. An American "super-soldier", who is just a normal GI in a distinctive uniform that resembles the costume of Citizen V from Earth-616, rallies his men in the face of a Japanese attack. However, the super-soldier is killed, his blood staining the American flag. A photograph of this image is released around the world, and President Roosevelt demands a true super-soldier from his advisors, rather than a normal soldier in costume. A year later, during the invasion of Sicily, three soldiers, (American privates Fisk (the grandfather of The Kingpin) and Nicholas Fury, and Canadian soldier James Howlett), attempt to loot a house. Military police arrive and arrest all three. Fisk is grazed by a bullet, while Fury and Howlett, despite the latter's protests that he's Canadian, are shipped off to separate unknown locations. Fury is selected to be the next test subject for Project Rebirth, as the results from blood tests most closely match that of "subject 22", the most successful of previous test subjects. He is injected with a serum that gives him super strength, which he uses to free himself and the other prisoners. This is permitted since the project scientists decide that they have all the information that they need for now. Elsewhere, Howlett awakens within the "Weapon X" complex, in a tank of liquid. He escapes the complex, but is shot as he nears freedom. Howlett's wound heals completely and he is recaptured. Dr. Cornelius, Weapon X's head scientist, explains that in attempting to create their own version of Captain America, Weapon X accidentally discovered a genome that, when genetically altered, grants the person carrying it various abilities based on their DNA. He calls these altered humans "mutants", (with Howlett as "Mutant Zero"), and states that mutants will be how humanity survives.Ultimate Origins #1 (June 2008) The story then alternates between the discovery of the artifact known as the Watcher by Captain Carol Danvers of Project Pegasus, a government warehouse for objects with mysterious origins and, usually, mass destructive capacity. and events leading to the birth of Captain America. A lame young man, Steven Rogers, is recruited by Dum Dum Dugan into the Project Rebirth Super-Soldier Program. Through many different treatments, Steven Rogers is reborn as the ultimate super-soldier and leaves his fiance Gail behind to start his life in World War II. Later, a teenaged Erik Lehnsherr visits the Weapon X complex and sets Wolverine free, letting the captive Canadian soldier know that his name is James. When Magneto's mother, who works at the complex, tries to stop him, he murders her and proclaims that he hopes there "is a hell." Before his mother's death, she justifies her work with Weapon X by declaring that she only wanted to find a cure for Erik and the others. Even later in Erik's life, he reads a book published by Charles Xavier and is determined to meet him. Showing up in the class that Xavier teaches, they soon realize that Charles's telepathic powers do not work on Magneto. They discuss the theories involved with having "mutanity" accepted and eventually relocate to the Savage Land, where Magneto's Brotherhood is waiting to be trained by the two. Sometime later, Nick Fury is questioned by General Ross while lying in a hospital bed after apparently being saved from an unspecified wartime threat by Wolverine. General Ross feverishly questions him about his previous involvement with the mutant known as Weapon X and the nature of Nick Fury's unique physiology. After Fury dismisses an offer to become the "new" Captain America (in replacement of the then-missing in action original), he wonders about his usefulness in other ways. The story skips forward for a brief synopsis of Project Rebirth 2 and important characters, including Nick Fury, Dr. Franklin Storm, Bruce Banner, Dr. Hank Pym, and Dr. Richard Parker. During this time, Dr. Storm is contracted to work with the Baxter Building project as well as Project Rebirth. Their work with the facility uses a vial of Fury's blood. Fury's identity as the donor is concealed from all scientific participants, although Parker suspects the truth. When Banner seems to have had a breakthrough, he and Dr. Pym decide to try it on themselves, starting with Banner. The trial goes awry and Banner, now as the Hulk, destroys the building and severely injures Richard and Mary Parker. The sight of the infant Peter Parker in his mother's arms shocks Banner back to himself and he is quickly subdued by Fury. Taking the infant in to his arms, he whispers that it is good that Peter is young, because he won't remember a thing. Later, Fury infiltrates the Weapon X project, and, after the shock of the environment sinks in, Fury realizes that nobody should ever know of human involvement in the mutant gene. He kills all of the scientists and their experimental subjects. The only mutant to survive is T'Challa, whom Fury feels a connection with due to their tragic pasts. Charles Xavier is next seen being speared in the back as an act of retaliation by Magneto, who claims Charles tried to attack him in his own mind. Magneto speaks of the mutant race's fate to ascend like gods over homo sapiens and his belief that God willed this to be. In the present day, the Watchers speak through Sue Storm and foretell certain doom that awaits before picking a herald. While the Fantastic Four wonder who this could be, Rick Jones is found by his family glowing in the backyard. ===== While on a routine F-16C fighter aircraft patrol in United States airspace west of Alaska, Doug Masters and his wingman test the g-forces of their fighters but stray into Soviet airspace. One of the Soviet aircraft has Doug on missile-lock, shooting him down. Doug safely ejects but is captured by Soviet soldiers. Several years later, Doug is still haunted by his days as a prisoner. Working as a crop duster, he is recruited by old friend, retired Gen. Charles "Chappy" Sinclair as an instructor at his flight school. Chappy's school has teenagers who fly his Harvard IV trainers with no regard for safety. These teenagers in trouble with the law were taken in as a means of rehabilitating them. During an exhibition the young misfits face off against teens from the Air Force. Wheeler cons a drug dealer out of $2,000 by handing him a bag of sugar disguised as cocaine. With her co-pilot Rudy Marlowe she tries to fly to Mexico. Doug pursues her and has her to land on an abandoned air force base. A platoon of armed men at the base try to kill them. Doug intervenes and tells Chappy about the incident. Chappy and Maj. Gen. Brad Kettle investigate the activity at a storage bunker revealed to be holding chemical weapons. Doug leaves the school and Chappy is given a notice by the State Patrol that his flight program is terminated immediately with his students sent back to juvenile hall. Wheeler steals a trainer, creating a diversion allowing students to hijack a bus and head back to the school. Chappy organizes the students to infiltrate the airbase and acquire enough resources to stop the convoy carrying the chemical weapons. Upon entering the airbase, Kitty Shaw and Chappy discover Operation Pandora was to use chemical weapons on hostile countries, like Cuba. They print out the data before leaving the premises and handing it to Kettle. Meanwhile, Dana Osborne and Rudy attempt to stop the convoy, but are shot down. As they attempt to escape on foot, Rudy is shot by Major Pierce, but Doug, Chappy and his team accompany Kettle to Craig Air Force Base, only to realize that Kettle is the ring-leader who captures the team. After Kettle leaves the chamber, Kitty hacks the computer setting off fire extinguishers, giving Chappy's team time to escape. A stray shot from one of the soldiers ruptures the canister, contaminating the chamber and killing Dr. Francis Gully and everyone inside. As Kitty and Peter sneak into the cargo plane carrying the chemical weapon, Chappy sends a radio message, warning everyone of a hostile aircraft heading to Cuba. Kettle orders his fighter squadron to shoot down the trainer aircraft. The squadron of two fighters attacks the trainers, only to be confronted by Doug, who has commandeered a fighter aircraft. Doug and the students shoot down the attackers. The students approach the cargo plane and attack it. Inside, Peter Kane opens the cargo door, causing the soldiers aboard to fall out. Kitty assumes the controls. Peter then jettisons all of the canisters into the ocean. Seeing his mission as a failure, Kettle prepares to kill Chappy when Doug suddenly attacks the airbase, giving Chappy time to escape. As police arrive at the scene, Kettle enters the contaminated chamber - his fate unknown. Days later, Wheeler tells Doug she is heading to Mexico for a new start, but he convinces her to stay. The Iron Eagle Flight School then prepares for a new batch of students fresh out of juvenile hall. ===== A dejected youth Vijay / Vetri (Ravi Krishna) decides to end his life on a railway track. On the tracks, he sees the dead body of a youth called Kishore and takes away his mobile phone. The call he attends over the phone brings him fortune. He gets richer, and money starts coming to him from all quarters. Fate takes a different turn. A baddie in the city, Moddu Poorana (Ajay), calls up and threatens Vijay. On other hand, a new girl named Swapna (Akshara), who knew Kishore but never met him, also enters Vijay's life. How Vijay manages to put together the pieces of his new life and escape from the deadly goons forms rest of the story. ===== The novel has a thin plot: two sisters, dressed as men and taking men's names, Steve and Blue, decide to work as agricultural labourers in Gippsland, the place their mother has told them about throughout their childhood and with which they feel they have a "spiritual link". The book chronicles their life and work over a few seasons, and particularly describes "the multitude of eccentrics".McLeod (1999) p. 168 The book is divided into four parts:Maxwell *Part One: "For the best! For the best!" Steve and Blue leave home in Dandenong and travel to Gippsland, near Bairnsdale, where they work as apple-pickers. Steve meets and falls in love with Kelly. They then go to Rutherglen to look for work pruning vines but aren't successful due to their gender, and return home to Dandenong. This title of this section, Maxwell suggests, "reflects the general mood and optimism of the first section". *Part Two: "The Glitter of Celtic Bronze against the Sea" Steve and Blue return to Gippsland where they work, mostly, as pea-pickers. Kelly had not responded to Steve's letters, and in this part she falls in love with Macca. Maxwell writes that the title of this section "is from Steve's idealisation of Macca, her lifelong love, whom she sees sometimes as Charon, the mythical Greek boatman on whom the goddess Venus bestowed youth and beauty. The Celtic bronze of his reddish hair is set against the colour of the sea". *Part Three: "No Moon Yet" Steve and Blue travel to the Ovens Valley in Northeastern Victoria and obtain work harvesting hops and maize. They spend some of this time out of work, and struggle to feed themselves. They thieve food to survive, most often from the Italian itinerant workers living near them. Steve pines for her love, Macca. The title, Maxwell writes, "expresses Steve's growing impatience and despair as she waits for sings of affection from Macca, her one true love, who has gone up-country". *Part Four: "Ah, Primavera" Steve and Blue return to Gippsland for another season of pea- picking. Macca is not there, and Steve learns that he has gone droving and has another "girl". At the end of picking, Blue returns home to marry, at Steve's encouragement, and Steve remains alone in Gippsland. ===== When gunshots are heard next door, the three children of widowed mystery novelist Marian Carstairs try to help the police help their mother solve the case or solve it themselves. Polly Walker, an actress, runs from the neighbors' house, telling police lieutenant Bill Smith that she had gone there to see Flora Sanford and found her dead. Flora was an agent who represented Polly as well as Marian, whose books feature a detective character with the same name as Bill's. Various suspects are considered, including other neighbors and Flora's hiding husband, who had fallen in love with Polly and wanted a divorce. The children begin sending anonymous letters, believing they are helping the investigation, until Bill finally persuades them to let him handle the case. He solves it, then expresses a romantic interest in Marian, pleasing the kids. ===== The story begins with Daniel and Alexis sitting in Daniel's office where they watch a video of Bradford's will, which was interrupted by Betty (who got a closeup). As he looks into the camera, he tells the siblings that he was sick and upon his death he wanted one of them to run Meade Publications; however, as he begins to explain the situation, he turns the camera off by mistake and the two are left without an answer. This causes Daniel and Alexis, who have been civil since Bradford's death, to once again renew their competitive sibling rivalry. The two later try to resolve the situation by calling Claire from prison but their mother is tired of the two arguing and tells them to settle this once and for all. The Meade siblings decide to solve their problem with a paintball contest. Nick walks over to Amanda's desk and sees her using