From Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ===== Spencer Tracy (center) as Father Flanagan in Boys Town A convicted murderer asks to make his confession on the day of his execution. He is visited by an old friend, Father Flanagan (Spencer Tracy) who runs a home for indigent men in Omaha, Nebraska. When the prison officials suggest that the condemned man owes the state a debt, Father Flanagan witnesses the condemned man's diatribe to prison officials and a reporter that describes his awful plight as a homeless and friendless boy who was a ward in state institutions. After the convicted man asks the officials to leave, Father Flanagan provides some comfort and wisdom. On the train back to Omaha, Father Flanagan is transformed in his humanitarian mission by revelations (echoed in the words) imparted by the condemned man's litany of hardships experienced as a child without friends or family as a ward of the state. Father Flanagan believes there is no such thing as a bad boy and spends his life attempting to prove it. He battles indifference, the legal system, and often even the boys, to build a sanctuary that he calls Boys Town. The boys have their own government, make their own rules, and dish out their own punishment. One boy, Whitey Marsh (Mickey Rooney), is as much as anyone can handle. Whitey's elder brother Joe, in prison for murder, asks Father Flanagan to take Whitey—a poolroom shark and tough talking hoodlum—to Boys Town. Joe escapes custody during transfer to federal prison. Whitey stays, though, and runs for mayor of Boys Town, determined to win with his "don't be a sucker" campaign slogan. When the boys instead elect handicapped Tony Ponessa (Gene Reynolds) and reject Whitey's shoddy campaigning, Whitey decides to leave. Only little Pee Wee (Bobs Watson), the Boys Town mascot, catches up with him and pulls on his sleeve, pleading, "We're going to be pals, ain’t we?" Whitey, nearly in tears refuses and pushes the child to the ground and tells him to go back. He then storms across the highway, and Pee Wee, caught in the tail wind, is too upset about his hero to think about oncoming traffic. When Pee Wee begins to cry, he is hit by a car, Whitey leaves, feeling guilty and hurt. He accidentally comes upon a bank robbery in Omaha and runs into Joe, who mistakenly shoots him in the leg. Joe takes Whitey to a church and calls Flanagan anonymously, after which Whitey is taken back to Boys Town. The sheriff comes to get Whitey, but Flanagan offers to take full responsibility for the boy. Whitey refuses to tell Flanagan about the robbery, because he has promised not to inform on Joe, but when he realizes that his silence could result in the end of Boys Town, he goes to Joe's hideout. Joe, realizing with Whitey that Boys Town is more important than themselves, releases his brother from his promise. His cohorts want to kill Whitey, but Joe protects him until Flanagan and the boys arrive at their hideout. The criminals are recaptured and Boys Town's reward is a flood of donations. A now committed Whitey is elected the new mayor of Boys Town by acclamation and Dave resigns himself to go into more debt as Flanagan tells him of his new ideas for expanding the facility. ===== The book follows the journey of an Anabaptist radical across Europe in the first half of the 16th century as he joins in various movements and uprisings that come as a result of the Protestant reformation. The book spans 30 years as he is pursued by 'Q' (short for "Qoèlet"), a spy for the Roman Catholic Church cardinal Giovanni Pietro Carafa. The main character, who changes his name many times during the story, first fights in the German Peasants' War beside Thomas Müntzer, during which time he takes part in negotiations which are eventually formalised as the Twelve Articles. Following this, he battles in Münster's siege, during the Münster Rebellion, and some years later, in Venice. ===== The series opens with a shot of a church's steeple, and the words "Peyton Place" superimposed, with a tolling of church bells. Announcer Dick Tufeld announces "This is the continuing story of Peyton Place." The scene changes to scenes of the town square, a rolling brook, and a panoramic view of Peyton Place. It dissolves to cast members, and then narration of previous episode events by Warner Anderson, who also played Matthew Swain. In 1966 the message was changed to "In color, the continuing story of Peyton Place." Warner Anderson left the series after the first season, but continued as narrator to the series until the final episode. ===== In 3028, humanity has mastered deep space travel and interacted with several alien species. A human invention called "Project Titan" alarms the Drej, a pure energy-based alien species. As the Drej start to attack Earth, Professor Sam Tucker, the lead researcher for "Project Titan", sends his son Cale on one of the evacuation ships with his alien friend Tek while Tucker and other members of his team fly the Titan spacecraft into hyperspace. The Drej mother ship arrives and fires a directed- energy weapon into the planet that completely destroys Earth, while debris from the explosion also destroys the Moon. The surviving humans become nomads, generally ridiculed by other alien species. Fifteen years later, Cale works at the salvage yard in an asteroid belt called Tau 14. He is tracked down by Joseph Korso, captain of the spaceship Valkyrie. Korso reveals that Tucker encoded a map to the Titan in the ring he gave Cale. Tek tells Cale that humanity depends on finding the Titan. When the Drej attack the salvage yard, Cale escapes aboard the Valkyrie with Korso and his crew: Akima, a human female pilot, along with Preed, Gune, and Stith, aliens of various species. On the planet Sesharrim, the Gaoul interpret the map, and discover the Titan hidden in the Andali Nebula. Drej fighters arrive, capturing Cale and Akima. The Drej eventually discard Akima and extract the Titans map from Cale. Korso's crew rescues Akima, while Cale eventually escapes in a Drej ship, and rejoins the group. Cale's map has changed and now shows the Titans final location. While resupplying at a human space station called New Bangkok, Cale and Akima discover that Korso and Preed are planning to betray the Titan to the Drej. Cale and Akima manage to escape the Valkyrie, but they are stranded on New Bangkok when Korso and the rest of the crew set off for the Titan. With the help of New Bangkok's colonists, Cale and Akima salvage a small spaceship named Phoenix and race to find the Titan before Korso does. Cale and Akima navigate through the ice field in the Andali Nebula and dock with the Titan before the Valkyrie arrives. They discover DNA samples of Earth animals, and a pre-recorded holographic message left by Professor Tucker who explains that the Titan was designed to create an Earth-like planet. However, due to its escape from Earth before its destruction, its power cells lack the energy necessary for the process. The message is interrupted by the arrival of Korso and Preed. Preed reveals himself to be working for the Drej and betrays Korso while holding him, Cale, and Akima at gunpoint. Preed attempts to kill them, but Korso snaps his neck, killing him. He and Cale then fight until Korso falls into the depths of the ship. Moments later, the Drej attack the Titan. Given the fact that Drej are, essentially, beings of pure energy, Cale realizes that modifying the Titan to absorb them will re-energize the ship. Unfortunately, in order to put this plan into effect, Cale must repair a malfunctioning circuit breaker; he sets off to do this while the remaining crew of the Valkyrie distract the aliens. Korso, who survived and overheard Cale's plan, shows up and helps stall the Drej and then sacrifices himself to complete the repairs. The Titan absorbs the Drej mothership along with everything aboard, and uses this gained power, along with the ice field, to generate a new, habitable planet. Cale and Akima stand in the rain, gazing at the beauty of their new home and discuss what this planet should be called. Stith and Gune do a fly-by on the Valkyrie as colony ships, filled with humans anxious to start life anew, approach. ===== The needs of teenagers in an isolated planned community called New Granada, east of Denver, Colorado, were not considered by those who designed the community, and their approved activities are to attend school and hang out at the recreation center, which closes at six o‘clock. The kids turn to drink, drugs, sex, vandalism and other petty crime to kill their boredom, but the adults are too concerned with their careers and business interests and focus on curbing the adolescents' seemingly senseless behavior through a 9:30pm curfew rather than understanding the root causes. After one of the kids is killed by a police officer, the youths violently rebel. ===== New Spring describes events which take place twenty years before the events of The Eye of the World (Book 1). The story begins in the last days of the Aiel War, and the Battle of the Shining Walls around Tar Valon. It is set primarily in Tar Valon and the Borderlands, specifically Kandor. New Spring focuses mainly on Moiraine Damodred and Siuan Sanche, two Aes Sedai new to the sisterhood, and how a young Moiraine became Aes Sedai, met Lan Mandragoran and made him her Warder. The novel also explains how Moiraine and Siuan witnessed a prophecy of the Dragon's rebirth and came to begin investigating the Karaethon Cycle, the Prophecies of the Dragon, decades before discovering Rand al'Thor. ===== The series is set in the New York City Police Department's Eleventh Precinct (the building shown was actually Ninth Precinct), Manhattan South Patrol Borough. The show revolved around the efforts of the tough and incorruptible Lieutenant Theodopolus ("Theo") Kojak (Telly Savalas), a bald, dapper, New York City policeman, who was fond of Tootsie Roll Pops and of using the catchphrases, "Who loves ya, baby?" and "Cootchie-coo!" Kojak was stubborn and tenacious in his investigation of crimes—and also displayed a dark, cynical wit, along with a tendency to bend the rules if it brought a criminal to justice. In the context of the script, Kojak's was seen as typical squad room humor, which was picked up later in the TV drama Hill Street Blues. Savalas described Kojak as a "basically honest character, tough but with feelings—the kind of guy who might kick a hooker in the tail if he had to, but they'd understand each other because maybe they grew up on the same kind of block." Kojak's Greek American heritage, shared by actor Savalas, was featured prominently in the series. In the early episodes of the series, he is often seen smoking cigarettes. Following the 1964 Surgeon General's Report on smoking, cigarette commercials were banned from American television in 1971, and public awareness of the dangers of cigarette smoking increased dramatically during the 1970s. To cut down on his own habit, Kojak began using lollipops as a substitute. The lollipop made its debut in the Season 1 episode "Dark Sunday", broadcast on December 12, 1973; Kojak lights a cigarette as he begins questioning a witness, but thinks better of it and sticks a lollipop (specifically, a Tootsie Pop) in his mouth instead. Later in the episode, Kevin Dobson's character Crocker asks about the lollipop and Kojak replies, "I'm looking to close the generation gap." Although Kojak continued to smoke, as he was frequently seen lighting a cigarillo, the lollipop eventually became his identifying characteristic; in fact, when the series debuted a new opening montage in season five, Kojak is seen both lighting a cigarillo and popping a lollipop into his mouth. 170px His longtime supervisor was Capt. Frank McNeil (Dan Frazer), a man who never seemed to know what was going on. Later in the series, McNeil was promoted to Chief of Detectives in Manhattan. Kojak is the commander of the Manhattan South Precinct's detective squad. His squad includes one of his favorite employees, young plainclothes officer, Det. Bobby Crocker (Kevin Dobson). Detective Stavros, played by Telly's real-life brother George Savalas, used the name "Demosthenes" as his screen credit during the first two seasons. George Savalas, under his real name, also received a Production Associate credit during the first season and a Production Assistant credit for the second season. Detective Saperstein (Mark Russell), and Detective Rizzo (Vince Conti), all gave Kojak support. Roger Robinson appeared in 12 episodes as Detective Gil Weaver. Although the show primarily focused on Kojak's police work, it occasionally veered into other areas of the character's lives, such as the first-season episode "Knockover" which included a subplot involving Kojak romancing a (much younger) female police officer. In 1976, crime writer Joe Gores received an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Episode in a TV Series Teleplay for the third-season episode "No Immunity for Murder" (first aired November 23, 1975). The show was canceled after five seasons in 1978, due to falling ratings. Reruns of Kojak became successful in syndication and on TV Land. Years after the series ended, Savalas reprised the role in two CBS TV movies, Kojak: The Belarus File (1985) (an adaptation of the John Loftus book The Belarus Secret) and Kojak: The Price of Justice (1987) (based on Dorothy Uhnak's novel The Investigation). Kojak is not a character in either book. In 1989, ABC revived the series again with five additional TV movies. These films saw now-Inspector Kojak lead the NYPD's Major Crimes Squad. Andre Braugher was cast as a young detective assigned to Kojak's command. Telly Savalas and Dan Frazer are the only cast members to appear in every episode of the original series. Kevin Dobson appeared in all but two episodes. George Savalas appeared in all but three episodes and Frazer, Dobson, and G. Savalas appeared in one Kojak TV movie each. ===== The Master arrives on Earth and steals the sole surviving Nestene energy unit from the National Space Museum. He then hijacks the Beacon Hill radio telescope, which he uses as a bridgehead to channel energy into the Nestene unit, and kidnaps Professor Phillips, a Ministry of Technology research scientist. Reports of the theft and sabotage bring the Doctor, his new assistant Jo Grant and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart to investigate. At Beacon Hill the Doctor encounters a fellow Time Lord, who warns him that an "old acquaintance" is on Earth and will certainly try to kill him. The Doctor then identifies and successfully neutralises the boobytrap which the Master has left behind. Meanwhile, the Master takes over Farrel Autoplastics, a nearby plastics factory, to build Autons. Jo, investigating the factory, is discovered by the Master, who hypnotises her and wipes her memory of their meeting. He sends her back to UNIT with a booby- trap, a box ostensibly containing the stolen energy unit. The Doctor realises she has been hypnotised and disposes of the bomb. UNIT traces the missing Professor Phillips to Rossini's Circus at Tarminster. The Doctor visits the Circus, where he is captured by Rossini, but freed by Jo, who has followed him there against orders. The Doctor removes something from the Master's TARDIS but is attacked by Rossini and his men. Rescued by two policemen, the Doctor becomes suspicious and unmasks one of the officers as an Auton. Fleeing from the Autons, the Doctor and Jo hide in a quarry until the Brigadier and Captain Mike Yates arrive. A firefight breaks out between the two soldiers and the Autons, enabling the Doctor's party to escape. Meanwhile, a larger group of Autons, disguised in weird Carnival masks, are touring the country handing out free plastic daffodils to the public. Soon deaths from asphyxiation, shock, and heart failure are being reported all across the country. The Master, meanwhile, infiltrates UNIT headquarters disguised as a telephone engineer, and installs an extra long telephone flex in the Doctor's laboratory. At the now-empty plastics factory, the Brigadier and the Doctor discover that Farrel, the owner, has chartered a coach. They also find a plastic daffodil, and a lurking killer Auton, proving the connection between the factory and the Master. In the Doctor's lab, as he tries to decode the Nestenes' instructions imprinted on the cells of the plastic flower, a radio signal from a walkie- talkie accidentally activates it. The daffodil sprays a plastic film over Jo's nose and mouth, nearly suffocating her, until the Doctor dissolves it with a chemical solvent. The Master makes another attempt to kill the Doctor, by calling him on the telephone he installed earlier, and using a sonic signalling device to activate the plastic telephone cable. The extra-length cable attempts to strangle the Doctor, but, thanks to the Brigadier's quick thinking, fails. The Master then breaks into UNIT HQ. As a bargaining counter, the Doctor reveals that he has possession of the Master's dematerialisation circuit, and threatens to destroy it: but he is foiled by the presence of Jo, who the Master takes as a hostage. The Master takes both Jo and the Doctor to the quarry near the radio telescope, to force the Brigadier to abort a planned RAF airstrike on the Autons sheltering there. But Farrel, struggling to break free of his hypnosis, unexpectedly causes a diversion, and while the Master is busy subduing him the Doctor and Jo escape. UNIT troops engage the Autons, while the Doctor and the Brigadier pursue the Master into the radio telescope's control cabin. The Doctor convinces the Master that the Nestenes are so utterly different they will not be able to distinguish between him and the humans once they arrive. Together, they use the channel opened for the invasion to force the Nestene energy back into space, causing the Autons to collapse. The Master flees, returning to the coach only to re-emerge, apparently surrendering. When he pulls out a gun, Yates shoots him dead, but the Doctor peels back a facemask on the body to reveal it is the hypnotised Farrel, disguised to look like the Master. The real Master escapes in the coach. However, with his dematerialisation circuit in the Doctor's hands, the Master is now trapped on Earth. ===== All of the Gaul area is under Roman control, except for one small village in Armorica (present-day Brittany), whose inhabitants are made invincible by a magic potion created periodically by the Druid Getafix. To discover the secret of the Gauls' strength, Centurion Crismus Bonus, commander of a Roman garrison at the fortified camp of Compendium, sends a spy disguised as a Gaul into the village. The Roman's identity is revealed when he loses his false moustache, shortly after he discovers the existence of the magic potion; whereupon he reports his discovery to the Centurion. Crismus Bonus, hoping to overthrow Julius Caesar, orders Getafix captured and interrogated for the recipe; but to no avail. Protagonist Asterix learns of Getafix's capture from a cart-seller; infiltrates the Roman camp in the latter's cart; and hears Crismus Bonus revealing his intended rebellion to Marcus Ginandtonicus, his second-in- command. Following Asterix's suggestion, Getafix pretends to agree to the Centurion's demand of the potion when Asterix pretends to give in to torture, and demands an unseasonal ingredient: strawberries. While Crismus Bonus' soldiers try to find strawberries, Asterix and Getafix relax in relative luxury; and when the strawberries arrive, consume them all, and console Crismus Bonus that the potion may be made without them. After all the ingredients are found, a potion is prepared that causes the hair and beard of the drinker to grow at an accelerated pace. The Romans are tricked into drinking this potion and before long, all of them have long hair and beards. When Crismus Bonus pleads Getafix to make an antidote, the druid makes a cauldron of vegetable soup (knowing that the hair-growth potion shall soon cease to take effect), and also prepares a small quantity of the real magic potion for Asterix. As Getafix and Asterix escape, they are stopped by a huge army of Roman reinforcements commanded by Julius Caesar. Upon meeting Asterix and Getafix, Caesar hears of Crismus Bonus' intentions against himself; deports Crismus Bonus and his garrison to Outer Mongolia; and frees Asterix and Getafix for giving him the information, while reminding them that they are still enemies. The two Gauls then return to their village, where their neighbors celebrate their recovery. ===== The game is set in the year 1590, four years after the events of Soulcalibur. The wave of slaughters that terrorized Europe reached a sudden end. The knight in azure armor, Nightmare, and his followers were successful in collecting enough souls and were about to start the restoring ceremony on the ruins of the once-proud Ostreinsburg Castle. But just as the ceremony was to start, three young warriors assaulted the castle. After an intense battle Nightmare fell, but then the evil soul inside Soul Edge sent the young warriors into a vortex of hellfire and stood to confront them. As a result of Soul Edge's evil aura, Krita-Yuga revealed its true form: that of the Holy Sword, Soul Calibur. The intense battle ended with the victory of the holy sword, but at the collapse of the vortex of Inferno, both swords along with the azure Nightmare were sucked in a void and expelled in another place. Siegfried, recognizing his sins, set out on a journey of atonement. Still the blade held a strong bond, and every night it took control of the body and took souls of those nearby. The efforts made by the young knight were fruitless, and four years later the Azure Knight Nightmare returned. Around those times various warriors came into contact of the blade's remaining fragments, revealing Soul Edge's ultimate survival after its defeat. Driven either to possess or destroy it, they join a new journey, while Nightmare begins his rampage, seeking souls to restore Soul Edge once again. ===== Anya unsuccessfully entreats D'Hoffryn to restore her demonic powers. Principal Snyder browbeats Willow into tutoring basketball star Percy West. At Giles's request, Willow hacks into Mayor Wilkins's files; when Faith finds out, she alerts him of the intrusion. Wilkins presents Faith with a fully furnished apartment and then tells her he plans to have Willow killed. Percy makes it clear that his idea of tutoring is that Willow should do his homework, and Willow does not correct him. Frustrated and unhappy, Willow then quarrels with Buffy and Xander and storms off. Willow assists Anya with a spell, but their conjuration goes awry, summoning "Willow" from "The Wish" rather than retrieving the magic amulet Anya sought. Neither Anya nor Willow realizes the consequences of their spell. Vampire Willow sees Sunnydale is a lot different. No one is afraid of her and there are more humans than vampires. It means the city is very peaceful and corruption free from vampires. Vampire Willow goes to the Bronze, where she fights with Percy and throwing him across the pool table. Vampire Willow runs into her old lover Xander and realize that he is alive. She also sees Buffy who is alive and despises her a lot worse. She shows her vampire face to Xander and Buffy. Two vampires sent by the mayor attack her, but she turns them to her side. Buffy and Xander tell Giles that Willow has been killed and turned vampire, but the genuine Willow arrives to demonstrate their error. None of them are aware that Vampire Willow is from Cordelia's wish that Buffy never came to Sunnydale. Angel and Anya drop into the Bronze. Vampire Willow and her new minions arrive and capture the crowd. Angel escapes to find Buffy. Anya recognizes what has happened, offers to restore Vampire Willow to her own world in return for help in retrieving her amulet, and suggests capturing the other Willow to assist in the spell. Angel, Buffy and Xander head for the Bronze, but Willow, turning back to get the tranquilizer gun, is captured by her doppelganger. Willow shoots the vampire; the others arrive back in the library and intrigued of learning that they each has their own doppelganger. They lock the unconscious vampire in the library cage, and Willow exchanges clothes with her in an attempt to pass herself off as Vampire Willow. They return to the Bronze. Cordelia arrives at the library and unwittingly releases Vampire Willow, who immediately attacks her, but Wesley intervenes and drives the vampire away. At the Bronze, although Anya exposes Willow's disguise, Buffy defeats the other vampires, then captures the returning doppelganger. Anya returns vampire Willow to her own timeline, where the alternate Oz immediately kills her. The next day, Percy, thoroughly intimidated by Willow's doppelganger (and believing she was the real Willow), shows