Vastralaya

Evan Shively (Perseus271)

Edgar Colt

Vitor Miguel

Prisma Soulstorm

Serena

Jordan

Bruna Guedes

Husain Kothari

FRNK

Uendi Prifti

Abdul Hasib

Leo Tolstoy embodies the most extraordinary contradictions. He was a wealthy aristocrat who preached the virtues of poverty and the peasant life, a misogynist who wrote Anna Karenina, and a supreme writer who declared, "Literature is rubbish." From Tolstoy's famously bad marriage to his enormously successful career, Troyat presents a brilliant portrait that reads like an epic novel written by Tolstoy himself.

I've carted this book about for twenty-six years. In earlier attempts to read to the end I've gotten so far as page 186, because, I suspect, I read on p.168: "[L]ittle by little, as the woman becomes Poet, biography must shift its principal focus from the person to that Voice of the verse, for it was in her poetry and not in the world that ED deliberately decided to 'live'." Of course, this is nonsense - from my perspective. I'm persuaded that ED did not lead a disembodied existence for the thirty-six years of earthly life that remained to her once she had chosen poetry as her vocation. Moreover, although I didn't witness the event, I believe that her family buried her earthly remains on May 19, 1886. And there was and is that rather annoying and off-putting presumption of the gatekeeper/Redeemer that Wolff adopts for the printed page, as in "No one cometh unto Miss Dickinson, but by me."But I am not now the same person who bought a copy of Wolff's book in 1986. And for that I am most grateful. Now I can just about ignore authorial arrogance - having labored sporadically with biography myself for nearly thirty years, I understand and accept that such hazards are realized - with certain notable exceptions - Richard Sewall, for example. And now I pose the question to myself: What biographical facts does Wolff's work establish? How can the results of Wolff's labor enhance the sense of ED that I have created for myself over the years of my engagement with that extraordinarily gifted and preternaturally brave person, as heroic as Homer's depiction of Odysseus.And that approach to Wolff's book has paid munificent dividends.My sense is that Wolff's reading of the poetry that ED composed before 1862 - from my perspective much fuller and richer than any reading that appears in Vendler's compendium - provides an entirely plausible explanation of ED's choice of vocation. It seems to me that one could select and integrate several hundred pages of Sewall and Wolff and thereby produce a book that documents highly persuasive answers to questions - how and under what conditions did ED choose poetry as vocation? Highly significant biographical questions, I would say. [I suspect, however, that choice had little to do with her actions. How could she have "chosen" differently? An impossibility, so far as I can tell.] Wolff's readings of all of ED's poetry might also serve as perfectly splendid hypotheses regarding the trajectory of ED's inner life. Her poems document certain events of her inner life - as do her letters. I say events, because her poems do not represent a complete transcript of the contents of her mind over time, but rather single events separated by more or less lengthy intervals that together might represent a "trajectory." [I do wish I could avoid this metaphor - but for now I'm at a loss to state what I think I mean by this word.]I note, however, that Wolff does not appear to be overly scrupulous with chronology. That's understandable because those who have been, first Johnson and then Franklin, have produced very different sequences of events - from the bits and pieces of evidence that they employed to give us the best numbering and dating that we have. As a result Wolff describes the course of ED's inner life that I can't believe entirely, because the poems she adduces as evidence of sequence don't correspond to events in time as Johnson, whose chronology she had but dismissed, described or as Franklin asserts in his revision of Johnson's chronology. So I suspect that ED's inner life was much more various and complex than Wolff's account allows. Hardly a surprise. And Wolff admits as much near the end of her book (p. 504): "In the days of her youth, ED's religious attitudes were surely dominated by defiance and anger, yet even in those early days there had been pensive moments of hope and trust in the Lord - never enough to suffuse her with faith or to conversion, but enough to find some expression in the poetry. In those early years the Voice of faith was faint in both religious and aesthetic terms ... As the years passed, however, the balance shifted, at first only slightly, but more and more as time went by. By the mid-1860s or early 1870s, well before Father's death, a new poetry of faith had emerged." Why then didn't this perspective inform nearly 300 pages of her reading of poems that ED composed in those early years? Oh, never mind. It's there, here and there. So now I am persuaded that someone could devote a lifetime of study to ED, the results of which could be a biography that traces and juxtaposes events in ED's inner and outer lives - with uncertainties admitted and plainly stated. Someone who would give us a biography of ED to stand with Joseph Frank's life of Dostoyevsky (five volumes) or Brian Boyd's Nabokov. As for me I have purchased Franklin's variorum edition of ED's poems, and I think I'll devote a substantial number of the years of this life that remain to me in the company of ED and H. D. Thoreau.Wouldn't it be paradise enough to spend an eternity or two listening to a conversation between ED and Margaret Fuller? But then again an eternity or two might not be long enough for ED to get a moment's free air time. Well, then three or four eternities.