paperclips, which he had been looking for all day. Amanda counters by saying she had a good reason, and shows him a string of clips that lead to Halston, who is dressed up in nailclip couture. Nick responds by getting security to remove Halston from the building, stunning Amanda. Meanwhile, Betty's workday is interrupted by Hilda's visit to make copies for her new beauty salon. Betty has invited Henry and Gio to help fix up Hilda's new business. Gio and Hilda hit it off, but things don't go as well for Henry and Betty. Gio offers to help Henry fix a sink but Henry says no. After Henry fixes the sink on his own, however, he gets drenched; his clothes are replaced by a new set whipped up by Justin. When Hilda and Gio announce that they are going to a salsa club they ask Betty and Henry to come along; however, Betty and Henry already have plans at Henry's apartment, so they turn down the invitation. For Wilhelmina, her attempts to get funding for SLATER are causing most of her staffers to start losing patience, and even the attempts to get financiers have hit a roadblock. Marc suggests another option; change her image. Apparently, it works and the "makeover" makes the headlines on "Fashion TV." However, later that evening after a meeting with her investors, Wilhelmina grabs a taxi only to be confronted by an elderly woman, on whom she slams the door. Unfortunately, the elderly woman turns out to be Betty White, and thanks to a pair of eyewitnesses who catch the incident on a cell phone, it makes headlines even on YouTube. Wilhelmina is surprised over this negative publicity, and when Marc assures her that it won't affect the investors, the phones start ringing endlessly with calls from the backers. At Henry's apartment, Henry tells Betty what their romantic evening consists of: making ice cream and watching a movie, though Betty sees this as boring. Although they attempt to spice things up by having Betty place ice cream and toppings on Henry, the evening for the two becomes a disaster, so Betty suggests that the two should join Hilda and Gio at the club. Once there, Betty sees her sister and Gio hit it off by drinking and dancing, while Henry feels that he is out of place as Betty tries to loosen him up. Even though Gio offers to buy drinks, Henry turns him down and loses his cool, getting his shirt burned by the flaming pelicans (drinks), and walking out on Betty. Moments later Betty finds that Henry has returned and is showing off his dance moves, thus winning Betty over. The two decide that they will return to the apartment, leaving Hilda and Gio alone. Gio watches the whole scene and ignores Hilda, who sighs, giving the idea that she has "discovered" something. However, as Hilda and Gio return to the Suarez home, Hilda thanks Gio for a wonderful evening, then tells him that she wasn't "the Suarez sister that you like", as she has figured out Gio's true feelings about Betty. Back at Mode, Daniel and Alexis prepare for their paintball battle, with Amanda on team Daniel and Nick and Kenny on team Alexis. During the entire evening the teams try to eliminate each other, but it is Alexis who seems to have the upper hand, even taking out most of Daniel's team. Amanda finally confronts Nick and begins to shoot at him only to find that their dislikes are a turn-on, and they start getting passionate by making out with each other against a window. Alexis then comes in and shoots Amanda, leaving only herself and Daniel in the game. Finally, as Daniel and Alexis confront each other, Daniel sees Alexis fall to the ground; as he prepares to shoot, Daniel instead picks up Alexis and holds her, saying that they can run the company together. Despite this gesture, Alexis tricks him by taking his gun and shooting him, making her the winner and the rightful CEO/President of Meade Publications. The following morning, Betty learns of Daniel's loss as he ponders about what it will be like working under his sister. The following day, Wilhelmina gets a surprise phone call from Betty White, and the two agree to meet at the hospital to call a truce. Unfortunately, the truce, broadcast live on TV, turns out to be a setup; as the cameras started rolling, Miss White pretends to shake Wilhelmina's hand, only to pull it away and "blaming" her for trying to hurt her sound hand. Wilhelmina cannot believe this, but White was adamant in her story. Later in her apartment, Wilhelmina tells Marc that there will be no SLATER, thanks in part to the publicity they didn't want with Miss White, so she turns to "Plan B," which she removes from the refrigerator and shows to Marc - the sperm she recovered from (the then newly dead) Bradford Meade, which she plans to use to give birth to an heir and get her stake in the company and become part of the Meade family. ===== A serial killer has murdered twelve bakers. While on a delivery for their bakery business, Wallace and Gromit save Piella Bakewell, a former pin-up girl for the Bake-o-Lite bread company, and her nervous poodle Fluffles when the brakes on her bicycle fail. Gromit finds there is no problem with the brakes, but Wallace is smitten. He and Piella begin a whirlwind romance, and Gromit is angered when she redecorates their house. Fluffles and Gromit share a sensitive moment when she returns Gromit's possessions, discarded by Piella. Wallace sends Gromit to return Piella's forgotten purse. At Piella's mansion, Gromit discovers numbered mannequins representing each of the murdered bakers, and a book of photos; Wallace is her planned thirteenth victim, completing a baker's dozen. When he shows Wallace the evidence, Wallace is too distracted with his engagement to Piella to listen. Gromit installs security measures in their home, including a metal- detecting security screener. After Piella tricks Wallace into thinking that Gromit bit her, Wallace muzzles Gromit and chains him up. Gromit watches helplessly as Piella prepares to push Wallace into the grinder; Wallace is saved when Piella is struck by a bag of flour. After an angry outburst about bakers, she leaves, but drops by the next day to apologise with a cake. Gromit, suspicious, follows her home, where Piella throws him into a storeroom with Fluffles. Escaping in Piella's old Bake-O-Lite hot air balloon, Gromit and Fluffles arrive at Wallace's house as he lights the candle. After a struggle, the cake falls, revealing the bomb. Wallace and Gromit are attacked by Piella, who reveals she detests bakers after her weight gain ended her career as the Bake-O-Lite girl. She is about to kill Wallace, but is attacked by Fluffles in a forklift. In the chaos, the bomb ends up in Wallace's trousers; Gromit and Fluffles neutralize the explosion with dough while Piella leaps onto her balloon and escapes. However, her weight drags the balloon into the crocodile enclosure in the zoo and she is devoured. Dejected, Wallace and Gromit decide to take their mind off things with a delivery. Outside, they find Fluffles and she joins them on a delivery. ===== Supporting characters of the telenovela. From left to right: Alfredo Uribe (Alejandro Awada), Mercedes (Claudia Fontán), Enrique "Quique" Ferreti (Carlos Belloso), Constanza Inzúa (Carla Peterson) and Miguel Quesada (Marcelo Mazzarello) The story begins during a boxing match of Esperanza Muñoznicknamed "Monita"who has sustained a hand injury. Her manager, Enrique "Quique" Ferreti, is pressuring her to continue fighting, despite her pain. This injury complicates her economic situation, as her boxing provides the only income for her adoptive family, namely Quique and his mother, Maria de las Nieves. Nieves loves Esperanza like her own daughter, and pressures her to marry Quique. Her neighbor Kimberly suggests that Esperanza apply for a job in the Quesada Group, where she works as a janitress. The secretary Mercedes rejects Esperanza due to her violent manners and her dressing style. Martín Quesada, the president of the company, sees Esperanza crying in the street and hires her as his personal assistant. Martín also meets three orphan siblings, José, Laura, and Coqui, who resisted being adopted by different families. He takes them to his home, and starts the legal proceedings to adopt them. Martín begins to like Esperanza, but his girlfriend Constanza, a cold, manipulative, and malicious woman, is wary of her. Esperanza does not tell Martín about her relations with Quique, instead pretending to be his sister. She also does not tell Martín that she is a boxer. Quique and Constanza begin their own relationship, unknown by most other characters. Martín breaks off his relationship with Esperanza when he sees her goodbye kiss with Quique, as he realizes that she was lying to him. After the breakup with Esperanza, Martín resumes his romance with Constanza and eventually proposes marriage to her, in order to improve his chances of winning custody of the three siblings. The judge, who thought that Esperanza was a bad influence on the children, gives the adoption to Constanza instead of Martín, forcing him to marry her. Their marriage proves difficult; Constanza is demanding and possessive, and despises the adopted siblings, who hate her as well. Martín finally breaks with Constanza when she pretends to be blind to keep him with her. The children's custody battle delays the divorce, as Martín wants to keep them. Due to the efforts of Martín's cousin Miguel, the unscrupulous lawyer "Falucho", and Constanza, Martin gradually loses his fortune, his business, and his house. He moves to the Conventillo and works as a taxi driver. Eventually, he recovers everything. A new character, Bárbara, temporarily joins the love triangle of Martín, Esperanza, and Constanza. Constanza gets pregnant by Quique and tries to pass off her son as Martín's, but fails. Martín finally marries Esperanza and has a family with her and the adopted children. Constanza moves in with Quique. ===== ===== One year after the events of Infinite Crisis, Princess Diana of Themyscira had dropped out of sight. Since then, the mantle of Wonder Woman had been passed to Donna Troy. Three villains: Giganta, Dr. Psycho, and Cheetah hold one of Diana's friends hostage at a museum on Themysciran history: Steve Trevor. The villains demand for the real Wonder Woman to appear, but Donna goes in and frees Steve, which leads to a fight between her, Giganta and Cheetah in their new forms which leads outside. With the help of Dr. Psycho, Donna is kidnapped. Sarge Steel, head of the Department of Metahuman Affairs, talks to Steve Trevor, who is revealed to be Agent Nemesis. There, he meets his new partner: Agent Diana Prince (Diana in her new secret identity). The next morning, Diana Prince goes to the museum for any clues. There, she meets Robin (Tim Drake) and her protégé Cassie Sandsmark of the Teen Titans. Cassie is angry at Diana for leaving her, even after she was in depression after Conner Kent's death. Having no answer as to why she had left her, Cassie takes off to fight the villains who have appeared again. With her friends and the Department in need of help, Diana goes into an alley and decides to become Wonder Woman for the first time in a year. But she is stopped by Hercules. Hercules takes care of the villains and questions Diana on her new Diana Prince identity. He points out that she stands for truth, yet she had decided to live a lie, further questioning her mission for peace on Man's World. He departs, leaving Diana more confused on what she is doing. Nemesis questions Hercules' sudden appearance and goes with Diana Prince to sneak around his location. They are attacked by him, to which it's revealed that he is under the control of Circe. Commenting on Diana's decision on pretending to be human, she casts a spell on her, removing her powers so that she is human. Now, Circe is Wonder Woman. News breaks out on the new Circe/Wonder Woman committing her own brand of justice by freeing women from forced labor and killing the men who has forced them. Hercules, sadden by the fact that he had attacked Diana despite it not being by his own actions, goes with her to Circe's island, Aeaea. Once they land, Circe attacks them. Subduing her, and grabbing her lasso of truth, she and Hercules go to her castle. Once there, Circe attacks again and Hercules stops her, but then he attacks Diana. It is revealed that Hercules and Circe were plotting against Diana and planning on ruling the world as their ultimate Gods, but Circe double crossed him. Stopping him from killing Circe, Diana uses the lasso to force Circe to reverse the spell she had cast on her. She does, and Diana is now Wonder Woman once again. But then, her entire rogues gallery appears... Attacked by all of her rogues, Diana manages to fight back until she is almost finished when Donna (in her old Wonder Girl outfit), Cassie, Nemesis, and members from the Teen Titans, the Justice Society, and the Justice League appear to help her. As they fight her rogues, Diana leaves to confront Hercules and Circe, who are fighting each other. Diana fights with Hercules, and since he is an evil God, she is prepared to kill him. But she is stopped by Circe, who subdues and binds Hercules in chains. Circe is living her punishment, as she lives forever and has lost what made her want to stay alive. Diana had accepted that she can't be human, and feels alone because she doesn't quite belong anywhere as she mentions she was made from clay. Circe tells her that she is never alone, and secretly casts a