up for tutoring with all his work completed and makes it clear he intends to please her from now on. ===== James Henry Trotter is a young orphan whose parents were devoured by a rhinoceros, forcing him to live with his abusive and domineering aunts Spiker and Sponge. James dreams of seeing New York City and visiting the Empire State Building, as his parents had wanted to do. One day, after rescuing a spider from his hysterical aunts, James meets a mysterious old man who gives him a bag of magical "crocodile tongues" before disappearing without a trace. On his way back inside, James stumbles and drops the crocodile tongues near an old peach tree. A colossal peach grows on the tree, and Spiker and Sponge exploit the peach as a tourist attraction. At night, as James picks up litter, he enters the peach's interior through a large tunnel that forms when he takes a chunk from a peach to eat it. Within the pit, he encounters and befriends a group of human-sized anthropomorphic insects: Mr. Grasshopper, Mr. Centipede, Ms. Spider, Mr. Earthworm, Mrs. Ladybug, and the Glowworm. As they hear Spiker and Sponge searching for James, Centipede cuts the stem connecting the peach to the tree and the peach rolls away to the Atlantic Ocean. Remembering his dream to visit New York City, James and the insects decide to go there. Centipede claims to be an experienced traveler and takes on the duty of steering the peach. Ms. Spider's silk is used to capture and tie a large flock of seagulls to the peach stem as the group fends off a giant mechanical shark. After the group staves off hunger by drawing sustenance from the peach, Ms. Spider reveals to James that she was the spider he saved from Spiker and Sponge. The next morning, James and his friends find themselves in the Arctic; Centipede had fallen asleep at the helm, and his exploratory credentials are exposed as fraudulent. After Grasshopper determines that a compass is required to escape the frozen wasteland, a remorseful Centipede plunges into the icy water below to retrieve one from one of the many sunken galleons, but is captured and taken prisoner by undead skeletal pirates. James and Ms. Spider rescue him with the compass at hand. As the group finally arrives at New York City, they are suddenly attacked by the tempestuous form of the rhino that killed James's parents. James, though frightened, gets his friends to safety and confronts the rhino before it strikes the peach with lightning; James and the peach fall to the city below, landing on top of the Empire State Building. After he is rescued by firefighters, Spiker and Sponge arrive and attempt to claim James and the peach. James tells the crowd of his fantastical adventure and exposes his aunts' mistreatment. Enraged at James's betrayal, Spiker and Sponge attempt to hack James with stolen fire axes, but are stopped by the insects and arrested by the police. James introduces his friends to the New Yorkers and allows the children to eat up the peach. The peach pit is made into a cottage in Central Park, where James lives happily with the bugs, who form his new family and also find success and fame in the city. James celebrates his ninth birthday with his new family and friends. ===== An experimental nuclear power research centre in some caves under a moorland is experiencing mysterious power drains and mental breakdowns amongst staff. The Third Doctor and Liz meet Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart there to investigate. A worker who was potholing in the caves is found dead with giant claw marks on his body, and his companion has been traumatised. Lawrence, the Director, resents UNIT's presence and feels that it will interfere with the working of the plant. Major Baker, the security chief, believes there is a saboteur in the centre, and the Doctor discovers that the logs of the nuclear reactor's operation have been tampered with. When the Doctor makes his way into the caves, he is attacked by a dinosaur-like creature before it is called off by a strange whistling sound. The Doctor analyses blood from a man-sized creature Major Baker shot at and finds similarities to "higher reptiles". In the meantime, the creature goes to the moorland on the surface and stumbles into a barn to hide. Quinn goes into the caves to a hidden base, where he demands the knowledge he was promised. He is told that he must first help the wounded creature and is given a signal device which emits the sound heard earlier. The creature attacks a farmer and his wife when they discover it in the barn. The farmer dies of heart failure after being frightened by it, but the wife survives and identifies her attacker. While investigating the barn, Liz is knocked unconscious by the creature, and it flees. The Brigadier and the Doctor follow the creature's tracks and find they end in tyre marks. Breaking into Quinn's office, the Doctor finds a globe that depicts the Earth's continents as they were 200 million years ago along with notes about the Silurian era of Earth's history. Quinn is discovered dead. The Doctor retrieves the signal device from his body and is surprised by the wounded Silurian creature. The Doctor tries to talk to the creature, but it runs away. Baker is captured and interrogated by the Silurians about the strength of humans. The Doctor and Liz follow Baker's route and open the entrance to the Silurian base with the signal device, where they find him in a locked cage. They witness a Silurian being revived from hibernation by a machine, explaining the energy drains that the reactor has been experiencing. Masters, the Permanent Under-Secretary in charge of the centre, arrives. The Doctor tells them about the Silurians in the caves, urging peaceful contact. However, this is ignored when Quinn's assistant reveals that he was killed by the Silurian he held captive. The Doctor attempts to warn the Silurians, but they put him in a cage. The older Silurian tells the Doctor how their race retreated underground when they saw the Moon approaching Earth millions of years ago. The hibernation mechanism malfunctioned, and they did not revive until a new power source was discovered. A young Silurian orders Baker infected with bacteria before he is released. The older Silurian releases the Doctor, giving him a canister of the bacteria so he can discover a cure. The younger Silurian usurps and kills the older one for this act, becoming the new leader. The Doctor reaches the centre and warns everyone to stay away from Baker, who collapses with the infection. Masters decides to return to London, unaware that he has been infected. Baker is taken to a local hospital and dies. The Doctor begins to work on a cure. Masters has reached London and eludes the search parties looking for him. The bacteria spreads, and deaths begin. The Doctor finds a cure, but the Silurians attack the centre and abduct him. Liz discovers the formula for the cure, which is soon mass-produced and distributed. The Silurians intend to force the Doctor to use the reactor to provide power to a weapon to destroy the Van Allen Belt and make the Earth's environment hostile to humankind. The Doctor overloads the reactor and tells the younger Silurian that the area will be irradiated for at least 25 years. The Silurians re-enter the caves to hibernate until the danger has passed. Since the mechanism is faulty, the younger Silurian will stay awake to operate it and sacrifice his life. The Doctor and Liz repair the reactor. The younger Silurian realises he has been duped into sending his race back to sleep. He attacks the Doctor but is shot by the Brigadier. Later, the Doctor tells Liz that he proposes to revive the Silurians and try to reach a peaceful compromise between them and humanity. However, the Brigadier has other orders, and the Silurian base is blown up. The Doctor is horrified at this act of genocide, but Liz suggests that the Brigadier was acting on orders of his superiors. ===== The Third Doctor and UNIT are called in to investigate a murder at Project Inferno, an effort to drill through the Earth's crust to harness great energies within the planet's core. It transpires that the drilling is producing a green ooze that transforms all who touch it into savage humanoid creatures called Primords, who can only be killed via extreme cold. Unbeknownst to anyone, the project leader, Professor Stahlman has been infected and is in the early stages of the change. After quarrelling with Stahlman, the Doctor attempts an experiment on the detached TARDIS console, but a freak accident transports him into a parallel space-time continuum. In this new universe, where Great Britain is a fascist dictatorship, the Doctor is captured and interrogated by Brigadier Lethbridge- Stewart's counterpart, a sadistic military commandant known as the Brigade Leader, along with the counterpart of the Doctor's companion Liz, who in this universe became a military officer instead of a scientist. When the drill penetrates the Earth's crust it unleashes immense amounts of heat and poisonous gases, along with more of the ooze, which Stahlman's counterpart uses to transform most of the remaining project staff into more Primords. The Doctor determines that the unleashed energies of the core will eventually disintegrate the planet, and is able to persuade the surviving staff members to help him return to his own dimension and prevent a similar catastrophe. They eventually succeed in restoring power to the TARDIS console despite repeated Primord attacks, but Liz's counterpart is forced to kill the Brigade Leader when he turns on the Doctor, who narrowly escapes as the Project Inferno facility is destroyed by a massive volcanic eruption. Back in his own reality, the Doctor urgently tries to have the drilling stopped, but like in the other reality his warnings are ignored. This time, however, the slower pace of the drilling means that Stahlman fully transforms into a Primord before the crust is penetrated instead of afterwards, and after the Doctor kills him with a fire extinguisher, the drilling is stopped in time to prevent disaster. Satisfied that the TARDIS console is now working again, the Doctor attempts to depart, only to end up landing in a local rubbish dump. ===== Sir Reginald Styles, a British diplomat trying to organise a peace conference to avert World War III, is in his study at Auderly House when a soldier wielding a futuristic looking pistol bursts in and holds him at gunpoint. However, before the guerrilla can fire, he vanishes, leaving Styles to shakily tell his secretary he has been visited by a ghost. As the conference is of vital international importance, UNIT is called in. The Chinese have pulled out of the conference and Styles will be flying to Peking to try to persuade them to rejoin. However, when the Third Doctor, Jo and the Brigadier go to Auderly House, Styles denies ever seeing the "ghost", even though the Doctor notes the presence of muddy footprints in the study. The guerrilla reappears on the grounds in a vortex-like effect, but is intercepted by two huge humanoid aliens, called Ogrons, who attack him and leave him for dead. UNIT soldiers discover the severely injured guerrilla and take him to hospital while the Doctor examines his weapon and a small black box that was found in a nearby tunnel system. Styles leaves for Peking, while the Doctor discovers that the pistol, an ultrasonic disintegrator, is made of Earth materials, not alien, and that the box is a crude time machine, complete with a miniature dematerialisation circuit. As he tries to activate it, the vortex effect appears again and the guerrilla vanishes. The temporal feedback circuit on the time machine also overloads – as the Doctor explains to the Brigadier, it has blown a fuse. Since everything seems to be centred on Auderly House, the Doctor decides to spend the evening there. The night passes without incident, but in the day, three guerrillas appear from the time vortex – Anat, a woman who is in command of the mission, and two men, Boaz and Shura. They come across a UNIT patrol and disintegrate the two soldiers while making their way to the house. In the study, the Doctor tries to reactivate the time machine, causing an alert to be sounded in the 22nd century. Shura enters, but the Doctor subdues him with some Venusian karate. Shura begs the Doctor to turn off the box, as in the future, a human Controller reports to the Daleks that the machine has been activated. The Daleks command that once the spacetime coordinates of the box are confirmed, whoever is using that device must be exterminated. In the present, Anat and Boaz enter with Jo as their prisoner and demand the machine be deactivated. The Doctor complies, and the conversation makes it apparent that the guerrillas believe he is Styles, whom they are apparently here to assassinate. The Doctor shows them a newspaper to convince them otherwise, and Anat demands to know who the Doctor is. When Captain Mike Yates and Sergeant Benton enter to search for the missing patrol, the guerrillas usher the Doctor and Jo into the cellar where they are bound and gagged. The Doctor is able to free his mouth and jokes to Jo he would prefer her to remain gagged, but she ungags herself anyway. Finding the Doctor and Jo gone, Yates contacts the Brigadier, who tells them to search the grounds again. In the future, the Daleks order the Controller to send troops to the frequency that they detected earlier, and activate a time vortex magnetron, so that anyone travelling between the two time zones will be drawn to the Controller's headquarters. In the past, Anat sends Shura to contact the future for more orders, but Shura only manages to retrieve a bomb from near the tunnel before being attacked by Ogrons. He is wounded but manages to stumble away. Jo asks the Doctor why, if the guerrillas wanted to kill Styles, they do not just travel back to the previous day to try again, and the Doctor says that this is due to the "Blinovitch Limitation Effect". They are ushered back up to the study – the Brigadier is calling on the house phone. The Doctor is forced to pretend over the telephone that everything is fine at Auderly House. The Brigadier tells the Doctor that Styles has convinced the Chinese to rejoin the conference and that the delegates will arrive the next day. The Brigadier asks for reassurance that everything is all right, and the Doctor tells him it is, but the Brigadier gets suspicious when the Doctor asks him to also "tell it to the Marines." The Brigadier decides to go to the house and see for himself. Jo frees herself from her bonds and threatens to destroy the box that the first guerrilla used, but Anat and Boaz tell her that it only worked for that person. Suddenly, the time vortex effect activates and Jo vanishes into the future, appearing in the Controller's headquarters due to the time vortex magnetron. There, the Controller ingratiates himself with Jo, who tells him everything, including the exact time and location where she came from. The Daleks use this information and send a Dalek supported by Ogrons to the present, where they attack the house. Anat and Boaz fire back and flee towards the tunnels. The Brigadier arrives just in time to gun down an Ogron, and the Doctor commandeers his jeep in pursuit of the two guerrillas. In the tunnels he meets a Dalek, and runs away, finding Anat and Boaz just as they activate their time machines, and is swept up in the same vortex. In the 22nd century version of the tunnels, the Doctor and the guerrillas are separated when Ogrons pursue them. The Doctor climbs out of the tunnels onto the surface, where he sees a Dalek order Ogrons to exterminate some rebels. When the Controller informs the Daleks that Jo mentioned a "Doctor", the Daleks react violently, declaring that the Doctor is an enemy of the Daleks and must be exterminated. The Doctor stumbles into what appears to be a factory, and sees humans being used as slave labour, guarded by other humans. He is captured by an Ogron and is being interrogated when the factory manager comes in and persuades the interrogator to let him speak to the Doctor. When they are alone, the manager asks the Doctor which guerrilla group he comes from, but the Doctor says he is not part of any group. Before any further conversation can take place, the Controller arrives, and takes the Doctor to see Jo. The manager contacts the guerrillas, who have made it back to their base with their leader, a man named Monia. The manager tells them of the Doctor, but he is discovered by an Ogron and killed. Monia decides that they must rescue the Doctor, because he seems to be the only man that the Daleks are actually afraid of. After an abortive escape attempt, the Doctor is strapped down to a Dalek mind analysis device, where images of the two previous Doctors are shown to confirm to the Daleks that he is, indeed, their sworn enemy. The Controller bursts in, saying that using the mind analysis device will kill the Doctor. He then says that they should keep the Doctor alive for information on the rebels, and that he will question the Doctor personally. The Daleks gloat to the Doctor that they have discovered time travel, invaded Earth again, and changed the course of history. The Doctor calls the Controller a traitor, and the Controller explains that at the end of the 20th century, 100 years of devastating worldwide wars began, killing 7/8ths of the population and forcing the rest to live in little more than holes in the ground. It was during this period that the Daleks invaded, conquering the world and using it for raw materials to fuel the expansion of their empire. Some humans cooperated – the Controller's family have been officials for three generations. The Doctor calls them a family of quislings. The rebel guerrillas attack the Controller's base and rescue the Doctor, though Boaz is killed. Monia is about to shoot the Controller, but the Doctor tells him not to – the Daleks would have used somebody else in any case. The rebels take the Doctor back to their hideout and tell him the rest of the story. Styles organised the peace conference, and when Auderly House was blown up, everyone was killed. The rebels believe that Styles engineered the whole thing and caused the century of war that followed. That was why they used Dalek-derived time travel technology to travel to the past, to kill Styles before he could destroy the peace conference. They used the tunnels because that is the only common location shared by the two time zones. The Doctor is sceptical, believing Styles to be stubborn, but basically a good man. When the Doctor finds out that the rebels had brought a bomb made of dalekanium with them, a powerful but unstable explosive that will even affect Dalek body casings, he realises that the rebels are caught in a predestination paradox. They will cause the very explosion that they went back in time to prevent in the first place, and thus create their own history and timeline. Indeed, back in the 20th century, Shura has found his way into Auderly House and plants the dalekanium bomb in the cellar. The Doctor and Jo make their way back to the tunnels so they can travel back and stop Shura, only to run into an ambush that the Controller has set up. The Doctor convinces the Controller that he has the means to stop the Daleks before they have even begun, and the Controller lets him go, only to be betrayed by an interrogator and exterminated by the Daleks. The Daleks send a strike force to the 20th century to ensure that their version of the future is preserved, and, with the Ogrons, attack as the delegates arrive at the house. In the ensuing battle between the Daleks, the Ogrons and UNIT, the Brigadier evacuates the delegates. The Doctor, back in the present, makes his way down to the cellar to try to convince Shura not to activate the dalekanium bomb; Auderly House is empty, and it will all have been for nothing. However, once Shura hears that the Daleks and the Ogrons are entering the house, he tells the Doctor and Jo to leave – he will take care of both of them. The Brigadier tells his men to fall back to the main road as the Daleks and the Ogrons search the house for the delegates and Styles, with the Daleks intent on carrying out their mission to the exclusion of everything else, and the Ogrons simply following orders. Shura detonates the dalekanium bomb, destroying both the house and everything in it. The Doctor tells Styles that it is now up to him to make the conference a success. Styles assures the Doctor that it will be, because they know what will happen if they fail. The Doctor, nodding at Jo, says that they know too. ===== The story follows the exploits of Arslan, the crown prince of the fictional kingdom of Pars, and it is divided into two parts. In the first part, Pars is taken over by the neighboring nation of Lusitania after Arslan's father, King Andragoras III, falls victim to a treacherous plot led by some of his most trusted retainers. After barely escaping with his life, Arslan rejoins his loyal servant, Daryun. Backed up by only a few more companions, including the philosopher and tactician Narsus and his young servant Elam, also Farangis, an aloof, cold priestess, and Gieve, a travelling musician and con-man, Arslan stands against overwhelming odds to assemble an army strong enough to liberate his nation from the Lusitanian army which is led by the elusive warrior known as "Silvermask", who is later revealed to be another contender to Pars' throne. In the second part, Arslan, now king of Pars, divides himself between defending his country against several external threats, including Silvermask, who is still at large, seeking to claim the throne for himself, and addressing the needs and hopes of his subjects. ===== Homeworld 2 continues the struggle of the Hiigarans and their leader Karan S'jet. While in the original game the player could select either the Kushan or Taiidan races, in the sequel the Kushan are established as the canonical protagonists. During the events of the original game (and played out in the prequel Deserts of Kharak), the Kushan race of the planet Kharak discovered the wreckage of the Khar-Toba, an interstellar transport starship, in the Great Desert. Inside, they found an ancient Hyperspace Core, and a galactic map etched on a piece of stone that showed that the Kushan had been transplanted to Kharak long ago, and pointed the way to their long-lost homeworld, Hiigara. The Kushan built an enormous self-sufficient Mothership, powered by the Hyperspace Core from the Khar-Toba, to carry 600,000 people across the galaxy to Hiigara. Throughout their journey, the Kushan battled the forces of the Taiidan Empire, which had exiled them, and endured numerous other hardships along the way. With the aid of the Bentusi, a powerful and enigmatic race of traders, the Kushan reached Hiigara and destroyed the Taiidan Emperor, laying claim to their homeworld. The story continues that the Hyperspace Core found in the Khar-Toba was the second of only three known to exist in the galaxy, left behind by an ancient race known as the Progenitors. The First Core was possessed by the Bentusi; the third was lost until approximately one hundred years after the Exiles reclaimed Hiigara, found by a Vaygr Warlord named Makaan. With his massive Flagship empowered by the Third Core, Makaan began a campaign of conquest, seizing control of the remnants of the Taiidan Empire and surrounding star systems, and--as of the beginning of Homeworld 2--began attempts to capture Hiigara. The story states that religious beings of the galaxy consider the discovery of the Third Core to announce the End Times, during which Sajuuk, thought to be an immensely powerful being, will return. Makaan believes himself to be the Sajuuk-Khar, a messianic figure that will unite the Three Cores and herald the return of Sajuuk. The game begins with the commissioning of a new Mothership, the Pride of Hiigara, at the Great Derelict at Tanis. The Pride of Hiigara is similar in shape and design to the original Mothership and commanded by Karan S'jet, as in the original game. The ship is attacked by the Vaygr during the final stages of construction, but escapes to rally the Hiigaran fleet. Makaan's fleet lays siege to Hiigara, and the Warlord offers a deal to the Hiigarans: if they surrender the Second Core to him, he will spare their Homeworld. The Bentusi inform the Hiigarans that they must find Balcora Gate, left behind by the Progenitors, behind which is something essential for stopping either the Vaygr threat, the End Times, or both. The Hiigarans find a Progenitor Dreadnought in the wreckage of a massive vessel, and find that it is required to unlock Balcora Gate. The Great Harbor Ship of Bentus, last of the Bentusi, sacrifices itself after being ambushed in a Progenitor AI attack, leaving its Core for the Hiigarans to claim in order to stop Makaan. But the Warlord learns of the Balcora Gate as well, and the game's penultimate mission takes place on the other side, where Hiigarans and Vaygr alike discover that Sajuuk is in fact a Mothership-sized Progenitor starship, with sockets for the Three Hyperspace Cores. The Hiigaran fleet engages Makaan's Flagship and destroys it, claiming the Third Core from the wreckage. With all three Cores, the Hiigarans reactivate Sajuuk, abandoning the Pride of Hiigara, and bring it back to Hiigara to break the Vaygr siege, destroying the Vaygr's planet-killer weapons and saving Hiigara from destruction. Sajuuk is later found to be the key to a galaxy-wide network of hyperspace gates, ushering in a new age of trade and prosperity for all civilized races in the galaxy - the Age of Karan S'jet, the true Sajuuk-Khar. ===== Ruins of Adventure contains four linked Forgotten Realms miniscenarios set in the ruined town of Phlan. The scenarios form the core of the Pool of Radiance computer game, and include clues to that game's solution. The adventurers are hired to remove evil forces from Phlan, presumably by killing them. They hear rumor of a Boss controlling them and seek him out. This Boss proves to be a worthy adversary, but in the end the adventurers defeat him. ===== Penn State. George Giles is a boy raised as a goat who rises in life to be Grand Tutor (spiritual leader or messiah) of New Tammany College (the United States, or the Earth, or the Universe).Guido Sommavilla, Peripenzie Dell'epica Contemporanea, p. 295John Clute. "Giles Boat-Boy or, The Revised New Syllabus" in: Frank N. Magill, ed. Survey of Science Fiction Literature, Vol. 2. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Salem Press, 1979. (pp. 873–877) . He strives for (and achieves) herohood, in accordance with the hero myth as theorized by Lord Raglan and Joseph Campbell. The novel abounds in mythological and Christian allegories, as well as in allusions to the Cold War, 1960s academia, religion and spirituality.The fullest study of the novel is Douglas Robinson, John Barth's Giles Goat-Boy: A Study (Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä Press, 1980). Rather than discovering his true identity, George ultimately chooses it, much like Ebeneezer Cooke does in Barth's previous novel, The Sotweed Factor. The principle behind the allegorical renaming of key roles in the novel as roman à clef is that the Earth (or the Universe) is a University. Thus, for example, the founder of a religion or great religious leader becomes a Grand Tutor (in German Grosslehrer), and Barth renames specific leaders as well: Jesus Christ becomes Enos Enoch (meaning in Hebrew "The man who walked with God" or "humanity when it walked with God"Sommavilla, pp. 285–9. Robinson (1980: 363) suggests that Enos Enoch is also a pun on "enough's enough."), Moses becomes Moishe, Buddha becomes the original Sakhyan. As the founder of the maieutic method, Socrates becomes Maios; Plato (whose Greek name Platon means "broad- shouldered") becomes Scapulas (from scapula, shoulder-blade); Aristotle, as the coiner of the term entelekheia (lit. "having an end within," usually translated "entelechy," or glossed as the actualization of a potentiality), becomes Entelechus. The heroes of epic poems tend to be named after the Greek for "son of": Odysseus becomes Laertides (son of Laertes), Aeneas becomes Anchisides (son of Anchises), and so on. The subtitle The Revised New Syllabus means, in the novel's Universe=University allegory, a parodic rewriting of the New Testament. Satan is the Dean o' Flunks, and lives in the Nether Campus (hell); John the Baptist is John the Bursar; the Sermon on the Mount becomes the Seminar-on-the-Hill; the Last Judgment becomes the Final Examination. Among the parodic variations, a computer replaces the Holy Spirit, and an artificial insemination the Immaculate Conception.Although Barth's narrator also provocatively notes that while George Giles was conceived in a virgin, he was not exactly born to one, as he broke his mother's hymen being delivered. For a glossary of Barth's Universe=University renamings, see Robinson (1980: 363–73). As claimed in the opening prefaces, the text is "discovered" by the author. A hypertext encyclopedia also figures in the book, years before the invention of hypertext and three decades before the Web became part of society at large. The character Max Spielman is a parody of Ernst Haeckel, whose insight "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" is rephrased as "ontogeny recapitulates cosmogeny" and "proctoscopy repeats hagiography".Mercer 1971: 7 The "riddle of the universe" is rephrased as "the riddle of the sphincters".Mercer 1971: 6. The novel also contains a forty-page parody in small type of the full text of Oedipus Rex called Taliped Decanus. The digressive play-within-a-book is grossly disproportionate to the length of the book, parodying both Sophocles and Freud. ===== The events in Freelancer take place 800 years after those in the video game Starlancer (2000). The solar system was engulfed in a civil war, fought between the Western Alliance and the Eastern Coalition. Facing defeat, the Alliance placed its people in stasis and sent them to the Sirius system, where they settled and transformed the surrounding space (the Sirius sector) into a region of political intrigue and opportunity. The rule of the sector is mostly split among four houses, each named after the sleeper ship that brought them to the system. Each house exhibits the culture of its terrestrial ancestor: Liberty of 1920s United States, Bretonia of Victorian era United Kingdom, Kusari of Shogunate era Japan, and Rheinland of Second Industrial Revolution Germany. The fifth sleeper ship, Hispania, suffered a malfunction en route and was abandoned in deep space (in the Omicron Alpha system). The descendants of its crew became pirates. Freelancers planetary bodies and space stations lie close to a single plane in each system, although some are above or below this plane and ships can travel out of the plane. There are 48 known star systems, and spacecraft can travel from one system to another by passing through jump gates. Within a system, spacecraft can travel in the trade lanes--a series of gates that connect to form a "space highway"--to quickly reach places of interest, such as planets, space stations, and mining operations. Asteroid and debris fields populate some of the systems, and secret hideouts and derelicts with valuable items exist in deep space. Merchant ships ply the trade lanes, carrying cargo from system to system and occasionally coming under attack by pirates. Patrolling the systems are police and large naval warships. ===== The adventure begins with PCs falling down an earthen tunnel. It is suggested that the portal to Dungeonland be a barrel within the dungeon of Castle Greyhawk, but the Dungeon Master (DM) may work in any premise to get them to this stage. Upon landing, the PCs find themselves in a surreal, oddly- shaped hallway which contains The Pool of Tears and the entrance to a diminutive garden. Once they have explored these areas, they cross a fungi forest and arrive at The Wilds of Dungeonland, which is essentially a wooded area containing several connected clearings. Over the course of the adventure, the PCs run into variations of Lewis Carroll's Wonderland creatures and characters, presented in a Dungeons and Dragons style. For instance, instead of the Mock Turtle, a Mock Dragon Turtle is present. The March Hare is a lycanthrope, and so on. The point of the adventure seems to be diversion and novelty more than anything else. There is little treasure and no overall plot. The PCs may leave Dungeonland when they choose, by returning to the Great Hall and wishing themselves back up the tunnel. The PCs may also explore The Land of the Magic Mirror, which adjoins Dungeonland to the West, if they are able to find the way. ===== In this module, the player characters plummet into a strange partial plane. They meet the Jabberwock, the Bandersnatch, and the Walrus and the Carpenter, and become involved in a giant game of chess. ===== Hair is a rock musical focusing on the lives of two young men against the backdrop of the hippie counterculture of the Vietnam era. Claude Hooper Bukowski is a naive Oklahoman sent off to New York City after being drafted by the Army ("Age Of Aquarius"). Before his draft board- appointment, Claude starts a self-guided tour of New York, where he encounters a close-knit "tribe" of hippies led by George Berger. As Claude looks on, the hippies panhandle from a trio of horseback riders including Sheila Franklin, a debutante from Short Hills, New Jersey ("Sodomy"). Claude later catches and mounts a runaway horse, which the hippies have rented, and with which Claude exhibits his riding skills to Sheila ("Donna"). Claude then returns the horse to Berger, who offers to show him around. That evening, Claude gets stoned on marijuana with Berger and the tribe. He is then introduced to various race and class issues of the 1960s ("Hashish", "Colored Spade", "Manchester", "I'm Black/Ain't Got No"). The next morning, Berger finds a newspaper clipping which gives Sheila's address in Short Hills, New Jersey. The tribe members—LaFayette "Hud" Johnson, Jeannie Ryan, and "Woof Dacshund"—crash a private dinner party to introduce Claude to Sheila, who secretly enjoys the disruption of her rigid environment ("I Got Life"). After Berger and company are arrested, Claude uses his last $50 to bail Berger out of jail—where Woof's refusal to have his hair cut leads into the title song of the soundtrack ("Hair"). When Sheila is unable to borrow any money from her father, Berger returns to his parents' home. His mother gives him enough cash to bail out his friends. They subsequently attend a peace rally in Central Park, where Claude drops acid for the first time ("LBJ", "Electric Blues/Old Fashioned Melody", "Hare Krishna"). Just as Jeannie proposes marriage to Claude, in order to keep him out of the Army, Sheila shows up to apologize. Claude's "trip" reflects his inner conflict over which of three worlds he fits in with: his own native Oklahoman farm culture, Sheila's upper-class society, or the hippies' free- wheeling environment. After snapping out of his acid trip, Claude has a falling-out with Berger and the tribe members, ostensibly due to a practical joke they pull on Sheila (taking her clothes while she's skinny-dipping, which forces her to hail a taxi in just her panties), but also due to their philosophical differences over the war in Vietnam—and over personal versus communal responsibility. After wandering the city ("Where Do I Go?"), Claude finally reports to the draft board (“Black Boys/White Boys”), completes his enlistment, and is shipped off to Nevada for basic training. It's now Winter in New York when Claude writes to Sheila from Nevada ("Walking In Space"). She, in turn, shares the news with Berger and his friends. Berger devises a scheme to visit Claude in Nevada. Meanwhile, Hud's fiancée—with whom he has a son, LaFayette Jr.—wants to marry as they had apparently planned to earlier ("Easy To Be Hard"). The tribe members trick Sheila's brother Steve out of his car, then head west to visit Claude. Arriving at the Army training center where Claude is stationed ("Three-Five-Zero-Zero", "Good Morning Starshine"), the hippies are turned away...ostensibly because the base is on alert, but also because the MP on duty doesn't like their looks. (The MP also assumes a condescending attitude toward Berger, caricaturing his perceived vernacular.) Sometime later, Sheila chats up army sergeant Fenton at a local bar. She lures the sergeant, with intimations of sex, to an isolated desert road, acquiring his uniform. The hippies steal Fenton's car, and Berger cuts his hair and puts on the uniform (symbolically becoming a responsible adult), then drives the sergeant's car onto the Army base. He finds Claude and offers to take his place for the next headcount so that Claude can meet Sheila and the others for a going-away picnic they're having for him in the desert. As fate would have it, just after a disguised Claude slips away to the picnic, the base becomes fully activated with immediate ship-outs for Vietnam. Berger's ruse is never discovered; clearly horrified at the prospect of joining the war, he is herded onto the plane to be shipped out. Claude arrives back to see the barracks empty and frantically runs after Berger's plane but is unable to reach it before it takes off for Southeast Asia ("The Flesh Failures"). Months later, Claude, Sheila, and the tribe gather around Berger's grave in Arlington National Cemetery, whose grave marker shows that he was killed in Vietnam. As "Let the Sunshine In" plays, they mourn the loss of their friend. The movie ends with what appears to be a full-scale peace-protest in Washington, D.C. ===== *In the musical, Claude is a member of a hippie "tribe" sharing a New York City apartment, leading a bohemian lifestyle, enjoying "free love", and rebelling against his parents and the draft, but he eventually goes to Vietnam. In the film, Claude is rewritten as an innocent draftee from Oklahoma, newly arrived in New York City to join the military. In New York, he gets caught up with the group of hippies while awaiting deployment to Army training camp. They introduce Claude to their psychedelically inspired style of living and eventually the tribe drive to Nevada to visit him at training camp. *In the musical, Sheila is an outspoken feminist leader of the Tribe who loves Berger as well as Claude. In the film, she is a high-society debutante who catches Claude's eye. *In the film, Berger is not only at the heart of the hippie Tribe but is assigned some of Claude's conflict involving whether or not to obey the draft. A major plot change in the film involves a mistake that leads Berger to go to Vietnam in Claude's place, where he is killed. *The musical focuses on the U.S. peace movement, as well as the love relationships among the Tribe members, while the film focuses on the carefree antics of the hippies. ===== The story begins with the catastrophic failure of an elevator which Watson had inspected just days before, leading to suspicion cast upon both herself and the Intuitionist school as a whole. To cope with the inspectorate, the corporate elevator establishment, and other looming elements, she must return to her intellectual roots, the texts (both known and lost) of the founder of the school, to try to reconstruct what is happening around her. In the course of her search, she discovers the central idea of the founder of Intuitionism – that of the "black box", the perfect elevator, which will deliver the people to the city of the future. ===== The story involves a party of player characters (PCs) who travel to the land of Barovia, a small nation surrounded by a deadly magical fog. The master of nearby Castle Ravenloft, Count Strahd von Zarovich, tyrannically rules the country, and a prologue explains that the residents must barricade their doors each night to avoid attacks by Strahd and his minions. The Burgomaster's mansion is the focus of these attacks, and, for reasons that are not initially explained, Strahd is after the Burgomaster's adopted daughter, Ireena Kolyana. Before play begins, the Dungeon Master (or DM, the player who organizes and directs the game play) randomly draws five cards from a deck of six. Two of these cards determine the locations of two magical weapons useful in defeating Strahd: the Holy Symbol and the Sunsword. The next two cards determine the locations of Strahd and the Tome of Strahd, a book that details Strahd's long-ago unrequited love. In this work, it is revealed that Strahd had fallen in love with a young girl, who in turn loved his younger brother. Strahd blamed his age for the rejection, and made a pact with evil powers to live forever. He then slew his brother, but the young girl killed herself in response, and Strahd found that he had become a vampire. All possible locations are inside Castle Ravenloft. The fifth and final card selected determines Strahd's motivation. There are four possible motivations for Strahd. He may want to replace one of the PCs and attempt to turn the character into a vampire and take on that character's form. He may desire the love of Ireena, whose appearance matches that of his lost love, Tatyana. Using mind control, Strahd will try to force a PC to attack Ireena and gain her love by "saving" her from the situation he created. Strahd may also want to create an evil magic item, or destroy the Sunsword. If, during play, the party's fortune is told at the gypsy camp in Barovia, the random elements are altered to match the cards drawn by the gypsy. As the party journeys through Barovia and the castle, the game play is guided using 12 maps with corresponding sections in the book's body guide. Example maps and sections include the Lands of Barovia, the Court of the Count, five entries for each level of the Spires of Ravenloft, and the Dungeons and Catacombs. Each location contains treasure and adversaries, including zombies, wolves, ghouls, ghosts, and other creatures. The main objective of the game is to destroy Count Strahd. The DM is instructed to play the vampire intelligently, and to keep him alive as long as possible, making him flee when necessary. In an optional epilogue, Ireena is reunited with her lover. They leave the "mortal world" as Ireena says, "Through these many centuries we have played out the tragedy of our lives." ===== Shigeru, a deaf young man whose job is to collect garbage with a collection vehicle, finds a surfboard with a chipped tip and takes it home. He becomes determined to learn how to swim and invites his friend, who also plans to surf, to the sea. ===== Kitano plays Murakawa, a Tokyo-based yakuza enforcer who has grown tired of gangster life. He is sent by his boss to Okinawa, supposedly to mediate a dispute between their allies, the Nakamatsu and Anan clans. Murakawa openly suspects the assignment is an attempt to have him removed and even beats up one of his colleagues, Takahashi, whom he distrusts, but ends up going with his men. He finds that the dispute is insignificant, and while wondering why he was sent to Okinawa at all, the group's temporary headquarters are bombed and they are then ambushed in a bar, leaving several of his men dead. Fleeing to the seaside, the survivors take refuge in a remote beach house belonging to a brother of one of the Nakamatsu members and decide to wait for the trouble to blow over. Whilst spending time at the beach, the group engages in childish games and pranks and begins to enjoy themselves. However, the games frequently have a violent undertone. When two of his men alternate shooting at a beer can on each other's head, Murakawa turns it into a game of Russian roulette. Putting the seemingly loaded gun to his head, he pulls the trigger on the last chamber. The chamber is revealed to be empty and Murakawa is unharmed. Murakawa later dreams of the Russian roulette game, although in his dream, the revolver is loaded and he is killed. When he wakes up, he walks down to the shore. He sees a car pull up, and a man drags a woman into the sand and attempts to rape her. Murakawa stoically watches for a while and then walks past them. When the man realizes Murakawa has been there the whole time and shouts at him, Murakawa headbutts him. The man pulls out a knife and threatens Murakawa. Murakawa then shoots the man, but to his companions, he claims the woman shot him. She then joins Murakawa and the gang at the beach house, and comes frequently to visit, spending time with Murakawa. Later, an assassin disguised as a fisherman appears. He kills several people, including the boss of the Nakamatsu clan and one of Murakawa's men, in the middle of a frisbee match. Learning that Takahashi is arriving in Okinawa, Murakawa and two of his surviving men visit his hotel. Unable to find him at first, they unexpectedly run into Takahashi and the assassin in the elevator, which results in a shootout, killing the assassin and Murakawa's men. Murakawa learns from interrogating Takahashi that their boss had intended all along to partner with the Anan clan and had sent Murakawa on a suicide mission to take over his turf. He also learns that the boss will be meeting with the Anan that night in a hotel. Takahashi is killed and Murakawa sets off with the only survivor of the group, a member of the Nakamatsu clan, who helps him by rigging the electricity in the hotel to go off at a certain time. Murakawa tells the woman that he may come back, and the woman promises to wait for him. Later that night, while waiting for all the yakuza to arrive, the Nakamatsu member asks Murakawa to take him with him, but admits that he has had enough when Murakawa asks. When the electricity goes off, Murakawa goes into the hotel and slaughters both clans with an assault rifle. The next morning, while the woman continues to wait for him, Murakawa drives to a spot near the beach and commits suicide by shooting himself in the head. The scene then switches to the car and the horizon and slowly fades. ===== In Getting any?, Minoru Iizuka (also known as "Dankan") portrays Asao, a naive and goofy man who lives with his grandfather in Saitama Prefecture. Even though Asao is 35 years old, he is very inexperienced with girls, but he absolutely wants to have sex. One day as he watches an erotic TV film, he realizes that all he needs to get girls and sex is a fancy car, so he runs to the closest car dealer. In the TV film, the male character had a Porsche 911 Cabriolet, so Asao aims for a luxury import car dealer. To the seller asking what kind of cars he is looking for, Asao naively answers that he wants "a car for having sex". After trying a cabriolet, with the assistance of a very helpful and somewhat helpless hostess, Asao confesses he is strapped. All he can afford is a used domestic budget-car, so he is forced to buy a Honda Today, a modest K-car which is very cheap compared to the Mercedes-Benz, Rolls Royce, Aston Martin and Ferrari displayed in the show room. Then, he quickly restages the scene he has seen in the TV film, with the help of a female mannequin, before aiming for street girls. Quickly, Asao realizes that male-female social relations are not as simple as in porn, and that real life girls are not as naive as in fictional works. After several humiliating and unsuccessful tries, Asao comes to the conclusion that roadsters are more efficient. Such cars are expensive but Asao is without money, so he asks his grandfather to help him. After cashing in his grandfather's liver and kidneys, he returns to the car dealer. The seller convinces him to buy an Austin Healey Sprite MkI, a classic British roadster, but once he learns how much money Asao really has, he changes his mind and sells him a Mazda Eunos Roadster (Mazda Miata), a popular Japanese roadster, claiming it is the same car. When Asao insists, the seller claims the '50s Austin-Healey was old-fashioned and the Eunos is a better model for cruising. The Eunos is driven a few meters and starts falling apart. Asao complains to the seller, but the latter is a con-man and refuses to talk with him any more, so Asao picks up the fallen pieces and attaches them to the back of his car. The young man tries his luck anyway with girls on the street, but does not succeed, so he finally sells his wrecked car to a local salvage company. As he walks home, he finds an apparently abandoned, parked, Mazda RX-7 Series 5 Turbo (FC), and he decides to steal it. Asao drives a few miles when he encounters a young woman walking along the road and decides to talk to her, as shown in the erotic film, but the sports car does not brake anymore and he runs over the girl, and crashes the car into a billboard. He is lucky enough to not get hurt and he ditches the coupé. Asao imagines stewardesses are naked and offer "on-board sex service" to first class 747 customers, so he decides to travel by plane. Since he does not have any money, he will do an armed bank robbery, but first he needs a weapon, so he heads to Kawaguchi City (near Tokyo) where he will be able to make his own revolver in the local iron foundry. Eventually, he has many adventures such as joining the yakuza, becoming Zatoichi, becoming invisible, and getting transformed into a giant fly-man a la the film The Fly. The movie ends with his capture after diving into a large reservoir of feces. After the credits, there is a scene where Asao jumps around Tokyo as the fly-man before landing/getting impaled on Tokyo Tower. ===== Shinji and Masaru are high school delinquents, terrifying their classmates, stealing money, and setting their teacher's car on fire. After some of their victims hire a boxer to beat up Masaru, he decides to get revenge, and takes