For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future -- to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save mankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire -- both scientists and scholars -- and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the Galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for a future generations. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation.But soon the fledgling Foundation finds itself at the mercy of corrupt warlords rising in the wake of the receding Empire. Mankind's last best hope is faced with an agonizing choice: submit to the barbarians and be overrun -- or fight them and be destroyed.

Blondie, The Good (Clint Eastwood), is a professional gunslinger who is out trying to earn a few dollars. Angel Eyes, The Bad (Lee Van Cleef), is a hitman who always commits to a task and sees it through--as long as he's paid to do so. And Tuco, The Ugly (Eli Wallach), is a wanted outlaw trying to take care of his own hide. Tuco and Blondie share a partnership making money off of Tuco's bounty, but when Blondie unties the partnership, Tuco tries to hunt down Blondie. When Blondie and Tuco come across a horse carriage loaded with dead bodies, they soon learn from the only survivor, Bill Carson (Antonio Casale), that he and a few other men have buried a stash of gold in a cemetery. Unfortunately, Carson dies and Tuco only finds out the name of the cemetery, while Blondie finds out the name on the grave. Now the two must keep each other alive in order to find the gold. Angel Eyes (who had been looking for Bill Carson) discovers that Tuco and Blondie met with Carson and knows they know where the gold is; now he needs them to lead him to it. Now The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly must all battle it out to get their hands on $200,000.00 worth of gold.

A young man -- starving, nearly catatonic and barely responsive -- is confined in a sanitarium. He is taken on a field trip along with other residents to the city's red-light district. There, he encounters by chance a woman from his past, triggering a series of flashbacks. We see that he was traumatized as a child, when he and his family were circus performers, and when he witnessed a murder/suicide: his father -- an American expatriate living in Mexico under suspicious circumstances -- cuts off the arms of his beloved mother, a possessive wife and religious fanatic who led a heretical church called "Santa Sangre (Holy Blood)," the members of which worshipped a martyred girl whose arms were severed by her father following her rape, and then commit suicide. Back in the present, buttressed by shock of his remembrance, he escapes the sanitarium and, in a series of hallucinations and dream-fulfillments, believes he has rejoined his armless mother. He "becomes her arms" and the "two" undertake a grisly campaign of murder and revenge.

In Hollywood of the 50's, the obscure screenplay writer Joe Gillis is not able to sell his work to the studios, is full of debts and is thinking in returning to his hometown to work in an office. While trying to escape from his creditors, he has a flat tire and parks his car in a decadent mansion in Sunset Boulevard. He meets the owner and former silent-movie star Norma Desmond, who lives alone with her butler and driver Max Von Mayerling. Norma is demented and believes she will return to the cinema industry, and is protected and isolated from the world by Max, who was her director and husband in the past and still loves her. Norma proposes Joe to move to the mansion and help her in writing a screenplay for her comeback to the cinema, and the small-time writer becomes her lover and gigolo. When Joe falls in love for the young aspirant writer Betty Schaefer, Norma becomes jealous and completely insane and her madness leads to a tragic end.

Dante Hicks is not having a good day. He clerks in a small convenience store and is told to come into work on his day off. Dante thinks life is a series of down endings and this day proves to be no different. He reads in the newspaper that his ex-girlfriend Caitlin is getting married. His present girlfriend reveals to have somewhat more experience with sex that he thought. His principal concerns are the hockey game he has that afternoon and the wake for a friend who died. His buddy Randal Graves works as a clerk in the video store next door and he hates his job as much as Dante hates his.

The lead character, called 'The Bride,' was a member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, led by her lover 'Bill.' Upon realizing she was pregnant with Bill's child, 'The Bride' decided to escape her life as a killer. She fled to Texas, met a young man, who, on the day of their wedding rehearsal was gunned down by an angry and jealous Bill (with the assistance of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad). Four years later, 'The Bride' wakes from a coma, and discovers her baby is gone. She, then, decides to seek revenge upon the five people who destroyed her life and killed her baby. The saga of Kill Bill Volume I begins.

1949, Santa Rosa, California. A laconic, chain-smoking barber with fallen arches tells a story of a man trying to escape a humdrum life. It's a tale of suspected adultery, blackmail, foul play, death, Sacramento city slickers, racial slurs, invented war heroics, shaved legs, a gamine piano player, aliens, and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Ed Crane cuts hair in his in-law's shop; his wife drinks and may be having an affair with her boss, Big Dave, who has $10,000 to invest in a second department store. Ed gets wind of a chance to make money in dry cleaning. Blackmail and investment are his opportunity to be more than a man no one notices. Settle in the chair and listen.