spell on her as she leaves. Diana Prince reports to Sarge and Nemesis on what happened to both Circe and Hercules, even though Nemesis mentions that he didn't see her when he arrived. Nemesis then shows her the things collected from Aeaea and she accidentally slits her hand on a sword and bleeds, which makes Diana confused. When meeting with Donna, she reveals that Circe made sure that she is human as Diana Prince and immortal as Wonder Woman, and thinks of it as some sort of gift. Now that she can be with humans instead of standing outside of them, Cassie and Donna go with her to the press conference to announce her return, with the rest of the superhero community with her and happy to have her back. Diana is happy, as she now knows "who is Wonder Woman". ===== The book opened at a Saturday, 2:47pm, with a New York teen Stephen Lane, and his uncle Richard Duffy, in a car chase over the Saharan desert in Al-Karesh, a fictional country in North Africa. They were pursued by gunmen. The chase ended with Richard Duffy about to be knifed by one of their pursuers. This was followed by a flashback to a recent past, specifically, Friday 9:00pm in New York, which showed that the two, despite being closely related, have actually just met just a couple of month before, despite Stephen's stamp collection being filled with stamps his uncle sent from all over the world. Stephen Lane was a typical teenager who liked nothing more than to watch videos of old movies and action movies, in the comfort of his home. His movie-marathon hobby was interrupted when his mother's younger brother, Richard, moved into the family's four-storey brownstone on East 61st Street, New York, one day. Richard was described as retired engineer, despite the fact he was only in his thirties. He was thought to be boring by his nephew. Richard was left in charge of Stephen when the latter's parents had to go away for the weekend. Shortly after their departure, Richard received summons from his past and announced he had to make a long trip ... to the Sahara desert in Africa. Instead of making alternative arrangements that could prove awkward to explain later, Richard decided to bring Stephen along and revealed during the trip that he was no mere engineer. Richard invited Stephen to meet Jack Hartford, the lead actor of The Caves of Gold, an action movie which Stephen was planning to watch on video the whole weekend. Knowing Jack Hartford was in Africa shooting The Deep, Dark Secret, Stephen accepted, thinking it was a joke. It was revealed that Richard had a secret past as an adventurer/mercenary. Jack Hartford was one of his old friends and needed his help. Richard was not one to say no, especially when a beautiful woman like Lorelei Blake was involved. During the journey, Richard passed a Kronom K-D2 watch to Stephen, telling him it was a very special computer-watch. Amidst an action movie set in the Sahara, Jack Hartford was accused of murdering Ian Stone, a stuntman. Richard was brought in to help clear Jack's name. Richard and Jack had previously worked together to capture a notorious bandit chief name Ali Ben Kir. As Richard refused to take credit and disappeared, Jack got the credit and was noticed by Hollywood film makers, who signed him as a star. Ian Stone did not take his fellow stuntman's rise to fame well. There was trouble between the star and the stuntman during the filming, and when Ian was killed, Jack became the prime suspect. To better investigate the case, the uncle-nephew duo agreed to be part of the cast to help complete filming the movie, with Richard replacing Jack in some scenes not involving close-ups. The chase became complicated when Jack was kidnapped and brought to an old tomb which served as Ali Ben Kir's previous headquarters. The eponymous series title was due to the time limit the duo had to solve the case and be back before Stephen's parents discover they had been absent. ===== Set against the backdrop of the Second World War, The Years Between unfolds in the library/living room of an English country house. The man of the house, Colonel Michael Wentworth, MP, is presumed dead after his plane crashed into the sea on a flight to Europe in 1942. His wife Diana is persuaded to take over the Colonel's parliamentary seat, and she is supported in her endeavours by her neighbour Richard Llewellyn, a sympathetic farmer with whom she strikes up a romantic relationship. Llewellyn teaches the Wentworths' young son Robin how to fish, thus becoming his great friend. Three years later, as the war is about to come to an end, the Colonel returns. He has been playing a key role in organising the resistance movement in Occupied Europe, and his disappearance and death were staged by the authorities to provide convincing cover for his activities. The remainder of the play deals with the fallout of Michael's return on the various protagonists. ===== Set in pre-1997, before the return of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China, the film opens with brothers Archer, Tony and Tiger discussing a drug deal with Sam, a rival gang leader. Ma Jun, a serious criminal investigations detective (who has been reprimanded for frequently inflicting injury on suspects), along with his team, raids the nightclub for investigation, and winds up fighting against his partner, Wilson, who has been planted as a mole. The three brothers are later confronted by Sam and his gang, who are impatient over receiving the drugs from the brothers' native Vietnam, but they are kept at bay with violence and intimidation. The brothers later threaten the elder leaders of their gang, when they attempt to intervene. Tiger is later assigned to kill Sam in his car, but the plan fails when Wilson intervenes. While in hospital, Sam agrees to testify in court against the three brothers. On the night of their mother's birthday, the brothers plan to recover their drug money, but as they are doing so, Archer is arrested by Hong Kong police, while Tony and Tiger discover that Wilson is a mole and attempt to get rid of him. While in court, Archer is forced to turn in all of his travel documents, which will prevent him from fleeing Hong Kong before his hearing. Tiger and Tony brutally murder Sam along with several other witnesses and crime figures crucial to the police investigation. They attempt again to kill Wilson, delivering a bomb which kills inspector Wong and injures Wilson's pregnant girlfriend, Judy, but fails to harm Wilson. Tony and Tiger then disguise themselves as janitors to sneak into the hospital where he is being protected by the police. Ma and Tiger both end up in the same elevator and Tiger attempts to kill Wilson with a silenced pistol once he appears, but Ma is aware of him and at the last moment engages him in a fierce struggle. After being disarmed, Tiger attempts to escape, but Ma gives chase until he corners him at an outdoor restaurant. Tiger uses a little girl as a hostage and then severely injures her by throwing her through the air onto the concrete. Ma furiously engages him in combat and beats him to death in front of the crowd. Tony, having kidnapped Judy from the hospital, threatens to kill her if Wilson, now a sole witness, testifies in court. During the court hearing, Wilson refuses to testify, and the case is dismissed for lack of evidence. Wilson later attempts to rescue Judy, but is captured by Tony and his gang. Once Archer walks free, Ma captures him and calls Tony for an exchange of hostages, leading to a confrontation in an abandoned village. Ma rescues Wilson and Judy, then singlehandedly takes on the remaining gangsters, killing most of them with his revolver and a commandeered sniper rifle. Wilson returns to assist him and helps to subdue Archer. Ma corners Tony and, having exhausted his ammunition, engages him in a gruelling hand-to-hand fight, eventually strangling him to unconsciousness in order to finally arrest him. ===== The story begins with Kunjidhapadam (Aravindhan), who comes from a small place to the city for an interview. He manages to find place to stay with his distant relative Subramanyam, who is actually a defaulter on loans taken on interest. He is absconding but then leaves his key at a secret place. Kunjidhapadam takes the key and stays, and he also manages to get a job. On the other hand, Angel (Charmy Kaur) grows as an orphan and works with a mineral water company. She does not have a place to stay so she locates those houses without occupants, stays there for a night, and gets going in the morning. One such instance gets her to Kunjidhapadam's house. All this apart, there are two dons Pavadai (Kota Srinivasa Rao) and Vembuli (Jayaprakash), who are out to kill each other. Vembuli is successful in killing Pavadai's son. Pavadai vows to kill Vembuli's son by the 12th day ceremony of his son. A twist of fate occurs, and Pavadai's goons mistake Kunjidhapadam to be Subrahmanyam and get him to take money. Kunjidhapadam gives an idea to kill Vembuli's son and is given a 16-day deadline to do so; else, Pavadai threatens to kill him. Vembuli comes to know of this and tries to kill Kunjidhapadam, but he comes alive. After that, Kunjidhapadam again meets Angel and tries to get money from her to give it back to Pavadai, which Subramanyam has to give. At that time, Pavadai realizes and confirms that Kunjidhapadam has to kill Vembuli's son. On the way back, he meets the opposite gangsters and tries to escape from them. The gangsters get his files, which contain his degree certificate. After that, he meets Angel and returns her money, which Pavadai returned with double of the amount and a gun. He meets Angel, and both plan to stay in actor Vadivelu's house. After that, both Kunjithapadam and Angel follow a man working under Vembuli and go inside a restaurant, where Kunjithapadam manages to get information about Vembuli's son, who is hidden in a moving airbus with many securities. Kunjithapadam is in search of the bus and finds it. After that, he tries to stop the bus and wants to talk with Vembuli's son. He tells him about all the things that happened with Pavadai and asks him to give him a job with security from Pavadai. However, they ordered not to face each other again, or else he will be killed. Soon after, Kunjithapadam and Angel go to a minister's house to stay at night. They get caught in the morning, but the manage to escape from the minister's gang. A police officer tries to escape them. He brings both of them to the station and mistakenly makes them get married. The police officer brought them to his house because their marriage is the 100th marriage done in the police station. The first night in the house has been arranged. At that time, both Angel and Kunjidhapadam become closer and fall in love. The next day, Kunjithapadam tries to see Vembuli's son, who is in a small boat. Some of Vembuli's henchmen were playing in the beach and throw Kunjithapadam son into the sea. Kunjithapadam manages to swim and reach the boat, also asking for his degree certificate. Vembuli's henchmen tore all the certificates, and one of the henchmen asks him to send Angel to him for prostitution. Kunjidhapadam got angry kills Vembuli's son and brings his body in a small boat to the beach where all gangsters were playing and kills all of Vembuli's henchmen. After that, he brings the body to Vembuli's house. He then kidnaps Vembuli and Pavadai, keeps both of them tied to a rock area, and murders them. Kunjithapadam again joins with Angel and starts back to Hyderabad. The film ends with them both getting on in a train for a brighter future and a happy life. ===== As described in a film magazine, ex-jailbird and derelict Steve Packard (Carey) is in the South Seas when he receives word of the death of his father and instruction to return and assume charge of the ranch left to him. On his arrival he learns that his grandfather has designs on the ranch. In his scheme to obtain it, the grandfather is abetted by Joe Blenham (Le Moyne), the foreman on Steve's ranch. Steve discovers Joe is double-crossing him when the latter attempts to rob Steve of some money. After a realistic Western rough and tumble fight, Steve leaves the ranch to return to the elder Packard. In his courtship of Terry Temple (Rich), who lives on a neighboring ranch, Steve is handicapped by his reputation from his past. She asks him to allow her to graze her cattle on some extra land he has obtained belonging to the elder Packard, in a transaction Steve believes to be perfectly legitimate. When the elder Packard learns of the grazing, he plans to stampede the cattle over a precipice. Steve and Terry go to a perilous position in front of the herd in an attempt to head them off. Steve proves he is a real man by saving Terry and her cattle. When the elder Packard learns that Steve really believed the land was his, the scheming of Joe comes to light. In a fist fight at the edge of a cliff, Steve throws Joe over the precipice. Steve and his grandfather are reconciled, and the courtship with Terry is now smooth sailing. ===== Aaron (Walthall) wishes to make Harry's land and girl his own. To do this, he sends Harry to Mexico with false papers for some horses. Harry gets arrested in Mexico, but soon escapes and returns home, where he is also arrested. Before he can be lynched, a Mexican girl brings the Texas Rangers to rescue him. ===== The film is about a Jewish man named Marty Shalom Weinstein (Fiore) who falls in love with a wrestling princess