his shy friend Shinji along with him to a boxing gym. To their trainers' surprise, Shinji is naturally- talented at boxing and easily defeats Masaru in a sparring session. Masaru encourages his friend to keep going at it, and quits boxing, opting instead to join the yakuza. As Shinji focuses on becoming a successful boxer, Masaru aims to become a gang leader, and their paths diverge. While the two of them climb to the top in their respective areas, Shinji looks for guidance from someone else after being left by Masaru, and this leads him into an unhealthy lifestyle that results in the end of his boxing career. Masaru's self- confidence and lack of respect for his yakuza boss also end his time with the yakuza, getting him kicked out. In the end, they are left with nothing, and as they ride their bike together in the schoolyard, Shinji asks if it is the end, to which Masaru replies that it is only the beginning. ===== Masao, who lives alone with his grandmother in an old Shitamachi area of Tokyo, receives a package, and in looking for a seal finds a photo of his long lost mother. He finds her address in Toyohashi, several hundred miles to the west. Leaving home to see his mother, he meets his grandmother's neighbors, Kikujiro and his wife. Kikujiro's wife forces Kikujiro to accompany Masao on a journey to see his mother, telling Masao's grandmother that they are going to the beach. At the start of their journey, Kikujiro is not serious about reaching Toyohashi. He gets absorbed in track cycling races and gambles away their winnings. Later, left outside a yakitori restaurant, Masao encounters a molester. After a narrow escape, Kikujiro promises to keep to the journey and take Masao to his mother. When the taxi Kikujiro steals breaks down, they are forced to hitchhike to Toyohashi, meeting various people along the way. They get lifts from a juggler and her boyfriend on a date, and a travelling poet who delivers them to Toyohashi. When they finally reach the address of Masao's mother, Kikujiro finds her living as a housewife with another man and their daughter. Masao's mother lives a completely different life from what he expected. It is almost as if she has forgotten him. Kikujiro tells Masao that she has just moved away, pretending not to have seen her. He tries to comfort Masao with a small blue bell shaped like an angel bullied from two bikers whom he happens to come across. Masao is so disappointed that Kikujiro cannot help but try to brighten up their return trip to Tokyo. He tells him an angel will come at the sound of the bell. They visit a summer matsuri held in a local Shinto shrine. While Kikujiro gets into trouble with some yakuza over a fixed shooting game, Masao dreams of dancing Tengu. Back on the road, they meet the poet and the two bikers again. They decide to camp a few days together. Masao enjoys playing some traditional games with them. Kikujiro is reminded of his own mother (it is implied that she, like Masao's mother, also left him as a child). Kikujiro gets one of the bikers to take him from their camp to his mother's nursing home in Daito-cho, a small country town, but he eventually decides not to see her and returns to the camp. The men continue to do their best to entertain Masao by larking about for a few more days. Before they are to return to Tokyo, Masao dreams about them appearing over the Milky Way. In the morning, the bikers say goodbye to them and leave the camp. Masao and Kikujiro get a lift in the poet's car to Tokyo. After dropping them off at a bridge, the poet continues on his way to Osaka and Kyūshū. Before Masao and Kikujiro part, Kikujiro says "Let's do it again sometime" and Masao thanks him. Kikujiro tells Masao to take care of his grandma. Masao asks Kikujiro's name and Kikujiro answers "Kikujiro! Now scram!". Masao passes a small bridge with the Angel bell ringing. ===== Yamamoto (Takeshi Kitano) is a brutal and experienced Yakuza enforcer whose boss was killed and whose clan was defeated in a criminal war with a rival family. Surviving clan members have few options: either to join the winners, reconciling with shame and distrust, or to die by committing seppuku. Yamamoto, however, decides to escape to Los Angeles along with his associate Kato (Susumu Terajima). There he finds his estranged half-brother Ken (Claude Maki), who runs a small-time drug business together with his local African-American friends. At the first meeting, Yamamoto badly hurts one of them, Denny (Omar Epps), for an attempt to fraud him. Later, Denny becomes one of the Yamamoto's closest friends and associates. Used to living in a clan and according to its laws, Yamamoto creates a hapless gang out of Ken's buddies. The new gang quickly and brutally attacks Mexican drug bosses and takes control of their territory in LA. They also form an alliance with Shirase (Masaya Kato), a criminal leader of Little Tokyo district, making their group even stronger. As time passes, Yamamoto and his new gang emerge as a formidable force, gradually expanding their turf to such an extent that they confront the powerful Italian Mafia. Now everybody respectfully addresses Yamamoto as Aniki (兄貴, elder brother). But soon Aniki suddenly loses any interest in their now successful but dangerous business, spending his time with a girlfriend or just sitting silently thinking about something. However, the Mafia ruthlessly strikes back, and soon Yamamoto and his gang are driven into a disastrous situation of no return as they are hunted down one by one. ===== As an English teacher and lecturer at Albert Mission College, Krishna has led a mundane and monotonous lifestyle comparable to that of a cow. He too plays an important role of protecting the Indian culture. Soon his life took a turn when his wife, Susila, and their child, Leela, come to live with him. With their welfare on his hands, Krishna learns to be a proper husband and learns how to accept the responsibility of taking care of his family. He felt that his life had comparatively improved, as he understood that there's more meaning to life than to just teaching in the college. However, on the day when they went in search of a new house, Susila contracts typhoid after visiting a dirty lavatory, keeping her in bed for weeks. Throughout the entire course of her illness, Krishna constantly tries to keep an optimistic view about Susila's illness, keeping his hopes up by thinking that her illness would soon be cured. However, Susila eventually succumbs and passes away. Krishna, destroyed by her loss, has suicidal thoughts but gives them up for the sake of his daughter, Leela. He leads his life as a lost and miserable person after her death, but after he receives a letter from a stranger who indicates that Susila has been in contact with him and that she wants to communicate with Krishna, he becomes more collected and cheerful. This leads to Krishna’s journey in search of enlightenment, with the stranger acting as a medium to Susila in the spiritual world. Leela, on the other hand, goes to a preschool where Krishna gets to meet the headmaster, a profound man who cared for the students in his school and teaches them moral values through his own methods. The Headmaster puts his students as his top priority but he doesn’t care for his own family and children, eventually leaving them on the day predicted by an astrologer as to be when he was going to die, which did not come true. Krishna gets to learn through the headmaster on the journey to enlightenment; eventually learning to communicate to Susila on his own, thus concluding the entire story itself, with the quote that he felt 'a moment of rare immutable joy'. ===== In the village of Devil's End an archaeological dig is excavating the infamous Devil's Hump, a Bronze Age burial mound. A local white witch, Olive Hawthorne arrives to protest, warning of great evil and the coming of the horned beast, but she is dismissed as a crank. After watching a television broadcast about the dig the Third Doctor tells Jo that Miss Hawthorne is right – the dig must be stopped, and they go there. Miss Hawthorne goes to see the new local vicar, Rev. Magister. Magister – actually the Master – tries to assure her that her fears are unfounded, but his hypnosis fails to overcome her will. Backed by a group of followers, the Master is conducting ceremonies in the cavern below the Church to summon up Azal, a force of evil. The Doctor and Jo reach the mound and the Doctor rushes inside to stop the dig, but it is too late. The tomb door opens and icy gusts of wind rush out, while the eyes of a gargoyle, Bok, flare with a reddish glow. Captain Mike Yates and Sergeant Benton arrive at the village the following morning, but the Brigadier, arriving later, finds himself unable to enter the village, as there is an invisible dome-shaped barrier, 10 miles in diameter and one mile high, surrounding it that causes anything trying to enter to heat up and burst into flame. He contacts Yates and is briefed on the situation while the Doctor and Jo return to the dig where they find a small spaceship in the mound, which has been condensed. From this, the Doctor realises that the Master is trying to conjure up an ancient and all-powerful demon, who is seen on Earth to be the Devil but is actually an alien. The Doctor explains that the Dæmons have used Earth as a giant experiment throughout its history, becoming part of human myth. The Master has called the Dæmon up once, and right now, it is so small as to be invisible. The third summoning, however, could signal the end of the experiment, and the world. The Master summons up Azal again and demands to be given the Dæmon's power, but Azal warns him that he is not the Master's servant. Azal says on his third appearance, he will decide if Earth deserves to continue existing. If so, he will give it to the Master. Azal then vanishes in another heat wave. The Doctor is captured by a mob of villagers working for the Master. They tie him up to a maypole and plan to burn him alive, but with the help of Miss Hawthorne and Benton he escapes. In the Church cavern Jo and Yates watch as the Master summons Azal one last time. They try to interrupt the ritual but are taken prisoner. As Jo is prepared as a sacrifice to Azal, the Brigadier manages to get through the heat barrier and enter the village. The Doctor manages to avoid Bok, who is guarding the Church and gets into the cavern, where the Master is expecting him. Outside, UNIT troops are held back by Bok. The Doctor and the Master both try to appeal to Azal but for opposite reasons. The huge, devil-like figure decides to give his power to the Master, and fires electricity at the Doctor to kill him. However, Jo, steps in front of the Doctor, asking Azal to kill her instead. Azal is unable to comprehend this illogical act of self-sacrifice, and his power turns against him, destroying himself and the Church. The Master tries to escape but is captured by the UNIT troops and taken away. The Doctor, Jo, Miss Hawthorne and the UNIT team join the villagers in their May Day celebrations. ===== The book follows the lives of an apple tree and a boy, who develop a relationship with one another. The tree is very "giving" and the boy evolves into a "taking" teenager, man, then elderly man. Despite the fact that the boy ages in the story, the tree addresses the boy as "Boy" his entire life. In his childhood, the boy enjoys playing with the tree, climbing her trunk, swinging from her branches, carving "Me + T (Tree)" into the bark, and eating her apples. However, as the boy grows older, he spends less time with the tree and tends to visit her only when he wants material items at various stages of his life, or not coming to the tree alone (such as bringing a lady friend to the tree and carving "Me +Y.L." (her initials, often assumed to be an acronym for "young love") into the tree. In an effort to make the boy happy at each of these stages, the tree gives him parts of herself, which he can transform into material items, such as money (from her apples), a house (from her branches), and a boat (from her trunk). With every stage of giving, "the Tree was happy". In the final pages, both the tree and the boy feel the sting of their respective "giving" and "taking" nature. When only a stump remains for the tree (including the carving "Me + T"), she is not happy, at least at that moment. The boy does return as a tired elderly man to meet the tree once more. She tells him she is sad because she cannot provide him shade, apples, or any materials like in the past. He ignores this (because his teeth are too weak for apples, and he is too old to swing on branches and too tired to climb her trunk) and states that all he wants is "a quiet place to sit and rest," which the tree, who is weak being just a stump, could provide. With this final stage of giving, "the Tree was happy". ===== Francis "Frank" Osbaldistone tells his tale, beginning with his return to his father William's merchant house of Osbaldistone and Tresham in Crane Alley, London, from an apprenticeship in a French associate's business. There, he meets with his business-minded father's anger and disappointment, since he has been more preoccupied with writing poetry than learning the business, much to his father's disgust. William was originally disinherited in favour of his younger brother Sir Hildebrand Osbaldistone, who has inherited both the family fortune and the family seat of Osbaldistone Hall instead. William, turned out at the age of his own son, has built a successful business with his trading company in the City and is a dissenter in religion, unlike his brother. Owen, the Head Clerk of Osbaldistone and Tresham and a long time friend of the family, attempts to persuade Frank to follow his father's wishes. Frank is not swayed. Instead, William sends him to stay with his uncle Hildebrand in Northumberland, near the border with Scotland. Frank sets out on horseback, meeting some travellers on the way. He observes that one of the travellers is nervous and protective of a box that he carries. Frank begins to tease the traveller, Morris, pretending to assume an interest in the mysterious box. At an inn, they are joined by a confident and sociable Scottish "cattle dealer” Campbell. They eat and drink and discuss politics together at an inn and then part ways, when Morris entreats Campbell to travel with him to provide protection, since Campbell has recounted how he thwarted two highwaymen singlehandedly. After Frank parts from the company near his destination, he encounters a fox hunt in progress. A lovely young huntress, dressed in riding habit, greets him and guesses his identity. Frank is smitten by the young woman, noting her intelligence and beauty along with her independent manner. She is Diana "Die" Vernon, a relative by marriage of Sir Hildebrand. They proceed to Osbaldistone Hall, a large, rambling and run-down old manor-house, filled with massive old furniture, rusted suits of armour, hunting trophies, marking the interests of his uncle and cousins. Frank meets old Sir Hildebrand, a former Cavalier, and his five older sons, each described by Die as given entirely to drinking and sport. At dinner, he meets the youngest brother, Rashleigh, who, unlike his father and brothers, is sober, charming and erudite. Frank notes a connection between Die and Rashleigh. Die explains that Rashleigh, a scholar intended for the priesthood, is her tutor. The next day, after encountering Andrew Fairservice the gardener, a loquacious Scotsman, Diana tells Frank that he has been charged with robbery and that the local Justice of the Peace Squire Inglewood, has a warrant for his arrest. Rather than flee to Scotland, he determines to protest his innocence. Die guides him and they encounter Rashleigh, who claims to have been pleading Frank's case. After declaring his innocence to the Justice, Frank confronts his accuser, who is none other than Morris. Morris, a government paymaster, has been robbed of his mysterious box, which contained gold specie with which to pay the English troops in the area. Frank's prior light-hearted interest in Morris' box on the journey north is the basis for the charge. Upon Frank's vehement declaration of innocence, and the Justice's sympathetic acquittal, Morris abandons his suit against Frank. Jobson, the Squire's pedantic and officious clerk, wants to pursue the matter on legal principle. After diverting Jobson by sending him on wild-goose chase, Rashleigh departs and quickly returns with the cattle-dealer, Campbell. Campbell witnesses truthfully that he was at the scene of the robbery and did not see Frank. Freed by the Squire from the charge, Frank returns to Osbaldistone Hall. He is consumed with jealousy after discovering that Rashleigh was in serious consideration for Die's hand in marriage; the usually sober Frank gets drunk with the family after Die exits, and strikes Rashleigh during an argument. In the morning, Frank apologises sincerely but Rashleigh's too-quick forgiveness rings false. Rashleigh travels to take Frank's place at Osbaldistone and Tresham. Diana warns Frank that Rashleigh is a subtle and dangerous conniver, and has her under his power. Frank begins to tutor Die and falls even more deeply in love with her. In between hours in the library with Die or in hunting with his cousins, he converses with Andrew Fairservice and learns much about goings on at the Hall: there are suspicious visitations by shadowy persons unknown; the servants fear a ghost that haunts the library; and a mysterious Catholic priest, Father Vaughan, visits the hall. Frank receives a letter from Tresham asking him to meet Owen in Glasgow and, only then, realises that none of his letters have reached London, including one warning his father of Rashleigh's dubious character. Die informs him that while William has been on the continent, Rashleigh has absconded with financial instruments vital to Osbaldistone and Tresham's solvency. Frank determines to help his father's business. He parts with Diana. She is destined to live in a convent due to a family compact (in which she has no say), as she refuses to marry any of Sir Hildebrand's sons. He enlists Andrew Fairservice as his servant and guide and hurries to Glasgow to find Owen and catch Rashleigh, who is now understood to be a Jacobite agent and agitator. Rob Roy and Francis Osbaldistone in the crypt of Glasgow Cathedral. Frontispiece to an 1886 edition of the novel, engraving by Dalziel Brothers. They lodge in Glasgow, and at services in a famous kirk in the religious town, an unseen stranger presses a note into Frank's hand telling him he is in danger and to meet him on a well-known bridge at midnight for information. Frank meets the stranger, who conveys him to the tolbooth (jail), which they enter unchallenged. Inside they find Owen, who is overjoyed to see Frank. Osbaldistone and Tresham's favoured Scottish trading partner, MacVitie, maliciously made Owen a debtor on behalf of his now insolvent employer and imprisoned him. Bailie Nicol Jarvie, a Glasgow magistrate who is also a Scottish partner of Osbaldistone and Tresham, arrives at the jail after midnight, when Sabbath is over. The mysterious stranger is Campbell, whom Jarvie recognises as his kinsman, Rob Roy McGregor. On Rob's promise to repay Jarvie 1000 Scots pounds that he owes him, Jarvie never says his name. Jarvie frees Owen, and allows Frank and Campbell to leave. The absent turnkey (jailer), who has let them pass in and out freely, is Rob Roy's man, Dougal. Before disappearing with Dougal, Rob tells Frank to meet him in his Highland home and suggests that Bailie Jarvie should accompany him to collect his gold. While Jarvie and Owen discuss finances, Frank takes a walk to the University grounds, where he spies Rashleigh walking with Morris and MacVitie. Frank confronts Rashleigh and they duel. Rob Roy breaks it up. After Rob sends Rashleigh away, he tells Frank to meet him at the Clachan of Aberfoyle in the Highlands. Frank now realises that Rob's affairs are entwined with his own and that Rob has had a long association with Rashleigh and Die. Frank, Jarvie and Andrew ride to the Clachan, where they find a rude country inn. Tired, cold and hungry, they enter over the objections of the landlady and the three men in plaids, drinking brandy at a table. A brief brawl ensues between the two parties, which is broken up by a fourth Highlander who has been sleeping on the floor. This man disappears, as Frank recognises him as Dougal, Rob's man. Frank and Jarvie converse with the men in plaid, and find they are the leaders of bands of armed men. Two are Highlanders; the second is a Lowland chief, Duncan Galbraith, who heads the Lennox militia. All have been enlisted by the English army to find and arrest Rob Roy. Thus Rob Roy does not meet them at the inn, but sends a note to Frank to meet at his home. Suddenly, an English patrol enters the inn, dragging Dougal with them. Frank and Jarvie are arrested as they fit the descriptions of the two people whom the patrol seeks. The soldiers force Dougal to lead them to Rob's lair, bringing Frank, Jarvie and Andrew along. They are ambushed by Highlanders, and the patrol is disarmed. Dougal, playing the fool, has led the patrol into a trap. The leader of the Highlanders is Helen, Rob's wife, a fierce, proud noblewoman, fully armed. Her band is composed mostly of old men, women and children. After declaiming the wrongs done to her and her clan, she produces the unfortunate Morris, now a hostage, and he is callously thrown into the nearby loch. The fighting men of the band, armed for battle, and led by Rob's two sons arrive. They report that Rob has been captured by the Duke's army. After Jarvie successfully appeals for clemency for them from Helen, pleading kinship, Frank is sent as emissary to the Duke's camp. He finds Rob is tied up for execution. The Duke's army sets off, but Rob escapes in crossing the river. Frank lays low in the confusion that ensues. Then he walks in the dark night along a path through the forest back to the Clachan. He meets Diana and a stranger, an older nobleman, riding on the path. Die gives him the missing bills that Rashleigh had taken and bids him adieu. Frank sadly assumes that the man is Diana's husband. Frank is overtaken by Rob, who takes him to his home, after expressing anger at Morris' murder. There, Jarvie and Andrew are already ensconced. Jarvie reviews the recovered bills and declares Osbaldistone and Tresham to be cleared of debt. Rob repays Jarvie with 1000 pounds of gold louis d'or. During the night, Rob tells Frank of how he and Rashleigh robbed Morris – a lark for Rob as an accomplished cattle-thief and blackmailer, but serious business for Rashleigh as a Jacobite agent. By now, Rashleigh has become a turncoat to save his skin and flees to Stirling as a traitor to the Jacobite cause. Frank and Jarvie are sent on their way homeward to Glasgow, after an emotional farewell from Rob, Helen, and their clansmen. In Glasgow Frank is greeted with warmth and forgiveness by his father, who has prospered while on the continent. In gratitude for his assistance and even-handedness, William rewards Bailie Jarvie with the commercial accounts that he has stripped from MacVitie. While finishing up their business in Glasgow, a rebellion of Jacobites breaks out. Frank, his father, and Owen, escape to London, where Frank levies a company of soldiers and rides north to support King George's cause. The rebellion is quickly suppressed, and back in London, Frank learns of the downfall of Sir Hildebrand (who has been captured and imprisoned in Newgate) and deaths of Sir Hildebrand's five older sons through misfortune or battle. Frank is heir to Osbaldistone Hall by his uncle's last will. Rashleigh, the surviving son, has been disinherited in favour of Frank as punishment by his father. Frank travels to claim the property. He meets with Justice Inglewood to review his uncle's will and learns from him that Diana and her father are thought to be out of England now; she is single and her father was deeply involved with the Rebellion, and he had visited Die in the role of Father Vaughan. This was the secret that Rashleigh held over her. With Andrew Fairservice, Frank takes possession of Osbaldistone Hall. Nostalgically selecting the library to sleep in, he finds Diana and her father hiding there. They request sanctuary as they are being hunted due to the failure of the Jacobite uprising. They tell Frank how Sir Frederick had been hidden at the Hall during his earlier stay. They plan to leave, but Rashleigh arrives with Jobson and the local constables, bringing a warrant to take possession of the Hall and arrest the Vernons and Frank. They are easily captured and taken away in a carriage. Still on the property, Rob Roy springs an ambush, freeing them all and killing Rashleigh. Rob Roy and his men bring