Sandy and it's a "no holds barred" quest for her love, the Jewish man finds he has to fight for his love as Sandy's dad is also a wrestler who only wants his daughter to marry a famous wrestler, and not a Jewish man with little money and no muscles. Robert also has to deal with Roxanne (Laurer) and Jennie (Marshall) along with others out to get him. ===== The novel primarily explores the consequences of Captain Jean-Luc Picard's possession of—and near-possession by—a legendary object of power. ===== The story of Palak, Pranjal and Daksh. Palak is the only daughter of separated parents, is brought up in London and comes to Mumbai to spend some time with her grandmother. She gets admission in Mumbai’s prestigious Princeton College where she meets Pranjal and they fall in love. To fulfill their only daughter’s dream, Palak’s parents decided to engage Palak with Pranjal. Till Daksh comes by. Daksh is Pranjal’s twin brother who is the back sheep of the family and obsessed with Palak. Daksh tries everything in his capacity to try and woo Palak but to no avail. Which is why grudgingly he gives up, and accepts Palak and Pranjal’s love. However, with the possibility of love to grow between Daksh and Palak a hard truth is revealed that Pranjal is alive. Not only is Palak's First true love alive he is also planning revenge on the newlyweds as he believes that Palak was unfaithful. ===== Beginning in February 1303, Corso broke with the other Black Guelphs and joined the Cavalcanti, a family of White Guelphs, in calling for the examination of the finances of his former allies. This led to a new eruption of fighting in which forces from Lucca temporarily controlled Florence. Donati was one of twelve prominent Florentine citizens summoned by Pope Benedict XI in 1304 in an attempt to bring peace to the city; the White Guelphs and some Ghibellines were restored, although the Ghibellines were expelled again in 1306. In 1308 Corso was accused of plotting to overthrow the Florentine commune and take power as lord of the city with the aid of his father-in-law Uguccione della Faggiuola, a Ghibelline, and was condemned as a rebel and a traitor; he died on October 6, 1308 while attempting to flee the city after having been besieged in his house by an angry mob.. English translation by Hugo Albert Rennert, Dunne, 1901. Chapter V.Nuova Cronica VIII. See especially section 8: “How the great man of the people, Giano della Bella, was driven out of Florence,” and section 96: “How Corso Donati, the Great and Noble Citizen of Florence, Died.”Catholic Encyclopedia: Florence.. ===== The novel begins in the 1890s with the Rogers family farming in Missouri. Though they are poor, Marie is unaware of this and enjoys her childhood for the most part. She does suffer physical abuse at the hands of her mother who believes that Marie lies. Marie's parents’ marriage is not a happy one; Marie's father wishes to make more money by leaving the farm and moves the reluctant family in order to obtain work cutting wood. The family bounces back and forth between John Rogers's temporary jobs and life on the farm. Marie's Aunt Helen comes to live with the family and works doing laundry for wealthy women. As a working woman, she is respected on the same level as John Rogers. Marie attends school regularly and becomes one of the smartest in her class. When she attends the birthday party of one of the wealthier students, Marie is made aware of class difference. She sees that not everyone lives as she does, and she is humiliated. When John discovers Aunt Helen is working as a prostitute he kicks her out of the house. Elly and Marie are left to support the family when John leaves them again. Marie begins stealing to keep the family fed and clothed. John Rogers returns and the family moves to a mining camp. Annie, Marie's older sister, marries at the age of sixteen. Her husband is the former beau of Aunt Helen. Annie dies only a few years after this. Jim, one of the men who works for John, proposes marriage to Marie and she accepts. Marie is fifteen. John and Elly explain the implications of marriage to Marie, and she breaks off the engagement. Due to financial troubles, the family continues to move for work. As a teenager, Marie becomes a teacher and moves to New Mexico. A pen pal relationship begins between Marie and Robert Hampton. Marie admires him for his education and the success middle-class status affords him. Marie leaves her second teaching job when she discovers her mother is deathly ill and goes home to be with her as she dies. As a traveling subscription saleswoman, Marie discovers her father and siblings living in squalor. She spends what money she has feeding and clothing the children and leaves. Marie ends up in New Mexico with no money. While starving to death in a hotel, she learns two men have raped a woman they mistook for Marie, believing Marie to be a prostitute. The bartender, one of the rapists, nurses Marie back to health. When he finds out that she is a virgin and not a prostitute, he proposes marriage. Marie is extremely offended and leaves town. She reunites with Big Buck, a man who used to work in the mining camps for her father. He takes care of her while she recuperates and offers to pay for her to go to school for six months. He also proposes marriage, which Marie turns down. While in school in Arizona, Marie meets Karin and Knut Larson. The siblings fascinate Marie because they are well educated. Marie becomes romantically involved with Knut. Knut and Karin decide to move to San Francisco. Marie receives a letter from her brother George stating that their father has sent them to work as farmhands for an abusive man. Marie is torn between helping her family and pursuing her education. She sends George what money she has and leaves for San Francisco. Marie and Knut get married with the understanding that it will be an equal partnership. She is introduced to socialism through friends of Karin. Marie becomes pregnant and has an abortion. Beatrice, her younger sister, moves to live with her. Marie recognizes how hard life has been for her younger siblings. Marie becomes pregnant and once again has an abortion. While on the ride home, Knut instructs Marie to sit up so as not to cause a scene. Marie cannot accept Knut's orders as a husband to his wife. This is the final straw, and their marriage ends. While at school, Marie meets an Indian who introduces her to the Indian independence movement. She is asked to leave school because of her liberal activities. On her way to New York, Marie stops to meet her old pen pal, Robert Hampton, and is disappointed by his appearance and strong Christian beliefs. He attempts to convert her to Christianity. Once in New York, Marie lives with Karin and works as a stenographer for The Graphic. Marie becomes increasingly involved in the socialist movement, though she feels little emotional connection to the cause. She receives a letter from George requesting financial help. He is in jail for stealing a horse. Marie responds with a hateful letter and money. Not too long after, she receives a telegram from Dan informing her that George, who was released from jail because of his young age, has died in a ditch cave in. Marie is guilt ridden. Struggling financially, Dan decides to join the military and fight in World War I. Marie worries about him constantly. Marie, still working vigorously as a journalist for The Call and attending school, meets an Indian named Sardar Ranjit Singh. Through him she becomes involved in the Indian independence movement. Talvar Singh, an Indian, asks her to hide a list of addresses for him. Juan Diaz, another member of the movement, breaks into Marie's apartment. When she arrives home, he interrogates her about Talvar Singh's whereabouts. Marie claims ignorance. Juan Diaz makes sexual advances and rapes Marie. Marie attempts suicide and is hospitalized. After returning home, she is arrested and interrogated about her involvement with the Indian independence movement. When Marie refuses to cooperate she is imprisoned. After her release, she meets Anand Manvekar. The two fall in love and are soon married. Marie finds happiness in this marriage, but soon Anand's jealousy about Marie's sexual past becomes an issue. Marie's marriage and work with the movement are destroyed when Juan Diaz announces to a comrade that he and Marie engaged in sexual intercourse. At the end of the book Marie has begged Anand to leave her because they will never be happy again, and she will only hold him back from his work. Marie sits alone in their apartment, her marriage and life work destroyed. ===== Headstrong and resourceful, Shin Na-ra once dreamed of becoming a career woman, but she spent the best years of her life supporting Kang Seung-woo, her boyfriend of seven years. Now he is a successful accountant and she is unemployed and rapidly approaching thirty. Na-ra hopes to marry Seung-woo, but after he returns from a business trip, he unexpectedly breaks up with her on their anniversary, telling her that not only did he have an affair, but he fell in love with the other woman, a cosmetics manager named Cha Mi-rae. To drown her sorrows, Na-ra drinks a large amount of alcohol and unknowingly drops the ring Seung-woo once gave her into a shot glass of soju. A stranger, Na In-jae, drinks the shot without seeing the ring and both of them end up in the hospital. Later, Na-ra decides to confront the woman who stole her boyfriend, but while at Mi-rae's cosmetics company, a job ad catches her eye. With nothing to lose, Na-ra fakes being her 20-year-old sister Na-kyung, a high school graduate, and starts working as a sales clerk at the company. Just her luck, Na-ra's co-worker is In-jae, who turns out to also be in love with Mi-rae. The two constantly clash at work, with Na-ra finding In-jae immature and spoiled. But what she doesn't know is that In-jae is actually the son of the company's vice president who was forced by his mother to learn the ropes by starting from the bottom. ===== Gilbert Selwyn's mother has remarried once more—this time to a successful but aging Hollywood producer. Gilbert, ever the schemer, lifted a few plot points from Casablanca (i.e., plagiarized the entire film and put a new title on it) and convinced his new stepfather to promote the script to actor Stephen Donato's producer. Gilbert convinces his friends, Philip Cavanaugh and Claire Simmons, to move to Hollywood to help him rewrite the script. They quickly uncover his deception. But since Gilbert told the studio executives that the script was mostly Philip and Claire's, they must help rewrite the screenplay or else find any chance of a career ruined. Claire refuses to go along with the stunt, but Gilbert offers her the chance of a lifetime: Gilbert's agent, having heard of their success selling a screenplay, has offered the trio a chance to write actress Diana Malenfant's new film. The movie will be the first time Diana and her son, Stephen Donato, have acted together on screen since Stephen was 10, and it may prove the jump-start to Diana's career which she's been searching for. Gilbert is able to wrangle an appointment with Diana Malenfant, who is not particularly interested. But Lily, her drunken and estranged sister, is writing a tell-all book. Philip convinces Diana and Stephen that he has a job assisting Lily with her memoirs, and that he could find out what Lily intends to say in her book. Shrewdly, Diana agrees to hire Gilbert, Philip and Claire to write her new film while Philip spies on Lily. Stephen, who is gay, soon makes a secret rendezvous with Philip. He's worried that Aunt Lily might attempt to out him in her book. Stephen convinces Philip that he should not only spy on Lily but actually sabotage the book. Philip agrees. Lily's older brother, former child actor Monty Malenfant (and an openly gay man), is suspicious of Philip but goes along to keep Lily happy. As if events were not complicated enough, Moira Finch suddenly shows up at Gilbert, Philip and Claire's home. She has heard about their deal with Diana Malenfant, and threatens to expose them as frauds. But Moira offers the three a deal: Moira has recently opened a ritzy Hollywood spa, but is lacking clients and cachet. Get Stephen Donato to show up for a free weekend at her spa, and Moira will forget all about how "Casablanca" happened to be sold (again) to one of Hollywood's biggest producers. Philip soon finds that Monty is on to him. Monty confirms that Stephen is indeed a homosexual, which thrills Philip and leads to numerous fantasies. But Monty also threatens to expose Philip to Diana. Monty offers him a deal: Philip helps Lily turn her book into a best- seller, and nothing will be said to Diana. Now Claire, Philip and Gilbert are caught in a bind. How do they help Lily while also ruining any chance her book might have? And what of Moira? Claire begins to suspect that her spa isn't quite what it seems, for Moira has far too much money and too many friends. The trio quickly get caught in a downward spiral of sex, closeted movie stars, hustlers, blackmail, secret videotape, a homophobic district attorney, a cute bartender, false fire alarms, car theft, impersonating a police officer, a sleazy public-access television host and a "night with Oscar" that has nothing to do with the Academy Awards. ===== On a stormy night, Sonic and Tails set out in Tails' biplane, the Tornado, after it detects a powerful energy signal. During their flight, the Tornado is struck by lightning and gets sucked into a tornado, knocking Sonic and Tails out. They awaken on a remote island and meet the energetic raccoon Marine, who longs to be a sailor. Sonic sets off to explore the island for shipbuilding materials, as Tails starts to work on Marine's ship. Sonic returns and discovers the smaller, faster waterbike that Tails and Marine have made. While exploring the surrounding islands to test the waterbike, they soon encounter a band of pirates led by the robotic Captain Whisker, who are after an ancient artifact known as the Jeweled Scepter. As Sonic attempts to stop Whisker from retrieving the Scepter, Blaze suddenly appears; she reveals to them that they have accidentally traveled to her dimension during the storm, and that she has been attempting to stop the pirates for some time. Whisker manages to escape with the Scepter, so Blaze and Sonic agree to work together and retrieve it. After searching, the group locates the pirates' hidden fortress and confront Captain Whisker and his first mate, Johnny. As the two are defeated, they attempt to escape to return the scepter to Doctor Eggman (their true leader), while Marine goes after them on her own. However, the pirates overpower her and take her hostage on their ship. Giving chase, Sonic and Blaze attack and defeat Whisker's strongest robot, the Ghost Titan, causing an explosion that sinks the ship. In the aftermath, Marine reveals she took back the Jeweled Scepter in the confusion, and Blaze returns the relic to its proper resting place. A furious Eggman takes matters into his own hands and steals the scepter. Upon discovering him, Eggman and his alternate-dimensional counterpart Eggman Nega, piloting a giant robot, begin their plot to turn Blaze's world into Eggmanland. Using the Chaos and Sol Emeralds, Sonic and Blaze transform into Super Sonic and Burning Blaze respectively, and battle the doctors. Over the protests of Eggman, Eggman Nega tries to destroy Blaze's planet as a last resort, but he is distracted by Marine, giving Sonic and Blaze an opening to defeat them, destroying the mech. Tails builds a craft that uses the power of both sets of Emeralds, as Sonic and Blaze promise to one day meet again. As Sonic and Tails set sail, Marine appears on her new boat, thanking Sonic and Tails and promising she will study to become a captain. The three say their final goodbyes as Sonic and Tails fly off for home. ===== The novel is framed as the reminiscence of an unnamed female character ("now she sits alone and remembers"), presumably Harriet Winslow. An elderly American writer and former journalist for the Hearst media empire, who can be shown to be but is not named until page 192 as Ambrose Bierce, decides to leave his old life behind and seek a glorious death in the midst of the Mexican revolution, taking with him only slight provisions and copies of two of his own works, as well as a copy of Don Quixote. A widower whose two sons are both dead (at least one from suicide) and whose daughter refuses to speak to him, this unnamed old man seeks out part of the Army of the North under Pancho Villa. This particular group, led by "General" Tomas Arroyo, has just liberated a massive land holding hacienda from the wealthy Miranda family, killing the family's remaining servants and destroying much of the hacienda itself (apart from the dance hall with many mirrors, which Arroyo has symbolically kept in order to allow his army, composed of commoners, to see their reflections). Arroyo is mestizo, the product of the rape of his mother by his Miranda father, and carries Spanish papers (which he himself cannot read) granting land to the natives of Mexico as a symbolic justification for the Revolution. The elderly American persuades Arroyo to let him join Arroyo's force by successfully shooting a hole through a tossed silver peso; since the American states that he was in the Indiana Volunteers, his Mexican allies refer to him as "Indiana General." At that same hacienda, the old man meets Harriet Winslow, a 31-year-old woman from Washington D.C. hired to tutor the young Miranda children. Winslow has left Washington after her older "beau," an army official named Delaney, has become involved in an army financial scandal. However, by the time she arrived there, they had long since fled with their parents from Arroyo's army (it is speculated that Winslow was hired merely as a smokescreen for the flight of the Mirandas). Winslow refuses to leave the hacienda, insisting that she has been paid and will wait for the family's return. At first, she refuses to call Arroyo "General" (insisting that he has merely given himself the title), and has a patronizing view about the revolutionary army and the Mexican people, saying, > "What these people need is education, not rifles. A good scrubbing, followed > by a few lessons on how we do things in the United States, and you'd see an > end to this chaos." "You're going to civilize them?" the old man asked > dryly. "Precisely." Fuentes, Carlos, The Old Gringo, p.41, translated by > Peden, Margaret Sayers. Farrar Straus Giroux, New York, 1985, Winslow is committed into the care of the elderly American, who subsequently falls in love with her. The elderly American displays considerable courage under fire, risking what seems like obvious death (to indulge his desire to die) only to perform heroic feats and survive. However, his refusal to obey Arroyo's order to shoot a captured federal soldier (choosing instead to shoot one of the pigs eating corpses on the battlefield) means Arroyo could have him executed. Although Arroyo instead executes the captured officer himself, he parlays his control over the "Indiana General's" life into a sexual relationship with Winslow. Although Winslow is coerced and the novel indicates that she "never forgave [Arroyo]" for actions surrounding the sexual activities (forcing her to admit she enjoyed it, and refusing to ejaculate in her mouth), it is implied that Winslow also desired Arroyo sexually. Arroyo's partner, a woman referred to as "La Luna" whom the Revolution has liberated from an abusive landowning husband, accepts his infidelity as necessary. The elderly American finds Winslow's sacrifice ironic, stating that she has not, in fact, saved him, since he came to Mexico to die. As the novel progresses, Winslow begins to learn to accept the truth of her past: contrary to her father's supposed death in the Spanish–American War in Cuba, he in fact deserted to live with another woman there. Although her attempts to rebuild and restore the hacienda are largely ignored, she also begins to appreciate the Mexican culture she finds around her. By the close of the novel, she returns to America, but refuses to testify in front of Congress as part of a journalistic campaign to encourage the U.S. to "civilize" Mexico, and decides that instead of attempting to change Mexico, as she had wanted to earlier, she wants "to learn to live with Mexico".Fuentes, Carlos, The Old Gringo, p.187, translated by Peden, Margaret Sayers. Farrar Straus Giroux, New York, 1985, The novel climaxes with the deaths of both the old man and General Arroyo. When the 'old gringo' burns the historical land-granting documents, Arroyo responds by fatally shooting him in the back. Later, after Winslow presses for the return of the American's body falsely claiming it is her father (so that he may be buried at Arlington), Pancho Villa faces criticism for an alleged cold-blooded murder of an American by his troops. Villa has the American's body "executed" by firing squad, encouraging Arroyo to give the "coup de grace" to the dead body. As he approaches to do so, Villa orders the firing squad to shoot Arroyo as a means of preventing any further American response. Like many of Fuentes' works, The Old Gringo explores the way in which revolutionary ideals become corrupted, as Arroyo chooses to pursue the deed to an estate where he once worked as a servant rather than follow the true goals of the revolution. However, as Arroyo had stated to Winslow and the elderly American that he feared the Revolution's success would cause him to become dictatorial in part of an endless cycle of repression and rebellion, and that therefore he hoped to die young, his death as a revolutionary (shouting "Viva Villa!") can be, and is seen by Winslow as, a triumph. ===== A rich young widowed Gina Lollobrigida as Anna, leaves New York and searches for a husband in the village in Italy she was born in. ===== The story shows the lives of various people from different parts of society who on one particular day, stroll through the park. ===== The film centres on two young soldiers in World War I who are about to go into battle. Both have comforting reminders of home. One of the men is an infantryman who clutches a photograph of his lover. The other a pilot who carefully tucks a teddy bear into a safe place in the cockpit of his biplane. The pilot takes off, headed for the airspace above the trenches where the other soldier waits for the whistle signalling an attack. The whistle sounds and the soldier tucks his photograph into his pocket and charges forward across the battlefield and dives into a foxhole. When he gets there he is horrified to discover he has dropped his photograph. He spots it lying on the battlefield nearby and begins crawling over to retrieve it. However every time he gets close the wind blows it further away. Meanwhile, above him, the pilot is now involved in a dogfight with a German triplane while simultaneously struggling to keep control of his bear which keeps coming loose from its safe place in his cockpit. Eventually the bear falls out of his cockpit and becomes caught on the tail section of his plane. Below on the ground, the infantryman has caught up with his photograph, but he doesn't realise he has wandered into the sights of a German sniper. Just as the sniper is about to fire, the view through his rifle scope is blocked by an object. It is the pilot's bear, which has fallen from the plane. In the time it takes the sniper to knock the bear away, the infantryman has disappeared. In his sights, in the place where the infantryman formerly stood, there is now a tank whose gun is aimed directly at him. The tank fires and the sniper is killed. ===== In fictional Clear River, Nebraska in 1946, 10-year-old Addie Mills is a lonely child behind her large horn-rimmed glasses, living in a plain, ordinary house with her widowed father James and her loving grandmother. Her mother had died shortly after she was born, and her embittered father wonders why his beloved wife had to die rather than their tiny and sickly baby. Her first name is taken from her father's middle name, but his only interaction with Addie seems to be in frequent corrections of her. There has never been a Christmas tree in the Mills home since his wife's death, although Addie constantly challenges this omission. Finally, Addie wins her class Christmas tree in a school contest — won using a guessing technique learned from her father — and brings it home for her first Christmas with a tree. James promptly orders the tree to be removed. His mother speaks up, reminding him that the house belongs to her; he responds by threatening to take Addie and clear out, leaving her alone in the house. In the middle of the night Addie sneaks out, removes the tree and delivers it to the only other one of her classmates who also goes treeless at Christmas (and who lost to Addie in the contest): because their family is too large and poor to afford one, they would be thrilled to finally have a tree. At last James realizes just how selfish and emotionally distant he has been towards his daughter, rethinks his position and comes home with a tree and several boxes of ornaments — except a star. James goes up to the attic and brings down just such a star as he had not brought home, much more magnificently-made than the one Addie had made for her prize tree, out of tinfoil that "everybody" saved and collected back in his day, such as from chewing-gum wrappers. When Addie admires the star her father reveals that her mother crafted it especially for her much-longed-for first baby's first Christmas. Then he lifts Addie up and they place her star on the tree. Finally, it seems that the father-daughter relationship is blossoming. An adult Addie narrates that her dear grandmother has died and she has moved to the big city, but returns every year for Christmas with her father, who always has a Christmas tree ready for her to hang her star on. ===== Ingolf Vogeler, a mercenary from the Republic of Richland arrives in Mackenzie lands in the Willamette River region of Oregon. He is being stalked by soldiers from the Church Universal and Triumphant (known as Cutters), which is located in Paradise Valley, Montana, and controls parts of Montana and Wyoming. Ingolf arrives in a tavern run by Tom Brannigan, and during the night, is attacked by these soldiers. As he is attacked, Rudi Mackenzie, Mathilda Arminger, Odard Liu, and the twins Ritva and Mary Havel join the fray. Odard and Rudi kill several assassins until Rudi shouts to take one alive. The assassins realize they can't escape and commit suicide before the party can react. Odard and Rudi break the door that Ingolf is hidden behind, and take him to a hospital. Ingolf is saved, and he relates his tale to the Mackenzies. It turns out that he had traveled to Nantucket with his mercenary company