Diana and her father to safety in France. Not many months later, after Frank begins working with his father, they learn that Diana's father is dying in France, and allows his daughter to make her own choice of the convent or marriage. Frank tells his father of his love for Diana. He gains his father's approval to marry a Catholic, as startling to him as his son owning Osbaldistone Hall. ===== The central character is Jason Matthews (Kristoffer Polaha), General Manager of the Grand Waimea. In the first episode, Nicole Booth (Brooke Burns) is hired as the new Director of Guest Relations. She is the daughter of a ruthless billionaire, and an old flame of Jason's who broke his heart years before. At the end of the first episode, Nicole reveals to Jason that she broke up with him because her father wanted her to date someone more successful, and he threatened to have Jason fired from the hotel he was working at the time. The chances for rekindled romance are then dashed when Nicole reveals she has become engaged since they broke up. Later in the series, Nicole told Jason that she returned to Hawaii to seek him out before getting married, because she wanted to know if there was still a chance for their relationship. The final episode has Jason and Nicole being married. However, in an unresolved cliffhanger, Jason is killed in a car explosion meant for Vincent. ===== Three years after the events of the first film, Stuart Little questions his abilities following a disastrous soccer match alongside his adoptive older brother George, who accidentally kicked Stuart with a soccer ball. Stuart's relationship with George is strained further after Stuart accidentally crashes a model airplane he and George were creating in the house. Stuart's adoptive father, Frederick, tries to encourage him, telling him that "every cloud has a silver lining." Later, Margalo, an apparently injured canary, falls into Stuart's roadster as he is driving home from school. Stuart invites Margalo to stay with his family for a while. However, Margalo is secretly assisting her master, a greedy falcon, to steal valuables from households. Orphaned as a fledgling, Margalo grows reluctant to steal from the Littles and becomes close friends with Stuart. The Falcon eventually loses patience and threatens to kill Stuart unless Margalo steals Eleanor's wedding ring. Concerned for Stuart's safety, Margalo complies. When the Littles discover that Eleanor's ring is missing, they think it has fallen down their kitchen sink. Stuart offers to be lowered down the drain on a string to get it, but the string breaks which causes him to fall. A guilt- stricken Margalo saves Stuart, but then leaves the Littles' house that night in order to protect him. The next day, Stuart assumes Margalo has been kidnapped by the Falcon and decides to rescue her with the help of the Littles' cat Snowbell. Before he leaves, Stuart asks George to lie about his whereabouts to his parents as a secret. With the help of Snowbell's alley cat friend Monty, Stuart and Snowbell discover that the Falcon resides in the Pishkin Building. There, Stuart confronts the Falcon, who reveals to him that Margalo works for him and that she was responsible for faking her injury and stealing his mother's ring. Margalo appears and assures Stuart that although she was following the Falcon's orders, she is still his friend. Stuart begs Margalo to come home with him, but the Falcon flippantly refuses to let Margalo quit her job. Despite Stuart's attempt by shooting a bow and arrow at the Falcon which didn't seem to hurt him, he drops Stuart over the side of the building intending to let him fall to his death, although Stuart survives by landing on a bag in a passing garbage truck but is knocked out on impact (unknown to Margalo or the Falcon). The Falcon captures Margalo to prevent her from saving Stuart and imprisons her in a paint can as punishment. However, Snowbell, who is getting worried about Stuart, makes his way to the building and finds Margalo while the Falcon is absent. At the same time, Stuart awakens on a garbage barge that was leaving New York and considers giving up until he finds his and George's broken yet still-functioning model airplane on the barge. Cobbling together using various pieces of trash, Stuart repairs the plane and escapes back to New York City to rescue Margalo. Meanwhile, the Littles discover Stuart is missing because George has been lying to them and they sit him down and confront him about it. They want to know where Stuart is and this time, the truth. When George says he isn't sure where Stuart is, Frederick insists it's never okay for George to lie to them. When George asks if it's wrong to break to promise to Stuart, Eleanor says it's wrong to promise Stuart that he'll lie to them as Frederick continues to demand an answer. When George says it was a promise (brother to brother) Frederick says he understands since he has a brother but whatever he promised him and he was in danger that would matter more to him than the promise. When Eleanor asks George how he'd feel and how they'd feel if something was to happen to Stuart, George is convinced and confesses that Stuart is at the Pishkin Buliding but when George asks if he's in trouble Frederick says he's not just in trouble, he's in big trouble and they head out by taxi to find Stuart. Meanwhile, Snowbell frees Margalo, but the Falcon arrives and tries to push Snowbell off the building, although he is intercepted by Margalo, who threatens to toss the ring off the roof if the Falcon kills Snowbell before Stuart swoops in to catch her. The Falcon catches up to the two in Central Park, while the Littles and Snowbell follow them. There, the Falcon attempts to drop them to their deaths by picking up and ripping off the top of the plane, but Stuart takes control of the plane again and ejects Margalo to keep her safe from danger in order to face the Falcon himself. With both of them flying toward each other, Stuart succeeds in blinding the Falcon by reflecting sunlight off his mother's ring before jumping from the plane, leaving it to crash directly into the Falcon. This sends the Falcon, now unable to fly, plummeting down into a garbage can where Monty is searching for food. Margalo safely brings Stuart back to the Littles and returns Eleanor's ring while Snowbell also reunites with them. Sometime later, Margalo says goodbye to the Littles and leaves to migrate south for the winter. After she flies off, the Littles become thrilled after hearing Martha, the infant of the family, say her first words: “bye-bye birdie.” ===== In 1965, two poor Singaporean children, Chew Kiat Kun (Shawn Lee) and his younger sister Seow Fang (Megan Zheng) live with their mother (Xiang Yun) who is late in her third pregnancy and their father (Huang Wenyong) who is in debt to a local rice merchant. The children make the best of what little they have, while their father works long hours doing odd jobs. The family's problems are compounded when Kiat Kun accidentally loses Seow Fang's only pair of shoes after taking them to be repaired. The children conduct a frantic search but find nothing; a karung guni man had claimed the shoes as unwanted rubbish. The Chew siblings are frustrated and rendered helpless by the situation until their father inspires Kiat Kun to share his shoes with his sister, trading off between classes so they can both attend school. Unfortunately, this plan brings additional problems: Seow Fang is chastised for wearing oversized shoes to school, while Kiat Kun is repeatedly late as he must wait for his sister to exchange shoes with him. At school, a wealthy schoolmate of Kiat Kun's named Tan Beng Soon (Joshua Ang) runs an amateur football team with his friends. Kiat Kun and his friends strike a bargain with Beng Soon to play on the team using the other boys' football shoes, in exchange for helping them cheat on their homework. However, the boys quarrel, causing an angry Beng Soon to renege on the deal and remove Kiat Kun and his friends from the team. Without their assistance, Beng Soon and his friends are punished for producing substandard homework. Although the boys try to resolve their differences, they eventually give up on reaching an agreement. Beng Soon's grades continue to fall, and his parents decide to send him away to study in England. Meanwhile, Seow Fang sees her classmate wearing her lost shoes to school. She and Kiat Kun follow the girl home, but after realising her father is blind and that her family was in a more dire situation than theirs, they decide not to reclaim the shoes. However, a few days later, Seow Fang notices that her classmate is wearing a new pair; upon confronting her, she discovers that the girl has discarded the old pair at the kampung rubbish dump. The Chew siblings frantically search the rubbish dump for her shoes, but only discover them as they are destroyed during a trade unionist riot against a policeman (Wakin Chau). The climax of the film, in which Kiat Kun is pushed to the limit but trips and finishes first -- a parallel to Singapore's political history. Kiat Kun is dejected until he learns that the third prize in the 1965 National Primary School Cross Country Competition is a pair of shoes. Because he was sick on the day his school selected representatives for the race, he pleads with his P.E. teacher to let him enter. The teacher, initially reluctant, relents when Kiat Kun rushes to get his cough medicine, demonstrating his running ability. As the competition begins, Kiat Kun notices that Beng Soon is also participating. Once the starting gun fires, Kiat Kun pushes himself to the limit and eventually establishes himself among the lead runners. Kiat Kun appears assured of third place, but unexpectedly trips over a stone and thus finishes first. Beng Soon ends the race in third place. While Kiat Kun is running, Mrs Chew goes into labour, forcing Seow Fang to run across a long path littered with broken glass to find a midwife. Finally, Mrs Chew gives birth to a baby boy and Beng Soon gives Kiat Kun and Seow Fang new pairs of shoes before departing. ===== In the beginning, Sazae was more interested in being with her horse than dressing up in kimono and makeup to attract her future husband. Hasegawa was forward- thinking in that, in her words, the Isono/Fuguta clan would embody the image of the modern Japanese family after World War II. Sazae was a very "liberated" woman, and many of the early plotlines revolved around Sazae bossing around her husband, to the consternation of her neighbors, who believed that a man should be the head of his household. Later, Sazae became a feminist and was involved in many comical situations regarding her affiliation with her local women's lib group. Despite the topical nature of the series, the core of the stories revolved around the large family dynamic, and were presented in a lighthearted, easy fashion. In fact, the final comic, in 1974, revolved around Sazae's happiness that an egg she cracked for her husband's breakfast produced a double yolk, with Katsuo remarking about the happiness the "little things" in life can bring. As of now, the popular Sazae-san anime is frequently taken as nostalgia for traditional Japanese society, since it alludes to a simpler time before modern technology, despite the fact that it was leftist to the point of controversy when it originally ran in Japanese newspapers. ===== The novel deals with the murder of a former member of Boston society who has lived in Hawaii for a number of years. The main character is the victim's nephew, a straitlaced young Bostonian bond trader, who came to the islands to try to convince his aunt Minerva, whose vacation has extended many months, to return to Boston. The nephew, John Quincy Winterslip, soon falls under the spell of the islands himself, meets an attractive young woman, breaks his engagement to his straitlaced Bostonian fiancee Agatha, and decides as the murder is being solved to move to San Francisco. In the interval, he is introduced to many levels of Hawaiian society and is of some assistance to Detective Charlie Chan in solving the mystery. The novel's denouement is nearly identical to that in the final Perry Mason novel by Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Postponed Murder (1970). ===== It is set almost exclusively in California (as opposed to Chan's native Hawaii), and tells the story of the former head of Scotland Yard, a detective who is pursuing the long-cold trail of a murderer. Fifteen years ago, a London solicitor was killed in circumstances in which the only clue was a pair of Chinese slippers, which he apparently donned just before his death. Sir Frederic Bruce has been following the trail of the killer ever since. He has also been interested in what appears to be a series of disappearing women around the world, which has some connection to the disappearance of a woman named Eve Durand in rural India also fifteen years ago. Just when it seems he might finally solve the murder case, at a dinner party to which a number of important and mysterious guests have been invited, Inspector Bruce is killed—and was last seen wearing a pair of Chinese slippers, which have vanished. It is left to Chan to solve the case and tie up all loose ends. ===== It tells the story of a Hollywood star (Shelah Fane), who is stopping in Hawaii after she finished shooting a film on location in Tahiti. She is murdered in the pavilion of her rental house in Waikiki during her stay. The story behind her murder is linked with the three- year-old murder of another Hollywood actor and also connected with an enigmatic psychic named Tarneverro. Chan, in his position as a detective with the Honolulu Police Department, "investigates amid public clamor demanding that the murderer be found and punished immediately. "Death is a black camel that kneels unbidden at every gate. Tonight black camel has knelt here", Chan tells the suspects."Roseman, Mill et al. Detectionary. New York: Overlook Press, 1971. ===== Inspector Duff, a Scotland Yard detective and friend of Chan's, first introduced in Behind That Curtain, is pursuing a murderer on an around-the-world voyage; so far, there have been murders in London, France, Italy and Japan. While his ship is docked in Honolulu, the detective is shot and wounded by his quarry; though he survives, he is unable to continue with the cruise, and Chan takes his place instead. Eventually, after more murders, Chan finds the killer before the next port of call. ===== Once again, the setting of the novel is rural California, where Chan has been invited as a houseguest. He meets a world-famous soprano, Ellen Landini, who is murdered not too long after the meeting. Chan does not have far to look for suspects—the host is her ex-husband, as are three of the other house guests. Her servants, entourage and husbands all come under suspicion. Once again, Chan is expected to solve the murder, which he does by understanding the key clues—the actions of a little dog named Trouble, two scarves, and two little boxes. When he understands how the murder is committed, he learns the role of elderly house servant Ah Sing—the keeper of the keys. ===== Following their victory over Adam; Buffy, Xander, Willow, and Giles meet at Buffy's to relax with movies, including Apocalypse Now. They quickly fall asleep and are each confronted by the First Slayer in their dreams. Willow's dream opens with Willow painting Sappho's love poem, Hymn to Aphrodite, in Greek onto Tara's back. She then finds herself on the Sunnydale High school stage, about to perform in a radically changed Death of a Salesman, with Riley playing a cowboy, Buffy as a flapper and Harmony (a popular girl in high school who snubbed Willow, and who became a vampire at the end of Season 3) goofily trying to bite Giles' neck. Willow realizes with increasing uneasiness that she knows neither her lines nor her role. Buffy then takes Willow to stand in front of a classroom in the same nerdy clothes she wore in "Welcome to the Hellmouth" and "The Harvest" at the beginning of the series. Xander mocks her as she nervously begins to read her book report. Oz and Tara—Willow's ex-boyfriend and current girlfriend—flirt with each other while watching Willow recite. Suddenly, Willow is attacked and has the life sucked out of her by the First Slayer. Xander's dream begins when he wakes on Buffy's couch. After excusing himself to use the restroom, he finds himself the object of an attempted seduction by Joyce. In the restroom, he starts to unzip, then realizes that the bathroom is attached to a large white room with many men in white coats ready to observe and take notes on his performance. He then meets Buffy, Giles, and Spike in a playground; Spike – unaffected by daylight – tells him that Giles is going to teach him to be a Watcher, as Buffy plays in a sandbox. Xander then finds himself in an ice cream truck with Anya; Willow and Tara (wearing skimpy clothing and garish make-up) are in the back, and they invite him to join them. He tries to do so, only to end up in the basement where his parents allow him to live. He goes to the university and comes across Giles, who starts revealing the reason for the dream, but who suddenly switches to speaking in French. Xander next finds himself in a reenactment of the Apocalypse Now scene between a captive Captain Benjamin Willard and Colonel Walter Kurtz, with Principal Snyder as Kurtz. Throughout the sequence Xander finds himself in his basement again and again, chased by an unseen pursuer, who is revealed as the First Slayer when she tears his heart out. Giles' dream begins with Giles swinging a watch in front of Buffy. They are in Giles' apartment, which has been stripped of furniture but for a chair and a bed. She laughs, and Giles' dream cuts to a family scene with Buffy and his girlfriend Olivia at a fairground. Quicker than the others to understand that something is wrong, he confronts Spike, who is posing for a photo-shoot in his crypt. In The Bronze, he meets Anya failing as a stand-up comic, and Willow and Xander (with a bloody chest wound), who warn him of their attacker. He breaks into song, giving suggestions on how to deal with what hunts them, but when the sound system breaks down, he crawls backstage to trace a wiring fault. He begins to realize his pursuer is the First Slayer, just as she scalps him. In the final dream sequence, Buffy is woken by Anya in her dorm room. She then finds herself in her room at home, where Tara speaks cryptically about the future. At the university, Buffy talks to her mother, who lives in the walls, then meets Riley at the Initiative. He has been promoted to Surgeon General and is drawing up plans with Adam (now in ordinary human form) for world domination. The three of them are interrupted by a demon attack, and Riley and Adam start to make a pillow fort. When Buffy finds her weapons bag, the only thing in it is mud, which she smears on her face. She is then transported to the desert and finally confronts the pre-verbal First Slayer; Tara is present to speak for her. Through Tara, the First Slayer tells Buffy that she cannot have friends and must work alone, which Buffy rejects. The Slayers fight in the desert and then in Buffy's living room next to her dying friends until Buffy realizes that she can stop the fight mentally by simply ignoring the First Slayer. She refuses to fight and walks away from the First Slayer; the First Slayer vanishes, and everybody wakes up. After they wake up, the four of them then discuss the significance of having tapped into the power of the First Slayer, and Buffy privately recalls Tara's words from her dream as she looks into her bedroom. ===== A homeless man, identifying himself only as "Mister," enters the offices of the powerful Washington D.C. law firm Drake & Sweeney and takes many of the lawyers hostage while angrily demanding information about some kind of eviction that took place. Although he is eventually shot and killed by a police sniper, one of the hostages, an antitrust lawyer named Michael Brock, is concerned by what he has learned and feels compelled to investigate further. Brock finds his way to the 14th Street Legal Clinic, where he meets Mordecai Green, an advocate for the homeless. Green, along with his abrasive but brilliant staff, work to provide legal help to the most downtrodden members of society. Brock's discovers that Drake & Sweeney was involved the sudden approval of a federal building project on the site of a condemned building that had been serving as rent-payment housing for formerly homeless families. These individuals were tenants and thus entitled to a full legal eviction/contestment process, but a senior Drake & Sweeney partner ignored this information because the firm had a large stake in ensuring the federal project start on time, and thus illegally evicted the tenants in the middle of winter, resulting in the death of a homeless family. Brock takes a confidential file, intending to copy it, but is quickly suspected of its theft. Shocked by what he has found, Brock leaves Drake & Sweeney to take a poorly paid position with the 14th Street Legal Clinic, which works to protect the rights of the homeless. This leads to the severing of his links to his previous white collar life, as his already-dying marriage officially ends in an amicable divorce. Brock later becomes emotionally involved in the case of a woman named Ruby, whose drug addiction led to her losing custody of her son. He also meets a young homeless advocate named Megan and they start a relationship. As Drake & Sweeney comes after Brock with theft and malpractice allegations, the clinic files a lawsuit against the firm and its business partners. The firm makes a deal where Brock has his license temporarily suspended, while they settle for a large amount of money and fire the partner whose actions led to the young family's deaths. Drake & Sweeney's head partner, deeply troubled by the events, offers to make his entire staff available for pro bono work to assist the clinic in fighting for the rights of homeless people. The book ends with Brock taking a short vacation with Megan and Ruby, and them reflecting on their lives. ===== Short story writer Jennifer Hills lives in Manhattan and rents an isolated cottage in Kent, Connecticut near the Housatonic River in the Litchfield County countryside to write her first novel. The arrival of the attractive and independent young woman attracts the attention of Johnny Stillman, the gas station manager, and Stanley Woods and Andy Chirensky, two unemployed men. Jennifer has her groceries delivered by Matthew Duncan, who is mildly mentally disabled. Matthew is friends with the other three men and reports back to them about the beautiful woman he met, claiming that he saw her breasts. Stanley and Andy start cruising by the cottage in their boat and prowl around the house at night. One day, the men attack Jennifer. She realizes that they planned her abduction so Matthew can lose his virginity. She fights back, but the three men rip her bikini off and hold her. Matthew refuses to rape Jennifer out of respect and pity for her, so Johnny and Andy rape her instead. After she crawls back to her house, they attack her again. Matthew finally rapes her after drinking alcohol. The other men ridicule her book and rip up the manuscript, and Stanley violently sexually assaults her. She passes out; Johnny realizes that she is a witness to their crimes and orders Matthew to go and murder her. Matthew cannot bring himself to stab her, so he dabs the knife in her blood and then returns to the other men, claiming that he has killed her. In the following days, a traumatized Jennifer pieces both herself and her manuscript back together. She goes to church and asks for forgiveness for what she plans to do. The men learn that Jennifer has survived and beat Matthew up for deceiving them. Jennifer calls in a grocery order, knowing that Matthew will deliver it. He takes the groceries and a knife. At the cabin, Jennifer entices him to have sex with her under a tree. She then hangs him alive and drops his body into the lake. At the gas station, Jennifer seductively directs Johnny to enter her car. She stops halfway to her house, points a gun at him, and orders him to remove all his clothing. Johnny insists that the rapes were all her fault because she enticed the men by parading around in revealing clothing. She pretends to believe this and invites him back to her cottage for a hot bath, where she masturbates him. When Johnny mentions that Matthew has been reported missing, Jennifer states that she killed him; as he nears his orgasm, she takes the knife Matthew brought with him and severs Johnny's genitals. She leaves the bathroom, locks the door, and listens to classical music as Johnny screams, bleeding to death. After he dies, she dumps his body in the basement and burns his clothes in the fireplace. Stanley and Andy learn that Johnny is missing and take their boat to Jennifer's cabin. Andy goes ashore with an axe. Jennifer swims out to the boat and pushes Stanley overboard. Andy tries to attack her but she escapes with the axe. Andy swims out to rescue Stanley, but Jennifer plunges the axe into Andy's back, killing him. Stanley moves towards the boat and grabs hold of the motor to climb aboard, begging Jennifer not to kill him. She repeats an order he made to her during the sexual assaults: "Suck it, bitch!" She starts the motor, disemboweling him with the propeller, and she speeds away. ===== A classic survival story, told partly through flashbacks to Zachary Bass's past. After being left for dead by his fellow trappers, he undergoes a series of trials and adventures as he slowly heals and equips himself while he tracks the expedition, apparently intent on retribution for his abandonment, while earning the respect of the Native Americans he encounters. However, when he finally confronts his fellow trappers and Captain Henry, he chooses not to seek revenge, but instead to focus on returning to his infant son. ===== Wendall Rohr and his team of tort lawyers have filed suit on behalf of plaintiff Celeste Wood, whose husband died of lung cancer, against the tobacco company Pynex. The trial is to be held in Biloxi, Mississippi, a state thought to have favorable tort laws and sympathetic juries. Before the jury in the Pynex trial has been sworn in, a stealth juror, Nicholas Easter, has begun to quietly connive behind the scenes, in concert with a mysterious woman known only as Marlee. Rankin Fitch, a shady "consultant" who has directed eight successful trials for the tobacco industry, has placed a camera in the courtroom in order to observe the proceedings in his office nearby, plotting many schemes to reach to the jury. He plans to get to Millie Dupree through blackmailing her husband through a tape that has him trying to bribe an official. He gets to Lonnie Shaver by convincing a company to buy his employer and convince him through orientation. He also tries to reach Rikki Coleman through blackmail of revealing her abortion to her husband. As the case continues, Fitch is approached by Marlee with a proposal to "buy" the verdict. Meanwhile, Easter works from the inside to gain control of the jury – being warm-hearted, sympathetic and helpful to jurors who might be won over, and rather ruthless to those who prove impervious to his efforts. Eventually, he becomes jury foreman after the previous one falls ill (resulting from Nicholas spiking his coffee). He also manages to hoodwink and repeatedly manipulate the judge. Meanwhile, Marlee Easter's partner/lover acts as his agent on the outside, increasingly convincing Fitch that, indeed, Easter is in control of the jury and in a position to deliver any verdict on demand. Marlee gives Fitch the impression that the pair's objective is purely mercenary – to sell the verdict to highest bidder. Still, he makes a great effort to discover her true name and antecedents. This turns out to be extremely difficult, and the detectives employed by Fitch express their grudging respect for her skill in hiding her tracks. As the trial reaches its climax, Fitch – still in the dark about Marlee's past – agrees to her proposal to pay $10 million for a favorable verdict. Only after the money is irrevocably transferred to an offshore account do the detectives discover the truth: Marlee is in fact an anti- smoking activist whose parents both died from smoking. Thus, Fitch realizes that he lost Pynex's $10 million in addition to having lost the trial. Inside the closed jury room, Easter convinces the jury to find for the plaintiff and make a large monetary award - $2 million in compensatory damages, and $400 million in punitive damages. While not able to sway the entire jury, Easter gets nine out of twelve jurors to back him – sufficient for a valid verdict in a civil case. Pynex and its defense lawyers are devastated. In the Cayman Islands, Marlee short-sells the tobacco companies' stocks and makes an enormous gain on the original $10 million. Easter quickly disappears from Biloxi and leaves the US. While Easter and Marlee are now wealthy and satisfied that they served justice, the tobacco industry, once undefeatable, are now vulnerable to an avalanche of additional lawsuits. The book closes with Marlee returning the initial $10 million bribe to Fitch, having almost doubled the money on the derivatives market, and warning Fitch that she and Easter will always be watching. She explains that she had no intention to steal or lie, and that she cheated only because, "That was all your client understood." ===== In New Orleans, a shooting takes place at a stock brokerage firm. Among the dead is Jacob Wood. The shooter was a failed day trader who apparently killed eleven people and wounded several others in the event. Two years later, with attorney Wendell Rohr, Jacob's widow Celeste takes Vicksburg Firearms to court on the grounds that the company's gross negligence led to her husband's death. During jury selection, jury consultant Rankin Fitch and his team communicate background information on each of the jurors through electronic surveillance to lead defense attorney Durwood Cable in the courtroom. In the jury pool, Nicholas "Nick" Easter tries to get himself excused from jury duty. Judge Frederick Harkin decides to give him a lesson in civic duty and Fitch tells Cable that the judge has now given them no choice, and that he must select Nick as a juror. Nick's congenial manner wins him acceptance from his fellow jurors, but Frank Herrera, a Marine veteran, takes an instant dislike to him. A woman named Marlee makes an offer to Fitch and Rohr by phone: she will deliver the verdict to the first bidder. Rohr dismisses the offer, assuming it to be a tactic by Fitch to obtain a mistrial. Fitch asks for proof that she can deliver, though, which Nick provides. By observing the jurors' behaviour through concealed cameras, Fitch identifies Nick as the influencer and orders his apartment to be searched, finds nothing, but Nick almost catches Fitch's man red-handed in his flat. Marlee retaliates by getting one of Fitch's jurors bounced. Fitch then goes after three jurors with blackmail, leading one, Rikki Coleman, to attempt suicide. He also sends his men to find a concealed device in Nick's flat where key information has been stored, after which they leave and set fire to the apartment. Nick shows the judge video footage of his apartment being searched the first time, and the judge orders the jury sequestered. Rohr's key witness, a former Vicksburg employee, doesn't show up. After confronting Fitch, Rohr decides that he cannot win the case. He asks his firm's partners for $10 million. Fitch sends an operative, Janovich, to kidnap Marlee, but she fights him off and raises Fitch's price to $15 million. On principle, Rohr changes his mind and refuses to pay. Fitch agrees to pay Marlee to be certain of the verdict. Fitch's subordinate Doyle who is investigating on Nick finds that he is in fact Jeff Kerr, a law school drop-out, then travels to Gardner, Indiana, from where Jeff and his law school girl-friend Gabby both come. Marlee is Gabby. Doyle gently quizzes Gabby's mother who tells him that Gabby's sister died in a shooting years ago when she was at secondary school. At the time, the town had sued the gun manufacturer and lost, Fitch had helped the defense win the case. Doyle concludes that Nick and Marlee's offer is a set-up, and he calls Fitch, but it is too late. Nick receives confirmation of receipt of payment and he steers the jury in favor of the plaintiff, much to the chagrin of Herrera, who launches into a rant against the plaintiff, which undermines his support. The gun manufacturer is found liable, with the jury awarding $110 million in general damages to Celeste Wood. After the trial, Nick and Marlee confront Fitch with a receipt for the $15 million bribe and demand that he retire. They inform him that the $15 million will benefit the shooting victims in Gardner. ===== An unmanned scientific probe sent to Mars discovers an alien artifact. A follow up robotic explorer lands and verifies that an enormous alien ship is partially buried on Mars. So a manned expedition is sent to explore this apparently abandoned alien ship. The expedition members are captured and taken underground to the habitat occupied by a combined society of humans living harmoniously with the alien Krsh. The expedition learns that, in previous millennia, the technologically advanced Krsh were won over to the religion of the humans. This society practices Judaism but accepts Jesus as their Messiah. Included in their Bible is the Book of Matthias which is the testament written by Judas Iscariot. However, unlike mainstream Christianity, this society views Jesus as a man and not as God (see Nicene Creed). Originally, the Krsh had arrived at Earth on an exploratory mission. To study humans, the Krsh had offered to bring injured humans to their spaceship for medical treatment. Then, the ship was attacked by another alien species which is especially hostile and xenophobic. Even though the attack was repelled and the ship of the xenophobic aliens was destroyed, the Krsh's own ship was damaged. So they landed on Mars to hide from more potential hostility which never arrived. During the years of camouflage, the Krsh and humans crew joined together into a unified society. Halfway through the novel, we learn that Jesus himself miraculously arrived among these people almost two thousand years earlier and had been living with them ever since. The proximity of Jesus is overwhelming and convincing both in terms of concrete, scientifically verifiable miracles as well as a strong visceral presence. This proximity convinces even the scientifically advanced Krsh. Also, three of the four crew members accept this Jesus and convert to this hybrid form of Judaism and Christianity. The fourth crew member, an atheist and the only female crew member, commits suicide. She is subsequently resurrected using advanced technology but not before she suffers brain damage that erases much of her personality. Towards the end of the novel, Jesus leads a flotilla of spaceships back to Earth in a reenactment of the Second Coming. Although desiring peaceful interaction and offering immortality and boundless manna, they are prepared for hostile action. As can be expected, Jesus is accused of being the Antichrist. Such doubts afflict Richard Orme who is the astronaut leading the manned expedition from Earth. In the penultimate chapter, Orme wavers on his conversion and submission to this Martian Jesus. He then prepares to assassinate the Jesus but throws himself upon a grenade from another assassin so as to save Jesus. In the final chapter, he awakens naked and disoriented to discover that he has been resurrected by Jesus while the world media looked on. Then, Orme reaffirms his commitment and the novel ends abruptly with a sense of the years of impending struggle against the forces of evil. ===== Polgara the Sorceress begins with Ce'Nedra entreating Polgara to write a book about her life, filling in the gaps left by her father's story, Belgarath the Sorcerer. The main part of the story then opens, revealing that Polgara and her twin sister Beldaran were raised by their adoptive uncles, the deformed Beldin and the twin sorcerers Beltira and Belkira (all disciples of Aldur, like Belgarath), after the apparent death of their mother, Poledra. Their mother was a shape-shifting wolf at birth; she was distressed that her human babies would be born deficient in lupine instinct, and therefore educated them telepathically prior to parturition. After the birth of the twins, Poledra was presumed to have died; but continued communication with Polgara. For many years, Polgara resented her father's long absence from her own upbringing; and when Belgarath resumed care of his daughters, Beldaran was quick to forgive him but Polgara often fled to the Tree at the center of the Vale of Aldur, where she learned to speak to birds and ultimately mastered the Will and the Word. Belgarath (with Beldaran's help) eventually negotiated an uneasy peace, and Polgara began her training under him. Following Beldaran's marriage, Polgara also resented the "loss" of her sister; but the shared loss eventually reconciled her to Belgarath. Over the years, she maintained a relationship with the descendants of Beldaran. A relatively young Polgara spent many years in the Arendish duchy of Vo Wacune, where she mitigated the Arendish civil wars. Ultimately she was proclaimed the "Duchess of Erat". When Vo Wacune was destroyed, Erat became part of the new kingdom of Sendaria. When the Rivan King (Beldaran's descendant) was assassinated, Polgara became the guardian of a secret line of surviving heirs, incognito in Sendaria and its neighboring domains. At the Battle of Vo Mimbre, Polgara learned that in the prophecies of her enemies, she was the intended bride of the dark god Torak, whom she therefore defied at each meeting. Following Torak's defeat at Vo Mimbre, Polgara returned to caring for the descendants of Riva, eventually raising Garion. ===== Wyatt Frame (Alan Cumming), an executive with the pop music record label MegaRecords, is confronted on a private jet by successful boy band DuJour over a strange backing track they have discovered on their recent single. Wyatt and the plane's pilot parachute out of the jet, leaving it to crash with the band still on board. Wyatt lands outside of the town of Riverdale, and he begins searching for a band to replace DuJour. He discovers struggling local rock band The Pussycats: lead vocalist and guitarist Josie McCoy (Rachael Leigh Cook), drummer Melody Valentine (Tara Reid), and bassist Valerie Brown (Rosario Dawson). The group accept Wyatt's immediate offer of a major record deal despite its seeming implausibility, and they are flown to New York City with their manager Alexander (Paul Costanzo), his sister Alexandra (Missi Pyle), and Josie's friend Alan M (Gabriel Mann). Wyatt renames the band "Josie and the Pussycats" without their permission. Meanwhile, MegaRecords CEO Fiona (Parker Posey) meets with world government representatives. She details how the United States government has conspired with the music industry to hide subliminal messages in pop music to brainwash teenagers into buying consumer products. Musicians who discover the hidden messages in their music are made to disappear via staged plane crashes, drug overdoses and similar disasters. The band's first single is released and, due to subliminal messaging, is an instant success. Valerie begins to resent the attention the label gives Josie, while Melody's uncanny behavioral perception makes her suspicious of Fiona. Fiona orders Wyatt to kill Valerie and Melody before they uncover the conspiracy; they are sent to a fake appearance on Total Request Live where Carson Daly attempts to kill them, though they survive due to his incompetence. Wyatt gives Josie a copy of the group's latest single, which contains a subliminal message track designed to brainwash her into desiring a solo career. After an argument with her bandmates, Josie realizes that the single caused the fight. Her suspicions are confirmed when she uses a mixing board to make the subliminal track audible. However, she is caught in the act by Fiona. MegaRecords have organized a giant pay-per-view concert that will be streamed online, wherein they plan to unleash a major subliminal message via themed "cat ears" headsets that viewers must buy to hear the audio. Fiona and Wyatt plan for Josie to perform alone, but the band insists on performing together. Fiona and Wyatt threaten to kill Melody and Valerie in a staged car explosion if they do not comply, but are thwarted by the badly injured members of DuJour, who survived the plane crash by landing the plane in the middle of a Metallica concert, where they were severely assaulted by fans. Josie, Valerie and Melody fight Fiona, Wyatt and their security guards. During the tussle, Fiona accidentally destroys the machine used to generate the messages, revealing the new subliminal message to be one that would make Fiona universally popular. Fiona reveals that she was a social outcast in high school due to her lisp, while Wyatt reveals that his appearance is a disguise—he went to the same high school as Fiona, but was a persecuted and unpopular albino. Fiona and Wyatt immediately fall in love. The government agents colluding with Fiona arrive, but with the conspiracy exposed, they arrest Fiona and Wyatt as scapegoats to cover up their involvement in the scheme. They abandon the idea of using music to spread subliminal messages, revealing that movies are much more effective. (At this point, the message "Josie and the Pussycats is the best movie ever!" goes by quickly.) Josie, Valerie, and Melody perform the concert together. Alan M arrives and confesses his love for Josie, who returns his feelings. The concert audience removes their headsets at Josie's suggestion and, able to judge the band on its own merits for the first time, roar their approval. ===== Children of Paradise is divided into two epochs, Boulevard du Crime ("Boulevard of Crime") and L'Homme Blanc ("The Man in White"). The first begins around 1827, the second about seven years later. The action takes place mainly in the neighborhood of the Boulevard du Temple in Paris, nicknamed "Boulevard of Crime" because of all the melodramas and bloody scenarios offered to the largely plebeian public each evening. There are two principal theaters: the Théâtre des Funambules ("Theater of Tightrope Walkers") specializes in pantomime, since the authorities do not allow it to use spoken dialogue, which is reserved for the "official" venue, the Grand Theater. Part I: Boulevard of Crime A young actor and womanizer, Frédérick Lemaître, dreams of becoming a star. He meets and flirts with Garance, a beautiful woman who earns her living by modestly exhibiting her physical charms in a carnival show. Garance staves off Frédérick's advances and goes to visit one of her acquaintances, Pierre- François Lacenaire, a rebel in revolt against society. Lacenaire is a proud, dangerous individual who works as a scrivener to cover his organized criminal enterprises. Shortly thereafter, Garance is accused of stealing a man's gold watch while she is watching a pantomime featuring Baptiste Deburau and a barker (Baptiste's father) in front of the Funambules Theater. Lacenaire is in fact the guilty party. Baptiste, dressed up as the stock character Pierrot, saves her from the police by silently acting out the theft, which he has just witnessed. He reveals a great talent, a veritable vocation for pantomime, but falls immediately and irremediably in love with Garance, saving a flower she thanked him with. Baptiste's father is one of the stars at the Funambules. The daughter of the theater director, Nathalie, who is a mime also, is deeply in love with Baptiste. Before the performance that evening, a used-clothes peddler named Jéricho reads in her palm that she will marry the man she loves, as he knew her father was worried about her mood affecting her performances. When a fight breaks out that evening between two rival clans of actors, Baptiste and Frédérick manage to calm the crowd down by improvising a mime act, thus saving the day's receipts. The most enthusiastic of the spectators are those seated in "paradise" (paradis), a term denoting in French theatrical language the top floor of the balcony, where the cheapest seats are located. Later that night, Baptiste catches sight of Garance with Lacenaire and his accomplices in a seedy restaurant/dancehall, "Le Rouge Gorge" (a pun: this means "The Robin" or "The Red Breast", but literally translates as "The Red Throat," a reference to the previous owner's throat having been slit). When he invites Garance to dance, he is thrown out of the restaurant by Avril, one of Lacenaire's thugs. He turns the situation around and leaves with Garance, for whom he finds a room at the same boarding house where he and Frédérick live. After declaring his love, Baptiste flees Garance's room when she says she doesn't feel the same way, despite her clear invitation to stay. When Frédérick hears Garance singing in her room, which is next to his, he quickly joins her. Baptiste becomes the star of the Funambules; fueled by his passion, he writes several very popular pantomimes, performing with Garance and Frédérick, who have become lovers. Baptiste is tormented by their affair, while Nathalie, who is convinced that she and Baptiste are "made for each other," suffers from his lack of love for her. Garance is visited in her dressing room by the Count Édouard de Montray, a wealthy and cynical dandy who offers her his fortune if she will agree to become his mistress. Garance is repelled by him and mockingly rejects his proposition. The count nonetheless offers her his protection if the need were to arise. She is later unjustly suspected of complicity in an abortive robbery and murder attempt by Lacenaire and Avril. To avoid arrest she is forced to appeal to Count Édouard for protection. The first part of the film comes to an end with this development. Part II: The Man in White Several years later, Frédérick has become famous as the star of the Grand Theater. A man about town and a spendthrift, he is covered with debts – which doesn't prevent him from devastating the mediocre play in which he currently has the main role by exposing it to ridicule in rehearsal and then playing it for laughs, rather than straight melodrama, on opening night. Despite achieving a smashing success, the play's three fussy authors are still outraged and challenge him to a duel. He accepts and when he returns to his dressing room, Frédérick is confronted by Lacenaire, who apparently intends to rob and kill him. However, the criminal is an amateur playwright and strikes up a friendship with the actor instead. He and Avril serve as Frédérick's seconds the next morning, when the actor arrives at the duel dead drunk. Baptiste is enjoying even greater success as a mime at the Funambules. When Frédérick goes to a performance the day after surviving the duel, he is surprised to find himself in the same box as Garance. His old flame has returned to Paris after having traveled throughout the world with the Count de Montray, who has kept her these several years. She has been attending the Funambules every night incognito to watch Baptiste perform. She knows she has always been genuinely in love with him. Frédérick suddenly finds himself jealous for the first time in his life. While the feeling is highly unpleasant, he remarks that his jealousy will help him as an actor. He will finally be able to play the role of Othello, having now experienced the emotions which motivate the character. Garance asks Frédérick to tell Baptiste of her presence, but Nathalie, now Baptiste's wife, is first informed by the spiteful rag-man Jéricho. She sends their small son to Garance's box to mortify her with their family's happiness. By the time Frédérick alerts Baptiste and he rushes to find her, the box is empty. When Garance returns to the Count's luxurious mansion, she finds Lacenaire waiting for her. Lacenaire satisfies himself that Garance has no love for him and, on his way out, encounters the Count, who is irritated to see such an individual in his home. Lacenaire reacts to the Count's challenge with threats, revealing the knife at his belt. Later, Garance declares to the Count that she will never love him since she is already in love with another man, but declares she will continue to try to please him, and offers to spread the word on the streets that she is "mad" about him, if he would like. Frédérick has finally achieved his dream of playing the role of Othello. The Count, who insists on attending the performance with Garance, is convinced that the actor is the man she loves. At a break in the play, the Count coolly mocks Frédérick, trying to provoke him into a duel. Elsewhere Baptiste, who is also in the audience, encounters Garance at last. When Lacenaire takes Frédérick's side in the verbal jousting, the Count attempts to humiliate him as well. Lacenaire takes revenge by calling him a cuckold and, dramatically pulling back a curtain, reveals Garance in Baptiste's embrace on the balcony. The two lovers slip away to spend the night together in Garance's former room at The Great Post House. The next morning, at a Turkish bath, Lacenaire assassinates the count for having had him thrown out of the theater. He then calmly sits to wait for the police and meet his "destiny", which is to die on the scaffold. At the rooming house, Nathalie finds Baptiste with Garance. With Nathalie