during an expedition to collect pre-Change relics. Along with two mercenary scouts (Kaur and Singh) and Kuttner, a guard of the bossman of Iowa travelling with the company, Ingolf saw a vision that told him to: Travel from sunrise to the sunset, and seek the Son of the Bear Who Rules. The Sword of the Lady waits for him. The party traveled back to the mainland to hook up with the remainder of the mercenaries, but they were all found dead somewhere in Illinois. Ingolf led the party west, but they are stopped by Cutter forces. The party is then betrayed by the guard, Kuttner, who turns out to be a Cutter officer. While fleeing, Kaur is wounded, and she and her brother dismount and turn to hold off the Cutters while Ingolf flees. Kaur and Singh make Ingolf swear to avenge them. Ingolf is able to escape the Cutter forces due to the sacrifice of the scouts, however he is later captured and taken to the C.U.T capitol, but manages to escape later on. Ingolf then arrived at Mackenzie territory and tells Juniper and Rudi Mackenzie his story. Both interpret the vision to mean that Rudi, who was prophesied to be the Sword of the Lady, has to go east to Nantucket. After a brief debate, Rudi, Ingolf, Mary, Ritva, and Edain Aylward, set off for Nantucket. As they travel, they split up, and meet back up at the house of John Brown, an important member of the Central Oregon Ranchers Association and ally of the Mackenzies. In the meantime Mathilda, Odard, as well as Odard's servant Alex, and the monk Father Ignatius, have joined the party, fleeing Protectorate territory and avoiding being brought back by Regent Arminger's men-at-arms. The party travels further east saving a group of Mormons from Rovers, nomadic brigands of southeastern Oregon. They learn that the Church Universal and Triumphant are at war with the Mormon state of New Deseret and are on the verge of defeating them. Later the party runs into a Cutter army in southern Idaho. They warn President Thurston, leader of the United States of "Boise", who defeats the force with his personal soldiers while Rudi and Edain save him from an assassination attempt by his own guards. The party travels to Boise to figure out why the Church wants Thurston dead, while Boise prepares for war against the Church. Taking the army of Boise south, Thurston meets with a demoralized Deseret army and agree to fight together against Cutter forces besieging the Deseret city of Twin Falls. During the combat, President Thurston is assassinated by his son, Martin Thurston, who is allied with the Cutters in an effort to make himself the dictator of Boise. Rudi and Thurston's younger son witness this and flee, warning the rest of the party. The party splits up to avoid being captured by the Cutters, traveling east and planning to meet up at a rally point. Mathilda, Odard, and Alex are cornered in a rocky ravine when Odard's horse is killed and Odard becomes injured. He and Mathilda turn to make a last stand, but Alex, under orders from Odard's mother to protect him at all costs, betrays them to the Cutters, and the trio are captured. Edain, Father Ignatius, Thurston's youngest son, Mary, and Ritva arrive at the rendezvous point but flee because of advancing Cutters. They encounter Boise forces and are taken in a pedal-powered airship to save Rudi from pursuing Cutter forces. In the meantime, Ingolf is captured by the Cutters, who are led by Kuttner, who mysteriously forces Ingolf to drop his machete and takes him prisoner. Meanwhile, the forces of the C.U.T. succeed in breaching the walls of Twin Falls, capturing the city and on the orders of their leader the Prophet Sethaz, massacres the entire population. ===== Tōru and Noburo are brothers of the Takagami Family who have just returned to their late mother's hometown of Mitsukawa. Toru has Yin in his blood and is constantly targeted by the yōkai and other creatures lurking in Japan. When Tōru is targeted by one, his brother Noburo releases the fox deity Kūgen Tenko who protects Tōru from the monster. Kūgen now acts as the protector of Tōru and Noburo to keep them safe from any threats to them, while at the same time trying to adapt to the modern world. ===== Trot tells the story of Lorois, a knight at the court of King Arthur. He lives in the castle of Morois, which can be identified with Moray in Scotland. One day, he leaves the castle to go deep into the forest, where he hopes to hear the song of the nightingale. There, he sees eighty beautiful young women and their lovers, elegantly dressed and riding leisurely through the forest. They are soon followed by another eighty women, their lovers, and their horses, talking and laughing. The third group of women, however, numbers one hundred. These women are alone, haggard, shabbily dressed, and "trotting" through the forest, sitting on saddles of straw. Lorois cannot be silent any more and must know the meaning of this procession. He talks to one of the unfortunate women who explains that the one hundred and sixty happy maidens were true in love and are being rewarded for "obeying love's commands." The one hundred miserable maidens never knew love and are now being punished. She tells Lorois to return to his castle and tell all the young women of their plight so that more do not make the same mistake. ===== In Batman Annual #26, Talia al Ghul takes her son Damian Wayne to the Australian Outback where he is tutored in the secret history of his grandfather, Ra's al Ghul. Talia is unaware that a former servant of Ra's, an albino named White Ghost, plans to use Damian as a shell for the soul of Ra's to return to Earth. Realizing that this process would kill Damian, Talia saves her son from his fate at the last minute. However the essence of Ra's is still able to return to our plane of existence as a living corpse, still needing Damian to stabilize his form. Damian runs to the Batcave to seek help from his father, Batman, but is met instead by Robin. When Damian pleads he doesn't want to fight and that Ra's has returned, Robin doesn't believe him and they fight, leading to Robin being knocked out and Damian running into Alfred in the manor, who believes Damian's story. Robin recovers and he and Damian continue to fight while outside Ra's League of Assassins ninjas surround and then infiltrate the manor. Meanwhile, in Asia, Batman manages to save Talia from being held captive by League ninjas and sets off after Ra's Al Ghul. As he does so, he radios Nightwing in New York, who uses Batman's Justice League teleport code to arrive at the Manor, taking out the Insect Girls - Tiger Moth, Dragonfly, and Silken Spider - who were hired by Talia to bring her Damian, and afterwards saves Alfred from being thrown out of a window and fights off many ninjas. Telling Alfred to prep a jet for travel to Asia, he heads into the Batcave to help Damian and Robin. During the battle, the ninjas tag the Insect Girls with poison darts and Nightwing is forced to give them an antidote at the expense of leaving Robin and Damian to be taken by the ninjas. He manages to save the three women, but the poison affects their brains, never to be fully functional again. Robin and Damian are taken to Ra's in Tibet, but then fight their way through ninjas. Damian leaves Robin alone with Ra's Al Ghul who knocks Robin out after offering him a chance to bring his parents back to life. Meanwhile, outside Lhasa, Batman and Talia are getting closer to Ra's only to run into more of his henchmen, defeating them with help from I-Ching. Nightwing and Alfred arrive in Lhasa where they are met by Ubu and more league ninjas, who are quickly defeated by the duo. Batman, Talia, and I-Ching ascend a Lhasian mountain where they find a secret entrance to Ra's's headquarters. On meeting, Ra's and Batman begin to fight, but since Ra's body is already dead, nothing hurts him. He then brings out Robin and Damian, offering Batman a choice on which one's body he should take. Batman offers his own body, but Ra's refuses, craving a younger one. Batman then offers to take Ra's to Nanda Parbat wherein lies the Fountain of Essence, much like the Lazarus Pit but with none of the dangerous after-effects. They travel there, but learn the temple is under attack by the Sensei, who is revealed as Ra's al Ghul's father, much to Batman's surprise. They manage to defeat his men, but when they fight him, Ra's is actually hurt by Sensei and he then engages Batman. The Sensei manages to break Batman's arm, blind him, and impale his chest with his cane, all in less than a minute. Batman, still determined, knocks Sensei into the Fountain of Life which kills him for not being a pure soul. The monks of Nanda Parbat check Ra's Al Ghul's body, but the spirit of Ra's possesses one monk's body and walks away. Batman, restored to full health and slightly de-aged after being soaked from the fountain, knows what Ra's has done and screams his name. Elsewhere, Robin is still haunted by Ra's offer to restore his loved ones to life. In the midst of a battle with Ra's ninja, Robin breaks off in pursuit of the White Ghost, deciding that it is selfish of him to deny his parents and friends another chance at life. The White Ghost tells Robin that he can restore them, but only if Tim swears his undying loyalty to Ra's Al Ghul and forsakes Batman. Robin agrees, and is sent to a chamber with a Lazarus Pit to be "reborn". There he is confronted by I-Ching, who decides not to stand in his way, then Nightwing, who swears to stop him. In Nanda Parbat, Ra's new body starts rapidly decaying like the last one. As a symbol of his rebirth, he offers Batman his friendship, but is refused. Ra's retaliates by deploying his men to overpower Batman and capture Damian, who has arrived to try to help his father. Meanwhile, Talia searches for Damian only to eventually realise he is now in Nanda Parbat and Robin chooses to attack Nightwing, who evades the assault and analyzes the situation. During and in-between attacks, Robin debates with his adopted brother, as even though he only intends to collect a sample of the Pit's properties, he seems willing to ignore the moral and long-term implications of utilising such a dangerous resource. I-Ching eventually mediates through a combination of words and violence to stop the fight, stating that Robin is seeking balance and can only achieve it by weighing his losses against what he already possesses. Nightwing allows Robin to collect the sample, hoping he is trusting his younger brother to make the right choice, which Robin does, discarding the sample and is consoled by Nightwing. The three find Talia and rendezvous with Alfred and the jet to fly to Nanda Parbat, where Ra's is about to claim Damian's body as his vessel at last. Batman intervenes to defend his son and the two begin to defend themselves when their reinforcements arrive in time. During the battle, the League lays waste to Nanda Parbat. Talia reacquires Damian when he chooses to assist Batman over escaping with her, knocking him out and escaping. The monks are saved but choose to seal themselves off totally from outsiders. Ra's life is finally preserved by White Ghost, actually his disowned son Dusan, who offers his "imperfect" body to finally win his father's respect. Dusan does not survive the body transfer and Ra's engages Batman in a duel. He is soundly defeated but the destruction of the temple and the intervention of the monks to banish Ra's from Nanda Parbat causes all parties to retreat. Aboard the jet with Dick, Tim and Alfred, Bruce ruminates on the value of family and chooses that as a celebratory toast when Alfred reminds him that it is Christmas. ===== As described in a film magazine, Robert McCarthy (Carey) beats his way on a passenger train to a mining camp located near an unexplored waste called the Canyon of the Fools. En route he discovers that his former sweetheart May (Clayton) is on the train, having promised to marry Jim Harper (Stanton) whom she is to meet at the camp. Bob is seen by Sheriff Maricopia Jim (Curtis) as he arrives at the camp. The Sheriff hires him as deputy on his promise to help run down the head of an outlaw gang that is operating in the canyon. Bob's one desire is to revenge himself on a man named Torrance who double-crossed him and had him unjustly convicted of a crime. Bob makes his presence known to May, who still loves him even though engaged to Jim. Together they go into the canyon. Bob discovers a secret mine being operated by a mysterious person named Polhill. The outlaws and their leader have long been seeking Polhill's treasure. It turns out Jim Harper is the leader of the bandits. He follows Bob into the mine entrance and stuns him with a blow from behind. Jim captures May and makes her a prisoner of Polhill's room above the mine, and then the gang seizes the gold. After several adventures Bob rescues May and is rewarded with her love and Polhill's gold. ===== Montez is the ruler of the tropical Temple Island. Thomas Gomez plays the villain, who schemes to marry her and get hold of the gold bars lining the submerged floor of the island's temple (about which the innocent islanders remain blissfully unconcerned). Jon Hall plays a heroic shark hunter who wins the day and the heart of the princess. ===== Nabaret tells the story of a knight named Nabaret who has an exceedingly beautiful and vain wife. His wife loves to dress in fine clothes and takes great care in her appearance. While Nabaret appreciates his wife's beauty, he