desperate and pleading her wifely rights, Garance declares that she has "been with" Baptiste for the past six years as much as Nathalie, his wife, has. She flees, pursued by the equally desperate Baptiste, who is soon lost in the frantic Carnival crowd amid a sea of bobbing masks and unheeding, white Pierrots. The film ends as Baptiste is swept away and as Garance makes her escape in her carriage, still unaware that her protector, the Count, is dead.Singerman, Alan, French Cinema: The Student's Book,(English edition) 2006. ===== The novel centers on three character groups: that of Hockenberry (a resurrected twentieth-century Homeric scholar whose duty is to compare the events of the Iliad to the reenacted events of the Trojan War), Greek and Trojan warriors, and Greek gods from the Iliad; Daeman, Harman, Ada, and other humans of an Earth thousands of years after the twentieth century; and the "moravec" robots (named for scientist and futurist Hans Moravec) Mahnmut the Europan and Orphu of Io, also thousands of years in the future, but originating in the Jovian system. The novel is written in first-person, present-tense when centered on Hockenberry's character, but features third-person, past-tense narrative in all other instances. Much like Simmons' Hyperion, where the actual events serve as a frame, the three groups of characters' stories are told over the course of the novel and begin to converge as the climax nears. ===== The film begins with a scene set in Brooklyn, New York in 1969. A group of four boys walk up to Bleek Gilliam's brownstone and ask him to play baseball with them. Bleek's mother insists that he continue his trumpet lesson. His father becomes concerned that Bleek will grow up to be a sissy, and a family argument ensues. Bleek continues playing his trumpet, and his friends go away. Over twenty years later, an adult Bleek performs on the trumpet at a busy nightclub with his jazz band, The Bleek Quintet. Giant, the band’s manager, advises Bleek to stop allowing his saxophone player Shadow Henderson to grandstand with long solos. The next morning Bleek wakes up with his girlfriend, Indigo Downes. She leaves to go to class, while he meets his father for a game of catch, telling him that while he likes Indigo, he likes other women too and is not ready to make a commitment. Later in the day while he is practicing, another woman named Clarke Bentancourt visits him. She suggests that he fire Giant as manager; he suggests that they make love (which he refers to as "mo’ better"). She bites his lip and he becomes upset about it, saying, "I make my living with my lips." Giant meets with his bookie to place bets. He meets Bleek at the club with the rest of the band, except for the pianist, Left Hand Lacey, who arrives late with his French girlfriend and is scolded by Giant. Later Giant goes to the club owners’ office, points out how busy the club has been since Bleek and his band began playing there, and unsuccessfully attempts to renegotiate their contract. Giant meets his bookie the next morning, who is concerned that Giant is going too deep into debt. Giant shrugs it off, and places several new bets. He then stops at Shadow's home to drop off a record. Shadow confides in him that he is cheating on his girlfriend. This leads to the next scene where Bleek is in bed with Clarke, and she asks him to let her sing a number at the club with his band. He declines her request. Bleek and Giant fend off requests from the other members of the band for a raise due to the band's success. Bleek goes to the club owners to ask for more money, which they refuse, reminding him that it was Giant who locked him into the current deal. That night both Clarke and Indigo arrive at the club to see Bleek. They are wearing the same style dress, which Bleek had purchased for them both. Bleek attempts to work it out with each girl, but they are both upset with him, and though he sleeps with them each again, they leave him (after he calls each of them by the other's name). However, tension rises with Shadow who has feelings for Clarke. Bleek and Giant go for a bike ride, where Bleek insists that Giant do a better job managing. Giant promises to do so, and then asks Bleek for a loan to pay his gambling debts. Bleek declines, and later Giant is apprehended by two loan sharks who demand payment. Giant can’t pay and gets his fingers broken. Later Giant tells Bleek that he injured himself, but Bleek doesn't believe him. Giant asks the other band members for money, and Left loans him five hundred dollars. When loan sharks stake out Giant's home, he goes to Bleek for a place to stay. Bleek agrees to help him raise the money but fires him as manager. Bleek misses both his girlfriends and leaves messages for each, but Clarke has begun a new relationship with Shadow. Bleek finds out about it and fires Shadow. The loan sharks find Giant at the club, take him outside, and beat him while Bleek plays--before Bleek can raise the money. Bleek goes outside to intervene and gets beaten as well. Additionally, one loan shark takes Bleek's own trumpet and smacks him across the face with it. This permanently injures his lip, making him unable to continue playing the trumpet. Months later, Bleek reunites with Giant, who has gotten a job as a doorman and stopped gambling. He drops in to see Shadow and Clarke, who are now performing together with the rest of Bleek's former band. Shadow invites him on stage, and they play together. Bleek still has scars on his lips and is unable to play well. He walks off the stage, gives his trumpet to Giant, and goes directly to Indigo's house. She is angry with him because he hasn’t contacted her in over a year. She tries to reject him but agrees to take him back when he begs her to save his life. A montage flashes through their wedding, the birth of their son, Miles, and Bleek teaching his son to play the trumpet. In the final scene, Miles is ten years old and wants to go outside to play with his friends. Indigo wants him to finish his trumpet lessons. However, unlike in the opening scene, Bleek relents and allows his son go play with friends. ===== Sinatra, apparently playing himself, takes a break from a recording session and steps outside to smoke a cigarette. He sees more than ten boys chasing a Jewish boy and intervenes, first with dialogue, then with a short speech. His main points are that we are "all" Americans and that one American's blood is as good as another's and that all our religions are to be respected equally. ===== By day nine-year-old Akira Ijuyin is a normal student at Clamp School, but at night he becomes the mysterious thief 20 Masks. His thefts are usually subject to the whims of his two mothers, which Akira pulls off without any true objections or interactions. One night Akira ducks into the room of five-year-old Utako Ōkawa in an attempt to hide from the police. Although the pair shares a four-year age difference, they find themselves quickly falling for each other even as Akira finds himself being increasingly more involved with thefts, some of which include Utako's family. This as well as several other obstacles give the young couple's budding relationship a fair amount of difficulty. ===== Iron Council follows three major narrative threads that join to form the novel's climax. Although Miéville weaves back and forth between narrative, time and space, this summary will follow each narrative individually, discussing their relation to each other toward the end. The novel is set in and around New Crobuzon, a sprawling London-esque city. New Crobuzon has for some unknown time been at war with Tesh, and is attempting to build a railroad across the outlying desert, partially as a new means of conducting this war. Against this backdrop, the novel follows the deeds of three main characters—Ori, Cutter and Judah Low. Judah's story begins some 20 years before the novel's opening. Judah was hired as a railroad scout for New Crobuzon, charged with mapping terrain and informing the land's inhabitants of the railroad's coming. While doing so, he spends time with the Stiltspear, a race of indescribable creatures who can conjure golems, living creatures made from unliving matter. Judah attempts to warn the Stiltspear away, but they will not listen and he must settle for making a few recordings and beginning to learn their golemetric arts. Eventually, he returns to the railroad, which does indeed wipe out the Stiltspear. Shortly afterward, Judah, a sex worker named Ann-Hari, and a Remade named Uzman lead a revolution in which the rail workers drive the overseers away, free the Remade, and hijack the train, transforming it into a moving socialist dwelling. Iron Council, the perpetual train, moves through the desert, gathering track from behind and laying it in whichever direction its citizens decide. The Council keeps moving to avoid the New Crobuzon militia, who are anxious to reclaim the train and destroy the rebellion- inspiring Council. Judah returns to New Crobuzon, where he immerses himself in esoteric golemetry literature, emerging as a master of the art. Eventually, Judah returns to the Iron Council, having spread its word throughout New Crobuzon, intent on using his golemetry to protect it. Cutter, whom the reader joins at the novel's opening, was a friend, disciple, and lover to Judah during Judah's return to New Crobuzon. He leads a group consisting of other disciples of Judah in search of the Iron Council to warn of an impending attack by the New Crobuzon militia. After living and working with the Council for a while, Cutter returns with Judah and others to New Crobuzon to inspire revolt with the news of Iron Council, which has decided to return to the city and confront the militia on its own turf. In their travels they meet Qurabin, a monk of the Moment of the Hidden and Lost, who continually trades aspects of himself in return for whatever knowledge he needs (over the course of the novel, Qurabin loses his native language, various memories, and finally his eyes to help the protagonists). Meanwhile, dissatisfied revolutionary Ori is led by a half-crazed old homeless man named Spiral Jacobs to join the militant gang of Toro. Committing robberies, raids, and even murder, Toro's group proceeds mercilessly on its quest to assassinate the mayor of New Crobuzon, a plan which is later revealed to be personal rather than political. During Ori's struggles with and against his new gang, an uprising by the Collective, a union of revolutionary groups, threatens to finally wrest New Crobuzon from the hands of its corrupt parliament and militia. After several days of fighting, however, the Collective is destroyed. Ori then learns that Spiral Jacobs is actually a powerful sorcerer sent by Tesh to introduce a dark, destructive force into the midst of New Crobuzon. Here Judah, Ori, and Cutter unite to stop Jacobs with the help of Qurabin, who takes the Tesh ambassador with him 'into the domain of Tekke Vogu'. Ori is killed in the confrontation. In light of the collapse of the Collective, Judah sends Cutter to dissuade Iron Council from returning. He is unsuccessful, and Judah conjures a time- golem to freeze the train in time to save its citizens. Ann Hari murders Judah shortly thereafter for thwarting the attack. As the novel ends, Iron Council has become a public monument of sorts, poised on the verge of attacking New Crobuzon until the unknown moment when the time golem dissipates. Cutter re- immerses himself in New Crobuzon's underground resistance movements, revitalising the protest publication Runagate Rampant. ===== Dennis Cooper is a young cooper apprentice living in poverty, working for his father and determined to marry Griselda Fishfinger. Dennis' father becomes terminally ill, and at his deathbed, his father speaks badly of Dennis. The young man resolves to make a pilgrimage into the city and find work before returning to Griselda. Griselda throws a potato at him, which he keeps as a cherished memento. When Dennis arrives at the city, the people are in a sustained state of fear of a mysterious monster. The king, Bruno the Questionable, considers pitting the land's knights against each other in a jousting tournament to determine who will be sent to slay the monster. Upon returning, the knight will be promoted to prince and married to the Princess, who lives in a tower, wishing a true prince will arrive and marry her. The tournament is announced, while Dennis is told there is no work in the city for even the most skilled and famed cooper. When Dennis accidentally enters the tower, the beautiful and naked Princess mistakes him for her prince, assuming he was forced to don peasants' clothes in the midst of a perilous adventure. She has him disguised in a nun's habit and sent out, but the peasantry believe he is Satan in the guise of a nun, or a nun in the guise of Satan, and decide to send him to the monster. Face to face with the monster, in the form of the bizarre Jabberwocky, Dennis accidentally kills the creature. Bruno the Questionable in turn promises to wed Dennis to the Princess. ===== In the jungles of British Ceylon, Indiana Jones searches for the idol of Kouru Watu. After retrieving the idol, Jones meets a Nazi named Albrecht Von Beck who also seeks it. Jones defeats Von Beck's paid South African ivory hunters and takes his leave while Von Beck is attacked by a giant albino crocodile. Back at school in New York City, Chinese official Marshall Kai Ti Chan and his female assistant Mei Ying inform Jones of the "Heart of the Dragon", a black pearl buried with the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huangdi. The Heart is said to grant the wielder immense magical power, and Kai wants Jones to retrieve it before it falls into the wrong hands. Mei Ying breaks open the Ceylon idol to find the first piece of the "Mirror of Dreams" inside it, an artifact that will help navigate through the Emperor's Tomb and reveal the entrance to Huangdi's crypt. Jones flies to the Prague Castle to acquire the second piece of the Mirror, encountering a large number of Gestapo agents. After solving a series of diverse puzzles and battling a superhuman test subject, he obtains the second piece, before he is knocked unconscious by Von Beck, who had survived the crocodile attack (albeit hideously scarred and blind in his right eye). Von Beck then takes the two Mirror pieces and orders his subordinates to transport Jones to Istanbul where Von Beck intends to interrogate him. Jones wakes up in a prison cell where Mei Ying appears and frees him. He is surprised to find that the Nazis, below Istanbul, have uncovered the ruins of Belisarius' sunken city in search for the final piece of the Mirror. Jones makes his way into the ruins and eventually falls into a sunken amphitheatre where he battles the Kraken guarding the final piece. After defeating the beast, Mei Ying reappears and tells him that Kai is actually the leader of the Black Dragon Triad, the most powerful crime organization in China. Kai had formed an alliance with the Nazis to find the Heart of the Dragon, but when Jones unwittingly secured the first piece of the Mirror, Kai decided to betray the Nazis in order to get the Heart for himself. Mei Ying teams up with Jones, both unaware that Kai's bodyguards have been listening in on their conversation. Mei Ying and Jones go to British Hong Kong in order to infiltrate Kai's fortress. They begin at the Golden Lotus Opera House, where they wait for Wu Han, a character from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom to help them. When Mei Ying is abducted by Kai's men, Jones and Wu Han chase the kidnappers down to a dock in a rickshaw, fighting scores of gangsters along the way. Upon arrival, they see Mei Ying being taken into a submarine by Von Beck. The submarine heads to Kai's private island, and Wu Han and Jones follow in a junk. After infiltrating a Nazi submarine base, Jones spies Von Beck and Kai arguing about their deal. They reach an agreement in which Von Beck can take the Heart to Adolf Hitler when Kai seizes control of China. Disguising himself as a Nazi, Jones makes his way to the peak of Penglai Mountain and the site of the Kai's Black Dragon Fortress where he finds Mei Ying guarded by the Feng twins, Kai's female bodyguards. After defeating them knocking them out, he falls down a heavily booby-trapped shaft into the temple of Kong Tien where he fights evil spirits and finds a magical Chinese boomerang-like weapon called the Pa Cheng, the Dragon's Claw. Eventually he finds Kai assembling the Mirror of Dreams and sacrificing Mei Ying to Kong Tien. Attempting to rescue her, Jones disrupts the ritual, and Kai flees while Mei Ying is possessed. Jones frees her and together, with the mirror, they venture to the Emperor's Tomb where he uses the mirror to cross various obstacles. He is however separated from Mei Ying, despite his efforts. When he arrives at the terracotta maze at the end of the tomb, Von Beck gives chase to him in a boring machine bent on getting rid of Jones once and for all. Von Beck is killed when his tank falls down a chasm, and Jones enters a portal to the Netherworld. After crossing a short Netherworld-version of the Great Wall of China, Jones finally finds Huangdi's crypt and the body of Qin Shi Huangdi. When Jones takes the Heart of the Dragon, the emperor awakens but is nearly instantly killed by the souls of his victims. Unable to control the power of the Heart, Indy collapses while Kai, who suddenly shows up, grabs the pearl. Mei Ying likewise appears to help Jones, but is shortly afterwards seized by Kai's newfound powers. Kai also creates a shield to protect himself and summons a dragon to battle Jones, but Jones uses the Pa Cheng charged with mystical energy to penetrate Kai's shield and destroys the Heart. At the moment Kai loses his powers, spirits of his victims rise and mistake Kai for the first Emperor of China. Jones and Mei Ying flee as Kai is devoured by the dragon. Back in Hong Kong, Jones gets to share some romantic time with Mei Ying, but Wu Han is quick to remind Jones that Lao Che has hired them to find the remains of Nurhachi, leading into the opening of Temple of Doom. ===== Cordelia returns to school only to be rejected by Harmony and her former clique, who taunt her as "Xander's castoff". She goes to The Bronze where Buffy accidentally humiliates her further by knocking her into a pile of trash in front of her friends. Cordelia decides that Buffy is to blame for her predicament. The next day, new girl Anya gives Cordelia an amulet while trying to goad her into wishing something bad would happen to Xander. Instead Cordelia wishes that Buffy had never come to Sunnydale. Anya immediately transforms into Anyanka, the vengeance demon of scorned and wronged women, and grants the wish. Cordelia is once again popular in school, her Cordettes are at her beck and call, and handsome jock John Lee wants to date her. Her happiness is short lived when she realises that the town is overrun by vampires. The Master has risen and created a vast army of vampires, which terrorize the surviving humans. Most of the students are either dead or vampires and there is a nighttime curfew. Walking through the streets at night Cordelia encounters Xander and Willow who are now aggressive, capricious vampires. She is saved by a group of vampire fighters led by Giles. Cordelia tries to explain to Giles what happened and asks to have Buffy back so that things could be the way they were; but, before she can elaborate, she is killed by Xander and Willow. Giles calls Buffy's contacts in Cleveland but is able only to leave a message for the very busy Slayer. He learns that the amulet Cordelia was wearing is that of Anyanka, whose granted wishes can be undone only if her center of power is destroyed. The Master has created machinery to industrialize harvesting of blood from captive humans. Giles, on his way home, is nearly captured by vampires who are rounding up humans for the plant; he is rescued by Buffy, the slayer, who in this reality is cold and cynical. She doubts that Giles can reverse Anya's spell, but does offer to kill the Master. Buffy finds Angel imprisoned; when she sees that he is a vampire, she initially rejects his help, but the marks of torture on his chest persuade her that he is no friend of the Master. The Master starts up the plant with the first human victim before a cage of prisoners, including Oz and Larry. Buffy and Angel attack the vampires. During the battle, Xander kills Angel, Buffy kills Xander, Oz kills Willow, and the Master breaks Buffy's neck. Meanwhile, Giles uses a spell to summon Anyanka to his house. He guesses that Anyanka's own amulet is the center of her powers and smashes it, restoring the original reality. Cordelia once again makes the wish and Anyanka tries to grant it, but without her amulet she is powerless. ===== Distress describes the political intrigue surrounding a mid-twenty-first century physics conference, at which is to be presented a unified Theory of Everything. In the background of the story is an epidemic mental illness, related in some way to the imminent discovery of the TOE. The action takes place on an artificial island called "Stateless", which has earned the wrath of the world's large biotech companies for its pilfering of their intellectual property. The narrator is a journalist for a science channel called SeeNet named Andrew Worth who carries video recording software in an intestinal implant. He is offered a story on a new illness called Distress, but declines. He journeys to Stateless through a series of convoluted flights to cover a presentation by 27-year-old South African physicist Violet Mosala, supplanting the preproduction by a colleague, Sarah Knight. When he arrives, he is informed by an asex anthrocosmologist named Akili that Violet's life is in danger. Violet is finishing her Theory of Everything, which she intends to present on the conference's last day. Through interfacing with a talkative local, Worth learns that Violet plans to emigrate to Stateless after the conference to use her celebrity to provide an opportunity for South Africa and other nations to end their support for the UN boycott of Stateless. He also witnesses the islands' physical underpinnings: it is basically held up by the activity of millions of micro-organisms. After meeting with a faction of anthrocosmologists, he learns that they believe in the concept that the universe is created by one person's Theory of Everything. That person is called the Keystone. Worth becomes deathly ill and believes he has been infected with cholera by a faction of anthrocosmologists who wanted him to transmit the disease to Violet Mosala. He recovers and is kidnapped by this group, who are led by a rival physicist Worth saw with Violet at the conference. Worth and Akili are held on a tanker where it is explained that these cultists believe Violet's TOE will destroy the world. Worth signals for help by connecting his implant to a port on the ship. He and Akili are rescued by citizens of Stateless. Worth returns to the conference and learns that a biotech conglomerate sent a militia to Stateless, angry at the technology they have appropriated. He negotiates with the militia to let a suddenly ill Violet return to South Africa, where she dies. Before her illness, however, she tasked an AI to synthesize her final theory. The militia moves to take over the main city of Stateless, brutalizing the citizens as they evacuate to the outskirts. While seemingly helpless to do anything at first, they soon strike back at the invaders by having triggered microorganisms consume the cities structural underpinning, sinking it into the ocean. Worth is fired from SeeNet and Sarah Knight replaces him, covering the war. Worth discovers that Sarah was working with the cultists, and that AIs are exhibiting symptoms of the titular mental illness as well. Believing that the AI that wrote the paper became the Keystone and that Distress will continue until a human reads it, Worth downloads and reads the paper, and realizes that all minds, together, collaborate in being "the" Keystone, giving all of humanity an intuitive connection with the universe. ===== In the story, Miss Lonelyhearts is an unnamed male newspaper columnist writing an advice column for the lovelorn and lonesome, a duty that the other newspaper staff considers a joke. As Miss Lonelyhearts reads letters from desperate New Yorkers, he feels terribly burdened and falls into a cycle of deep depression, accompanied by heavy drinking and occasional bar fights. He is also the victim of the pranks and cynical advice of Shrike, his feature editor at the newspaper. Miss Lonelyhearts tries several approaches to escape the terribly painful letters he has to read: religion, trips to the countryside with his fiancée Betty, and affairs with Shrike's wife