mistrusts her because of her vanity; and he accuses her of making herself beautiful for another man. Nabaret talks to the woman's relatives and asks them to speak with her about her behavior. When they do, the woman simply retorts that her husband should "let his beard grow long / and have his whiskers braided" (vv. 38-39). The family members laugh at her answer and share it with others, from which the lai is composed. ===== "The Octopus," a masked crime lord, is bent on crippling America with a wave of terror. He demands tribute from railroad magnates and other captains of industry. Richard Wentworth (Warren Hull), an amateur criminologist who is friendly with the police and is secretly "The Spider," a masked vigilante, is equally determined to destroy the Octopus and his gang. Pleasant and smiling in civilian life, Wentworth is frequently ruthless as The Spider, using his two .45 semi-automatic pistols against any public enemies who attack him. The Spider uses a knotted rope to swing about similar to Marvel Comics Spider Man will years later. Wentworth also masquerades as affable underworld lowlife Blinky McQuade. Disguised as McQuade, Wentworth can infiltrate gangland as a hired gun or getaway-car driver and keep current on the mob's illegal activities. The only people who know Wentworth's various identities are his assistants Jackson (Richard Fiske) and Ram Singh (Kenne Duncan), his butler Jenkins (Don Douglas), and his fiancée Nita (Iris Meredith). The Octopus was a pulp villain written by Norvell Page, who also wrote most of The Spider pulp novels. He is garbed completely in white and is only ever seen by his henchmen while sitting in his throne-like chair. Unlike the pulps, where The Spider is dressed in an all black cape, mask, suit, and wide-brimmed fedora, in the serial he is garbed in a black suit and fedora, but with white web-like markings on his lightweight cape and full face mask. The serial follows the standard formula of fights, shoot-outs, Wentworth's friends being kidnapped at various times and needing to be rescued. Each chapter ends with The Spider or his friends in deep trouble, often about to be killed, but the effect is spoiled by a trailer for the next episode which follows, showing them rescued and continuing to fight the villains. The secret headquarters of The Octopus is found by The Spider in the final chapter; he has unwittingly given himself away to Wentworth and realizing this, Wentworth must now die; but as The Spider, Wentworth is triumphant in the end, unmasking The Octopus and ending his national reign of terror. During the serial The Spider (like Marvel Comics much later Spider- Man) uses his web line a number of times to get out of trouble. Commissioner Kirk (changed from Kirkpatrick in the pulps) suspects that Wentworth is The Spider during one chapter. The Octopus' gang, like their boss, wear robes when they gather together in his presence. The Octopus ruthlessly executes all who failed him; in case of trouble, The Octopus always uses a false arm and hand, which allowed him to conceal a pistol in his real hand hidden beneath his robes. ===== Amateur criminologist Richard Wentworth, formerly the masked vigilante, the Spider, brings his former alter ego out of retirement for 15 action-packed chapters to help his old friend, police commissioner Kirk (Kirkpatrick in the pulp novels), battle a dangerous, power-obsessed maniac called the Gargoyle. This mysterious crime lord and his henchmen threaten the world with acts of sabotage and wholesale murder in an effort to wreck the National security of the United States. ===== "Doon" begins with a beautiful heiress who lives near Daneborc (modern-day Edinburgh). She is very prideful and will not take a husband. All the men in the land try to woo her, but she refuses unless her suitor can travel from Southampton to Edinburgh in the span of one day. Most men who attempt this fail at the task. If they succeed, the lady invites them into her home where she asks them to sleep in a very soft bed. There, they die of exhaustion. In this way, she avoids marriage for a long time. One day, a noble knight named Doon from France attempts to win the hand of the lady. With his great horse Baiart, Doon makes it from Southampton to Edinburgh and is invited into the woman's castle. Rather than laying down, however, Doon stays up all night, realizing that he risks death by sleeping in the bed prepared for him. When the servants find him alive the next morning, they all rejoice; but the lady procrastinates by giving Doon a second quest. He must ride as far as a swan can fly. Doon agrees, and after he and his horse have rested, they start out from Edinburgh behind the swan. Doon easily completes this task and marries the heiress. After only four days of marriage, however, Doon leaves his wife behind to return to France. He reveals to her that she is already pregnant and gives her a ring for her to give to the child. She later gives birth to a son. When the son is grown, he goes to a tournament at the Mont Saint-Michel. Unknowingly, the son ends up jousting against the father, whom he defeats. At the end of the tournament, Doon goes to speak to the young man and asks to see his hands. He immediately recognizes the ring that he gave to his wife many years ago and explains who he is. Doon and his son return to Edinburgh to the lady, where they live together in happiness. ===== On 13 October 1939, reservists of the Finnish army are called up for active duty as the threat of Soviet invasion becomes likely. Martti and Paavo Hakala, two farmer brothers from Kauhava, Southern Ostrobothnia, join other men from the municipality in a half-platoon under the command of Second Lieutenant Jussi Kantola. After mustering at the local school, the men ride the train to Seinäjoki to join the rest of the Finnish Army's 23rd Regiment, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Matti Laurila. After weeks of practice, the regiment goes to the Karelian Isthmus, where Kantola's men help civilians evacuate their village in the potential war zone. Laurila gives a speech to the regiment before marching to the Taipale River, where Kantola's men help in building defenses in preparation for the anticipated Soviet attack. On 6 December, the Battle of Taipale begins on Finnish Independence Day, and the Finns are shelled by Soviet artillery advancing to the frontline. The Red Army gathers outside the Finnish trenches, and the next day the Finns are strafed by the Soviet Air Force as the Red Army launches a human wave attack with T-26s, but hold them back. Paavo is wounded and sent home, where he attends the funeral of four Kauhava men killed in the attack. Paavo recovers and returns to the front, but is soon killed in a direct hit from Soviet artillery in front of Martti. Several times, the Soviets attack and enter the Finnish trenches, but the Finns manage to push them back. Kantola is ordered to retake a casemate captured by the Soviets when he left it unattended, with the Finns driving out the Soviets but suffering high casualties in the assault and destroying the casemate. On 27 December, the Soviets halt their attack on the Taipale front and Kantola's men go to Yläjärvi for rest and recuperation, and Martti manages to get home leave. When Martti returns, the unit goes to Vuosalmi near the village of Äyräpää to prevent the Soviets from crossing the Vuoksi River. The Finns try to fend off Soviet human wave attacks but are overwhelmed and Martti is almost killed when a Soviet soldier buttstrokes him, forcing the Finns to retreat. On 5 March, Martti, Kantola and the surviving Finns cover a counterattack by the men of Nurmo, but a delay allows the Soviets to get into an advantaged position. The Finns face more human wave attacks and are overwhelmed by the mass of Soviet soldiers. On the morning of 13 March, the Finns are almost overrun when the fighting stops at eleven o’clock as the Moscow Peace Treaty takes effect. ===== Everyone takes advantage of Ramiro de la Mata (Fernando Soler), a funny drunkard and rich widower. His daughter Virginia (Rosario Granados), and his son Eduardo (Gustavo Rojo), as well as his lazy brother Ladislao (Andrés Soler), and his sister in law Milagros (Maruja Grifell), all do nothing while living at Ramiro's expense. Gregorio (Francisco Jambrina), his other brother tries to help him by making everyone believe that Ramiro is financially ruined, forcing the family to look for jobs of their own. ===== A group of ten disparate people, strangers to each other, have all been summoned by a mysterious host named Mr. Owen to travel to Africa and join him on a safari he is hosting. After arriving by train, they meet Philip Lombard who guides the entourage with the aid of local natives through the jungle. They are joined by Marston who makes a spectacular entrance as a flying ace. Things turn ominous from the beginning, however. First their native guides abandon them, then more natives cut a bridge line across a deep ravine (their only way in and out of camp). As a result, the eight guests, plus a married couple, the Rodgers, who arrived earlier, find themselves isolated in their hunting camp. In addition, their host, Mr. Owen, is strangely absent. Following their dinner, by means of a gramophone recording, an inhuman voice accuses each person of a murder that they each had caused and escaped justice. Events go from being unsettling to deadly when Marston chokes to death after drinking a poisoned martini. His death mimics the first verse of the English nursery rhyme 'Ten Little Indians'. Later, one of the ten small Indian dolls that adorn the centre of the dining table is found with its head snapped off. In the morning, Rodgers makes everyone breakfast single-handedly, as his wife Ethel Mae is found dead in her bed. Suspicion arises that they are being picked off by a dangerous lunatic. As four of the men set off with rifles to hunt down Mr. Owen, General Romansky confides to Vera Claythorne his guilt over the death of his subordinate and that no one will leave the safari. The General not long after is pushed off a cliff and the guests realize that they are being executed by Mr. Owen who, in fact, may be one of them. After suspicion falls on Mr. Rodgers whose activity was unknown during the hunt, Rodgers angrily insists to spend the night keeping watch on the hill. In the morning, he is found killed, with an axe in his head, fulfilling the fourth verse of the poem. Marion Marshall turns to God to for protection and confesses to Vera in private that the co-actress who died was Marshall's secret lover. When Marion takes a nap, the killer enters her tent and kills her with a syringe, putting suspicion on Dr. Werner. At night, the terrified remaining guests admit to their guilt, and Vera returns to her tent, and screams, alarming the others. The Judge is missing, but soon falls from the top of her tent, shot in the head. Not long after, Dr. Werner goes missing, later to reappear with his throat slit. Blore barricades himself in his tent, only to be found dead by Lombard and Vera, stabbed in the chest, with Marston's teddy bear between Blore and the knife. By now, only Lombard and Vera are left, and Vera turns on Lombard with his gun, preparing to shoot. She does, and returns to the common tent where the Judge is waiting, wearing his official robes and wig, with a noose prepared for Vera. He explains how the Doctor helped him fake his death, and that he killed everyone as part of his experiment to seek perfect justice, as his own "private little safari hunt." He grabs Vera and forces her at gunpoint into the noose, pulling out the chair. Vera struggles to avoid being killed by holding onto the long part of the rope, as the Judge watches and waits, drinking poison to kill himself as well. Lombard re-appears, alive, as the Judge dies, right before Vera lets go the rope, but Lombard rescues her in time. They both leave the safari together as the rescue plane arrives. ===== The existence of Niccolò, a film director living in Rome, is empty. He has no new film to make, no woman in his life, and his only family is his sister, a gynaecologist, and her little son. He approaches one of his sister's patients, a beautiful young aristocrat called Mavi, and the two start a passionate affair. It proves empty, since Niccolò has no interest in her family and titled friends, a feeling they reciprocate, and introduces her to no friends of his. Worse, Niccolò finds he is under surveillance and is even explicitly warned off Mavi. Who these threats emerge from she does not say and he never finds out. To escape his shadowers in Rome, he takes Mavi out to an old farmhouse he has rented, but the drive there through fog is traumatic and they quarrel violently. In the morning Mavi has vanished. Searching for her back in Rome, the only friend of hers who will talk to him warns Niccolò that Mavi is bisexual and hints at a jealous past lover. Wanting company and affection, Niccolò meets a young stage actress called Ida, slim and athletic like Mavi, a working-class girl who loves the country and is not brittle or mysterious but utterly open. While she is happy to sleep with him, she realises that he is still longing for Mavi and sets him on the trail to find her present address. Listening on the stairs, Niccolò hears Mavi tell the girl with whom she shares a flat that she must keep on hiding from him. Accepting at last that Mavi will never come back, he takes