and Mrs. Doyle, a reader of his column. However, Miss Lonelyheart's efforts do not seem to ameliorate his situation. After his sexual encounter with Mrs. Doyle, he meets her husband, a poor crippled man. The Doyles invite Miss Lonelyhearts to have dinner with them. When he arrives, Mrs. Doyle tries to seduce him again, but he responds by beating her. Mrs. Doyle tells her husband that Miss Lonelyhearts tried to rape her. In the last scene, Mr. Doyle hides a gun inside a rolled newspaper and decides to take revenge on Miss Lonelyhearts. Lonelyhearts, who has just experienced a religious enlightenment after three days of sickness, runs toward Mr. Doyle to embrace him. The gun "explodes", and the two men roll down a flight of stairs together. ===== ===== Beth Heke left her small town and, despite her parents' disapproval, married Jake "the Muss" Heke. After eighteen years, they live in a slum and have six children. Their interpretations of life and being Māori are tested. Beth is from a more traditional background and in saying so, relates to the old ways; Jake is an interpretation of what some Māori have become. Beth sometimes tries to reform herself and her family—for example, by giving up drinking and saving the money that she would have spent on alcohol. However, she finds it easy to lapse back into a pattern of drinking and irresponsibility. The family is also shown to be disconnected from Western culture and ways of learning. Beth reflects that neither she nor anyone else she knows has any books at home, and her daughter, Grace, is the only character with a real interest in school and learning. (This disconnection from books and education is a major concern of Duff's, for which reason he founded the charity Duffy Books in Homes, which gives free books to children from poor backgrounds and generally encourages reading.) Jake is unemployed and spends most of the day getting drunk at the local pub with his friends. There he is in his element, buying drinks, singing songs and savagely beating any other patron whom he considers to have stepped out of line (hence his nickname 'The Muss'). He often invites huge crowds of friends back to his home for wild parties. While Jake portrays himself as an easygoing man out for a good time, he has a vicious temper when drinking. This is highlighted when his wife dares to 'get lippy' at one of his parties and he savagely attacks her in front of their friends. Nig, the Hekes' eldest son, moves out to join a street gang. He cares about his siblings but despises his father for his thoughtless brutality, a feeling returned by the elder Heke. Nig attempts to find a substitute family in the form of the gang, but this is unsuccessful as the gang members are either too brutal or, in the case of Nig's gang girlfriend, too beaten down to provide him with the love and support he craves. The second son, Mark 'Boogie' Heke, has a history of minor criminal offenses and is taken from his family and placed in a borstal. Despite his initial anger, Mark finds a new niche for himself, as the borstal manager instructs him in his Māori heritage. Grace, the Hekes' thirteen-year- old daughter, loves writing stories as an escape from the brutality of her life. Grace's best friend is a drug-addicted boy named Toot who has been cast out by his parents and lives in a wrecked car. He is the one who really cares for her. She is the maternal figure within the family when her family is a drunken mess, clearing up the house and going with Boogie to court to attempt to make a good impression of their broken family. Grace is raped in her bed one night, and she subsequently hangs herself. In her diary, later found by her family, Grace says she thinks it was her father who raped her; Jake, who had been too drunk to remember what happened that night, has no answer. He leaves his family and starts living in a park, where he reflects on his life and befriends a homeless young man. Meanwhile, Beth starts a Māori culture group and generally attempts to revive the community. A sequel to the book was published in 1996, What Becomes of The Broken Hearted?, which was made into a film in 1999. Both the book and film sequel were well received, though not as celebrated as the original. The third book in the trilogy, Jake's Long Shadow, was published in 2002, but has not been made into a movie. ===== George Malley is a kind but average auto mechanic in a small town in Northern California. While celebrating his 37th birthday at a local bar with his best friend, Nate, and father figure, Doc Brunder, he steps outside while drunk. A ball of shining bright white lights moves around in the sky, grows closer and hits him in the head, making a loud sound and knocking him down. When he comes to and re-enters the bar, he learns that nobody else saw the lights nor did they hear the sound. Doc notices something is amiss when George quickly achieves a checkmate in their chess game. George begins to exhibit remarkable levels of intelligence. He easily absorbs vast amounts of information, formulates new, revolutionary ideas, as well as developing psychokinesis. Not needing sleep, he spends each night reading multiple books. George tries to use his new intelligence for the good of his community. He correctly predicts an earthquake without any equipment. When Doc is called to aid a sick Portuguese man, George learns the language in minutes and helps translate. He then uses his telekinesis to rescue the man's young relative. Visiting Nate, George decodes and responds to a signal on Nate's shortwave radio, though Nate asks him to forget about it out of fear that they might be picking up information from a nearby air force base. During this time of upheaval, the townsfolk become wary, but George finds support from Doc, Nate and from a growing relationship with a single mother, Lace, and her children, Al and Glory. George also sets a plan in place to help Nate get together with the mother of the Portuguese boy he rescued. George invites Lace to join him on a trip to UC Berkeley to meet with seismologist Professor Ringold about George's earthquake prediction. Instead, the FBI takes George and Nate into custody over his code-breaking. He breaks more codes, then astounds Dr. Nierdof by easily answering a series of difficult quizzes and exams. When George threatens to talk to the press, he is finally released. Returning to the local bar, George becomes frustrated with friends' questions about his abilities, and he causes a large mirror to break via telekinesis. Al buys a piece of the mirror at school where it's all being sold. Lace visits him to provide a shave and a haircut. Their innocent intimacy scares her since she has tried so hard to not like him, but it encourages him to stop avoiding the townsfolk. He goes to the county fair to ease fear with a demonstration of his powers, but the crowd goes into a frenzy, demanding his attention and his perceived healing powers. George is knocked to the ground, where he again sees the balls of light, before losing consciousness. George awakens in a hospital. With Lace and Nate there for support, Doc explains that George has a deadly brain tumor. This has caused the lights and stimulated George's phenomenal brain functions. They have called Dr. Wellin, a leading brain surgeon, to see if an operation can save George's life. Dr. Wellin later determines there is only a 1 in 500 chance of survival but wants to proceed with an invasive operation solely to do research on George's living brain. When George refuses, saying he still has work to do, the doctor has him declared mentally unfit and held against his will. George escapes from the hospital and returns home. He spends time with Nate, then goes to Lace's to spend time with her and her children. The FBI agent shows up, but Lace persuades him to let George die in peace. George and Lace share a romantic and intimate time, but he informs her that he is about to die and she cries as she holds him. Professor Ringold arrives at Lace's house, only to learn that he is too late. Lace gives him George's research materials, so he can finish George's breakthrough work. A year later, George's friends are gathered for what would have been his 38th birthday. Nate, now fluent in Portuguese, is married to a visibly pregnant Ella. Other signs of George's phenomenal impact on the town and its people are seen all around. ===== The film recounts the troubled life of French sculptor Camille Claudel and her long relationship with the sculptor Auguste Rodin. Beginning in the 1880s, with the young Claudel's first meeting with Rodin, the film traces the development of their intense romantic bond. The growth of this relationship coincides with the rise of Claudel's career, helping her overcome prejudices against female artists. However, their romance soon sours, due to the increasing pressures of Rodin's fame and his love for another woman. These difficulties combine with her increasing doubts about the value of her work and drive Claudel into an emotional tumult that threatens to become insanity. ===== The main character Andy is a writer of newspaper classified ads who has been going from relationship to relationship since eighth grade. He loses custody of his dog when his girlfriend, Cheryl, breaks up with him for another man—a punk rocker named Trevor. Andy then meets Lorna, a children's TV show host, but she is too obsessed with her own dog. She's also still hurt emotionally because her boyfriend was Trevor, who left her for Andy's ex, Cheryl. Andy meets her in a bar and has to take her home as she's ill. They both begin making out, but it stops there as she throws up. He knows she works for the TV station and sends her roses and a note requesting a relationship. She decides not to pursue. He moves on by putting himself in a dating auction. She spends some time alone and finally goes out on a date with the clerk from the video store, Callum. It's not much of date, but he helps her out in a big way with the message he leaves on her machine. Andy gets involved with another woman, a nutritionist named Keiran who believes a lot of sex is beneficial. Meanwhile, Cheryl takes Andy's dog to a psychiatrist, who tells her that her promiscuity is traumatizing the dog. While both Andy and Cheryl do their best to share custody, problems arise as Cheryl and Trevor break up and she tries to win Andy back unsuccessfully. Keiran figures out Jeri's boyfriend Jeff is having an affair with Rachel. When Rachel goes to the obedience school graduation to see Jeff's dogs get their diplomas, the dogs run to Rachel and Jeri deduces the affair. They break up. Andy runs to her side to console her. Both Andy and Lorna have feelings for each other, but aren't sure how to follow through with it. Andy being with Kieran and Lorna being with Callum help them come to a very important conclusion. They meet up at the bar they first met at... and start a relationship. ===== In the book's opening, the title character and her mate ambush a herd of Astrodon, which are large herbivorous sauropods. The Astrodon are surprised, thinking that their bulk deters smaller predators. Utahraptor, however, are much larger than any resident raptor, and proceed to take down an Astrodon with teamwork. When Red's mate climbs onto the dead Astrodon, the corpse rolls in the mud, trapping the male under the bulk of the animal. Despite Red's best efforts, her mate suffocates. Despondent, Red wanders around the floodplain, nearly starving since a Utahraptor cannot successfully hunt big game on its own. Red follows a familiar scent and is reunited with her sister, a single mother with three chicks. The two hunt together and bring food back to the nest for the young. A white pterosaur, one Red has seen since she hatched, helps the two by finding carrion and prey in exchange for a helping of meat. On one hunting expedition, when the two adult Utahraptor are stalking a herd of Iguanodon, Red spies a young male Utahraptor that is watching their prey. He begins a courtship dance for Red, but Red's sister chases him off, hissing. Her growls agitate the Iguanodon, who stampede; the male hastily leaves. After climbing into a tree to escape a flash flood, Red encounters the male raptor again, who performs a courtship dance while hanging onto the tree branches. Red's sister begrudgingly allows the male to stay with them, provided he steers clear of her chicks. For a while, Red and her pack are happy, feeding off the plentiful carrion left by receding flood waters, but the pack's way of life is upset by an invasion of large Acrocanthosaurus, huge meat-eating dinosaurs. The added competition for food puts strain on the pack, as does the unexpected death of one of the chicks. A fight erupts between the male raptor and Red's sister. Red, torn between a prospective mate and her kin, tries to defuse the situation. Two Acrocanthosaurus watch the commotion and take the opportunity to attack the Utahraptor. Meanwhile, a Kronosaurus ambushes one of the chicks on the beach. Seeing the danger, Red lures the female Acrocanthosaurus into deep water where the larger predator is dragged under by the Kronosaurus. Red saves her family, but at a price—her consort is forced away by Red's sister. Facing continual threats from the Acrocanthosaurus, Red, her sister and the chicks are forced up into the mountains. They encounter ice and snow for the first time, and kill a segnosaur in a cave, turning the den into their nest. The older chick accompanies the two adults on hunting expeditions. One day the raptors encounter a strange creature they have never seen—a whip-tailed diplodocid who inflicts wounds on Red and her sister; the older chick is forced to set off alone and find the pack's food. This calamity coincides with the arrival of a large pack of smaller raptors known as Deinonychus. Sensing the weakness of the Utahraptor pack, they surround the nest and wait for the wounded raptors to become weak enough to attack. Red's sister dies, and Red is crippled and defenseless against the smaller dinosaurs. The Deinonychus close in and wait for Red to die, but are driven back by a sudden attack—the older Utahraptor chick returns with Red's consort to defend the nest, driving back the Deinonychus. Some time later, the old white pterosaur circles over Red's mountain stronghold, and finds the pack has grown considerably. Red now has chicks with her consort and the older chick has found a mate and has chicks, who are having fun rolling down a hill. The satisfied pterosaur leaves with a mate and offspring of his own. ===== Martin Chuzzlewit has been raised by his grandfather and namesake. Years before Martin senior took the precaution of raising an orphaned girl, Mary Graham, to be his nursemaid, with the understanding that she will be well cared for only as long as Martin senior lives. She thus has a strong motive to promote his well-being, in contrast to his relatives, who want to inherit his money. However, his grandson Martin falls in love with Mary and wishes to marry her, ruining Martin senior's plans. When Martin refuses to give up the engagement his grandfather disinherits him. Martin becomes an apprentice to Seth Pecksniff, a greedy architect. Instead of teaching his students he lives off their tuition fees and has them do draughting work that he passes off as his own. He has two spoiled daughters, Charity and Mercy, nicknamed Cherry and Merry. Unbeknown to Martin, Pecksniff has taken him on in order to establish closer ties with his wealthy grandfather. Young Martin befriends Tom Pinch, a kind-hearted soul whose late grandmother gave Pecksniff all she had in the belief that Pecksniff would make an architect and a gentleman of him. Pinch is incapable of believing any of the bad things others tell him of Pecksniff, and always defends him vociferously. Pinch works for exploitatively low wages while believing that he is the unworthy recipient of Pecksniff's charity. When Martin senior hears of his grandson's new life he demands that Pecksniff kick young Martin out. Then Martin senior moves in and falls under Pecksniff's control. During this time Pinch falls in love with Mary, but does not declare his feelings, knowing of her attachment to young Martin. One of Martin senior's greedy relatives is his brother, Anthony Chuzzlewit, who is in business with his son, Jonas. Despite their considerable wealth, they live miserly, cruel lives. Jonas, eager for the old man to die so that he can inherit, constantly berates his father. Anthony dies abruptly and under suspicious circumstances, leaving his wealth to Jonas. Jonas then woos Cherry, while arguing constantly with Merry. He then abruptly declares to Pecksniff that he wants to marry Merry and jilts Cherry, not without demanding an additional £1,000 on top of the £4,000 that Pecksniff has promised him as Cherry's dowry, with the argument that Cherry has better chances for matchmaking. Jonas, meanwhile, becomes entangled with the unscrupulous Montague Tigg, formerly a petty thief and hanger-on of a Chuzzlewit relative, Chevy Slyme, and joins in Tigg's crooked insurance business. Tigg cheats young Martin out of a valuable pocket watch and uses the funds to transform himself into a seemingly fine man, calling himself "Tigg Montague". This convinces investors that he must be an important businessman from whom they may greatly profit. Jonas eventually ends up murdering Tigg, who has acquired embarrassing information about him. At this time Tom Pinch sees his employer's true character, goes to London to seek new employment, and rescues his sister Ruth from mistreatment by the family that employs her as a governess. Pinch quickly receives an ideal job from a mysterious employer with the help of an equally mysterious Mr Fips. Young Martin, meanwhile, has encountered Mark Tapley, who is always cheerful, which he decides does not reflect well on him because it shows no strength of character to be happy when one has good fortune. Mark decides that he must test his cheerfulness by seeing if he can maintain it in the worst possible circumstances. To this end he accompanies young Martin when he goes to the United States to seek his fortune. The two men attempt to start new lives in a swampy, disease-filled settlement named Eden, but both nearly die of malaria. Mark finally finds himself in a situation in which it can be considered a virtue to remain in good spirits. The grim experience, and Mark's nursing of Martin back to health, change Martin's selfish and proud character, and the men return to England, where Martin seeks reconciliation with his grandfather. By this time, however, his grandfather is under Pecksniff's control and rejects him. Martin is then reunited with Tom Pinch. They discover that Tom's mysterious benefactor is old Martin Chuzzlewit, who has been pretending to be in thrall to Pecksniff. Together the group confront Pecksniff with their knowledge of his true character. They also discover that Jonas has murdered Tigg to prevent him from revealing that he had planned to murder Anthony. Martin senior reveals that he was angry at his grandson for becoming engaged to Mary because he had planned to arrange that particular match himself, and felt that his glory had been thwarted by their action. Martin and his grandfather are reconciled, and Martin and Mary are married, as are Ruth Pinch and John Westlock, another former student of Pecksniff's. Tom Pinch remains in unrequited love with Mary for the rest of his life, never marrying, and always being a warm companion to Mary, Martin, Ruth and John. ===== In a small rural Pennsylvania town in July 1957, teenager Steve Andrews (Steve McQueen) and his girlfriend, Jane Martin (Aneta Corsaut), kiss at a lovers' lane when they see a meteorite crash beyond the next hill; Steve decides to look for it. An old man (Olin Howland) living nearby finds it first. When he pokes the meteorite with a stick, it breaks open, and a small jelly-like globule inside attaches itself to his hand. In pain and unable to scrape or shake it loose, the old man runs onto the road, where he is nearly struck by Steve's car; Steve and Jane take him to Doctor Hallen (Stephen Chase). Doctor Hallen anesthetizes the man and sends Steve and Jane back to locate the impact site and gather information. Hallen decides he must amputate the man's arm since it is being consumed. Before he can, the Blob completely consumes the old man, then Hallen's nurse Kate, and finally the doctor himself, growing redder and larger with each victim consumed. Steve and Jane return in time for Steve to witness the doctor trying to get out the window with the creature covering him. They leave and go to the police station and return with Lieutenant Dave (Earl Rowe) and Sergeant Bert (John Benson). There is no sign, however, of the creature or its victims, and skeptic Bert dismisses Steve's story as a teenage prank. Steve and Jane are taken home by their parents, but they later sneak out. In the meantime, the creature consumes a mechanic at a repair shop. At the Colonial Theater during a midnight screening of Daughter of Horror, Steve recruits Tony (Robert Fields) and some of his friends to warn people about the creature. When Steve notices that his father's grocery store is unlocked, he and Jane go inside to check why. The janitor is nowhere to be seen. The couple is quickly cornered by the creature and they seek refuge in the walk-in freezer. The creature oozes in under the door but quickly retreats. Steve and Jane gather their friends and set off the town's fire and air-raid alarms. The responding townspeople and police still refuse to believe them. Meanwhile, the creature enters the Colonial Theater and engulfs the projectionist before oozing into the auditorium. Steve is finally vindicated when screaming people flee the theater in blind panic. Jane, her kid brother Danny, and Steve become trapped in a diner, along with the manager and a waitress, as the creature, enormous from the people it has consumed, engulfs the diner. Dave has a connection made from his police radio to the diner's telephone upstairs, telling those in the diner to get into the cellar before the police bring down a live power line onto the creature. When the power line is felled, it discharges a massive electrical current into the creature which is unaffected but the diner is set ablaze. When the diner manager uses a carbon dioxide extinguisher on the fire, Steve notices that the creature recoils. Steve remembers that it also retreated from the freezer, telling Jane "That's why it didn't come in the ice box after us. It can't stand cold!" Shouting in hopes of being picked up on the open phone line, Steve yells to Dave about the creature's vulnerability to cold. The firemen have a limited supply of CO2 fire extinguishers. Jane's father high school principal Henry Martin (Elbert Smith) leads Steve's friends to break and enter the school to retrieve all its CO2 extinguishers. On their return, a brigade of fire extinguisher-armed students, firemen and police first drive the creature away from the diner freeing all trapped there, then surround and freeze the creature. Dave requests authorities send an Air Force heavy-lift cargo aircraft to transport the creature to the Arctic. Dave says that while the creature is not dead, at least it will be stopped. To this, Steve replies, "Yeah, as long as the Arctic stays cold". The film ends with parachutes bearing the creature on a pallet down to an Arctic ice field with the superimposed words "The End" morphing into a question mark. ===== According to the manual backstory, the sun-wizard master Acanthopsis discovers the "Cosmic Power" with a toll on his life. Before dying he teaches it to his disciples, Alestes and Mentor. Alestes has been transformed into a barn owl, and has to pass through Mentor's traps and monsters in order to reach the Cosmic Power. ===== Plot cards are generally regarded as the defining feature of A Game of Thrones: The Card Game. Unlike the shuffled and randomly drawn resource deck, at the beginning of each round, each player chooses a new plot card to be revealed, which will have an effect on the round to be played, allowing for a strategic element to an otherwise random game. Plot cards indicate the base amount of gold available for the player to use to bring new cards into play during his Marshalling phase (indicated by a number within a gold coin), a base initiative value to determine the order of play for the round (indicated by a number within a diamond), a base claim value to determine the scope of the effect that player winning a challenge (indicated by a number in a silver disk), and a text box detailing any other effects or restrictions on the plot card, including any traits that it might have. Most plot cards are designed with built-in trade-offs, sacrificing high claim for low income, or some other game mechanic drawback. =====