Ida for a romantic holiday in Venice. There she gets a phone call from her doctor in Rome, who confirms that she is pregnant. Delicately, she tells Niccolò that she does love him but her loyalty must now be to the father of the baby. Back alone in Rome, Niccolò starts musing about his next film. He imagines a spaceship built of asteroid material that could approach the sun. He recalls telling his young nephew about space travel, saying, "The day mankind understands what the sun is made of and its power, perhaps we'll understand the entire universe and the reasons behind so many things." His nephew responds, "And then?" ===== Philip and Claire's latest efforts at breaking onto Broadway have flopped, but their efforts have not gone unnoticed by Gilbert's employer, Tommy Parker. Tommy is a gofer for billionaire Boyd Larkin, who wants to insert a spy into the household of his arch-rival billionaire, Peter Champion. Peter's wife, Elsa, is seeking to launch a singing career and needs just the right songwriting team. Gilbert, on the other hand, is hoping that helping Parker and Larkin pull off their scheme will advance his own chances at snagging the world's wealthiest sugar daddy. Philip and Claire are soon hired. Unfortunately, Elsa can't carry a tune and her acting abilities are nonexistent. Nonetheless, they have to make her look good: Champion could destroy their careers if they don't. But if they manage to pull it off, they'll be on the fast track to fame. It's not long before Philip and Gilbert are caught spying, which leads them to become double- agents, double-double agents, and triple-agents. And when the man of their dreams turns out to be a homosexual, suddenly Philip and Gilbert are competing for his financial (and sexual) favors and betraying one another as well. Category:1991 American novels Category:Novels by Joe Keenan Category:Novels with gay themes Category:Novels set in New York City Category:Novels about journalists Category:1990s LGBT novels ===== A lighthearted vacation in a vintage RV turns into a deadly roller-coaster ride for seven young friends in this gorefest tinged with touches of camp. A psychopath armed with night vision goggles and a machete stalks his prey, and there seems to be no escaping his brutal intentions. ===== Gilbert Selwyn and Moira Finch usually can't stand each other. They have only two things in common: an aversion to honest work, and wealthy stepfamilies. But they have a plan: they intend to get married. Gilbert recently went to his "fat cousin Steffy's wedding", where he realized that his normally tight-fisted stepfather's family became overwhelmingly generous for a family wedding; Moira's stepfather, the Duke of Dorsetshire, is likewise poised to shower the couple with cash, checks, and gifts worth tens of thousands of dollars. Gilbert estimates that he and Moira might clear $100,000 each by marrying, living together for a decent interval, and then divorcing. But to make the plan work, Gilbert has to have a best man and someone who'll swear that his homosexuality was "just a phase." That someone is Philip Cavanaugh, the narrator of the story: Gilbert's best friend, former lover, and an aspiring songwriter. At first Phillip wants no part of the plan—having suffered the disastrous fallout of Gilbert's previous get-rich-quick schemes—but agrees as soon as Gilbert offers him a cut of the take, enough to afford a computer and some decent Scotch. But there's a snag: Moira's mother, the Duchess, says on the phone that she doesn't have enough ready cash to pay for the wedding, so she asks Moira to pay for it from her trust fund. Only, Moira has already induced her banker, Winslow, to embezzle the funds, and blown her inheritance on several zany investment schemes. She quickly comes up with a new plan: convince Gilbert's stepfather, Tony Cellini, to pay for the wedding, with the "promise" that the Duchess will reimburse Moira for what "she" has spent from her trust fund—in effect, doubling the couple's take from the wedding. Over lunch with Gilbert's perky but extremely naive mother, Maddie, Phillip becomes nervous at hearing about Tony's mysterious comings- and-goings and the surprisingly high number of "accidental" deaths in his family. Phillip suspects that Gilbert and Moira's future in-laws (and victims) are mafiosi. Both Gilbert and Moira find the notion preposterous, but Phillip cracks and confides all to his songwriting partner, the brainy Claire Simmons. At the Cellini family's Christmas party, Claire needs only one quick look to confirm that Gilbert's in-laws are mafiosos, the patriarch of the clan being infamous gangster Freddy "the Pooch" Bombelli. She and Phillip pull Gilbert into a bathroom and acquaint him with two hard facts: One, attempting to swindle the Mafia is stupid; and Two, attempting to do so partnered with Moira is suicidal, for she has already ingratiated herself with Gilbert's family far more successfully than he, and would throw him and Phillip to the wolves in a heartbeat if anything went wrong. Watching Moira schmoozing with the clan, it is also horrifyingly obvious that Moira knows full well they are mafiosi, yet intends to swindle them anyway. Claire reasons that the best way for Phillip and Gilbert to extricate themselves is to tip off the Duchess to Moira's trust fund swindle. Unfortunately, both their anonymous letter and phone call to the Duchess are intercepted by Moira's accomplice, the Duchess's butler, and Moira misidentifies Gilbert's old nemesis, Gunther Von Steigel, and Moira's friend Vulpina, as the blackmailers. Phillip and Gilbert are helpless to stop Moira as she engineers a campaign of terror and revenge against Gunther and Vulpina, which increases Gunther's suspicions of Gilbert and the wedding. Claire, sensing something wrong, does further research, and gathers Phillip, Gilbert, and Moira together to reveal the truth: the "Duchess" doesn't exist. Moira made up her mother's status years ago, as an amusing lie to tell her friends, which suddenly became necessary to maintain when Gilbert wanted to partner with Moira to bilk his wealthy family (Moira's real mother, Claire gleefully confides, is currently serving a prison term in California, "learning respect for other people's property"). Likewise, Moira has never had a trust fund; that was just a ruse to explain away her mother's inability to pay for the wedding. Winslow is a chemist, rather than a banker, who impersonated the Duchess on the telephone for Phillip and Gilbert's benefit. Moira admits the truth, but refuses to abandon the wedding. Claire concedes that she can't expose Moira without exposing Phillip and Gilbert, so she can only offer her reluctant assistance in pulling off the swindle—something that she now believes is possible, as long as they can convincingly stage the Duchess' "tragic" death before the wedding. Everything seems to be going smoothly, until Freddy Bombelli tells Moira that he plans to visit her mother in England while he is there for a business trip. Moira panics and says he can't, because her mother will be in New York in a week. They now have to convince the extremely anxious Winslow to pose as a woman, since his extremely distinctive vocal impression of the Duchess cannot be imitated. To their surprise, Winslow turns out to be an entirely convincing Duchess, and Freddy is captivated. ===== Tomoe Gozen, a warrior of incredible skill, is the vassal of warlord Shojiro Shigeno. In the process of defeating Shigeno's enemy, the Chinese monk Huan, Tomoe is nearly killed. Huan resurrects her on the condition that she turn against her former master, and after committing a series of evil deeds under Huan's power, Tomoe manages to free herself and becomes ronin, or masterless samurai. The story mostly traces Tomoe's attempts to regain her honour, leading her into conflict with enemies, friends and the samurai culture that created her. ===== After the death of her close childhood friend, 17-year-old Sarah Landon (Rissa Walters) goes to visit her friend's grandmother, Thelma Shaw (Jane Harris), in the small town of Pine Valley, California. Upon arriving in Pine Valley, Sarah's car starts making strange noises, and she stops at the repair shop. While there, she talks with the owner and learns of a story involving a local family, and asks Mrs. Shaw to get the full story. As the story goes, a young man named David Baker (Brian Comrie), who lives in Pine Valley, will be killed by his deceased uncle on his 21st birthday, which is that coming Monday. David's uncle, Ben Woods (Rusty Hanes), was angry with his sister because of her involvement in the car crash that killed his own son, Johnny, on his 21st birthday. After receiving the threat as a child and learning of his uncle's death, David became obsessed with the paranormal, trying to find out how Ben would kill him. He became a recluse, moving to a loft above the family's barn. Sarah and Matt (Dan Comrie), David's brother, try to help him before his birthday arrives, though initially Matt doesn't believe that his brother will really die. At first, David believes Ben was reincarnated, and that a boy who moved next door to the Bakers, Justin Van Kamp (Kendell Linley), will murder him. After encountering Ben's spirit in the man's former home, he realizes Ben is still a spirit and will instead possess someone else to kill him. As it grows closer to midnight (the paranormal hour) on David's 21st birthday, Sarah, Matt, and David, with the help of a local psychic's niece named Yolanda Lopez (Sylvia Enrique), uncover a ritual that may save David's life. At midnight, they begin the ritual, and when Matt and Sarah return to Mrs. Shaw's house, they find out that Mrs. Shaw is the person who was possessed by the spirit of Ben Woods. The two teens race back to the Bakers' home, with Mrs. Shaw/Ben in close pursuit. Just as the possessed woman is about to kill David, Justin van Kamp appears, and it is revealed that he is actually the reincarnation of Ben's son, Johnny. Johnny convinces his father not to kill David, and Ben's spirit moves on. Later that day, Sarah returns home to San Diego, saying that this adventure was only the beginning of strange occurrences in Pine Valley, hinting at a possible sequel. ===== Laxmidevi (Tanuja), a strict disciplinarian, wants her daughters, Leena (Farha Naaz) and Esha (Neelam Kothari), to marry brothers from a wealthy family, so that both girls can stay in the same household. But Leena and Esha fall in love with Omi (Rohan Kapoor) and Vicky (Govinda) respectively. The boys are poor orphans who have taken to petty crimes in order to survive. How the matter is resolved forms the rest of the story. ===== Govinda stars as Sagar, a wealthy but idle young man. Following a night of consuming much alcohol he finds a homeless and parentless young boy. He takes the boy home and learns that he is deaf and attempts to nurture him and names him Raja. He tries to get information out of him but does not understand anything. Raja's mother has been brutally murdered (by Anupam Kher and his henchman Ranjit) as she witnesses a murder committed by this pair. Sagar takes Raja out to fairs and adventures and Raja sees Ranjit and tries to tell Sagar that he is the one who murdered his mother. Slowly Sagar understands the tale of the story. He meets a girl Neelam and becomes friends. She takes them to her house. Raja sees a picture of Neelam, her father and shockingly his mother. Sagar wants to unfold the mystery of Raja's incident. He finds out that Raja's mother has been murdered. As he is looking for clues, he gets arrested. To prove his innocence the boy takes them to his house where there was a happy family. They take a sniffer dog to find out clues. The dog sniffs the floor outside the house. the men dig it and find a piece of cloth which his mother was wrapped in and buried there. ===== Johnny (Mithun Chakraborty), Govinda (Sanjay Dutt) and Iqbal Ali (Govinda) are close friends live in a small community in Bombay. They get together to help each other and other needy people in the community and, hence, are in the bad books of a local gangster who calls himself DK. Tragedy strikes Govinda when his mother dies. At the time of the funeral, Govinda is reunited with his father, Advocate Verma, who has been missing for years. Then a police inspector gets Johnny to meet his biological mother, Mary. The three friends rejoice over this good fortune. Then Johnny finds out that Verma was behind the atrocities that were inflicted on his mother years ago, and he goes to confront Verma, only to come against an enraged Govinda, who cannot believe his father is capable of committing any atrocities against anyone. It is now up to Iqbal to find a solution to end the enmity between Govinda and Johnny, before DK takes advantage of this situation. ===== Courteous Police Inspector Rane, intent on arresting notorious gangster P.C. Mathur finds himself on trial for murder and sentenced to seven years behind bars, of course being framed for the murder by his enemy. Following his prison term, Rane becomes an underworld operator known as Rana, intent on seeking revenge on Mathur and killing him. He hires Jai to kill Mathur, but mistakenly kills somebody else in the process. Jai, feeling angered by his mistake gives up a life of crime to concentrate on his family, leaving Rana alone to hunt down Mathur. It is now up to Rana to fulfill his quest, but avoid being killed first by Mathur's gang. =====