After an uncomfortable, borderline disturbing visitation by a cryptic neighbour, the fading movie star, Nikki Grace, is thrilled to hear that she has just landed herself the female lead role in director Kingsley Stewart's sensational Southern melodrama called "On High in Blue Tomorrows". However, as she gradually disappears into her complex role, Nikki's character, Susan Blue, starts to emerge from the labyrinthine pathways of her unconscious, creeping into her delicate consciousness. More and more, as Nikki's dissociation becomes more aggressive, and her self-transcendent experience sets in motion a sometimes subtle, sometimes profound transformation, parallel worlds interweave, and a mysterious lost girl tuned into the TV sitcom,

A documentary showing the lives of the famous directors Ethan Coen and Joel Coen. Including many guests featuring in their films.

A young Hobbit known as Frodo has been thrown on an amazing adventure, when he is appointed the job of destroying the One Ring, which was created by the Dark Lord Sauron. He is assigned with three warriors including Gandelf, Aragorn, and Boromir. But it's not going to be an easy journey for the Fellowship of the Ring, on the ultimate quest to rid the Middle-earth of all evil.

In London, the sideshow troupe of Doctor Parnassus promises the audience a journey to the "Imaginarium", an imaginary world commanded by the mind of Doctor Parnassus, where dreams come true. In the stories that Doctor Parnassus tells to his daughter Valentina, the midget Percy, and his assistant Anton, he claims to have lived for more than one thousand years; However, when he fell in love with a mortal woman, he made a deal with the devil (Mr. Nick), trading his immortality for youth. As part of the bargain, he promised his son or daughter to Mr. Nick on their sixteenth birthday. Valentina is now almost to the doomed age and Doctor Parnassus makes a new bet with Mr. Nick, whoever seduces five souls in the Imaginarium will have Valentina as a prize. Meanwhile the troupe rescues Tony, a young man that was hanged on a bridge by the Russians. Tony was chased until he finds and joins the group. Tony and Valentina fall in love with each other and the jealous Anton discovers that his competition may be a liar.

In 1954, up-and-coming U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels is assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Boston's Shutter Island Ashecliffe Hospital. He's been pushing for an assignment on the island for personal reasons, but before long he thinks he's been brought there as part of a twisted plot by hospital doctors whose radical treatments range from unethical to illegal to downright sinister. Teddy's shrewd investigating skills soon provide a promising lead, but the hospital refuses him access to records he suspects would break the case wide open. As a hurricane cuts off communication with the mainland, more dangerous criminals "escape" in the confusion, and the puzzling, improbable clues multiply, Teddy begins to doubt everything - his memory, his partner, even his own sanity.

Ten years after the invasion of Naboo, the Galactic Republic is facing a Separatist movement and the former queen and now Senator Padmé Amidala travels to Coruscant to vote on a project to create an army to help the Jedi to protect the Republic. Upon arrival, she escapes from an attempt to kill her, and Obi-Wan Kenobi and his Padawan Anakin Skywalker are assigned to protect her. They chase the shape-shifter Zam Wessell but she is killed by a poisoned dart before revealing who hired her. The Jedi Council assigns Obi-Wan Kenobi to discover who has tried to kill Amidala and Anakin to protect her in Naboo. Obi-Wan discovers that the dart is from the planet Kamino, and he heads to the remote planet. He finds an army of clones that has been under production for years for the Republic and that the bounty hunter Jango Fett was the matrix for the clones. Meanwhile Anakin and Amidala fall in love with each other, and he has nightmarish visions of his mother. They travel to his home planet, Tatooine, to see his mother, and he discovers that she has been abducted by Tusken Raiders. Anakin finds his mother dying, and he kills all the Tusken tribe, including the women and children. Obi-Wan follows Jango Fett to the planet Geonosis where he discovers who is behind the Separatist movement. He transmits his discoveries to Anakin since he cannot reach the Jedi Council. Who is the leader of the Separatist movement? Will Anakin receive Obi-Wan's message? And will the secret love between Anakin and Amidala succeed?

2002 American epic space opera film directed by George Lucas

Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) is a harried technocrat in a futuristic society that is needlessly convoluted and inefficient. He dreams of a life where he can fly away from technology and overpowering bureaucracy, and spend eternity with the woman of his dreams. While trying to rectify the wrongful arrest of one Harry Buttle (Brian Miller), Lowry meets the woman he is always chasing in his dreams, Jill Layton (Kim Greist). Meanwhile, the bureaucracy has fingered him responsible for a rash of terrorist bombings, and Sam and Jill's lives are put in danger.

Action movie star Tugg Speedman is on the downslide of his professional career. He wants to be considered a serious actor, but his latest serious role as the title character in "Simple Jack" resulted in negative reviews and ridicule. Comedian Jeff Portnoy is best known for his leading roles in sophomoric comedies, and may be less well known for his rampant drug use. Five time Oscar winner Kirk Lazarus is a serious method actor, who immerses himself in whatever the role. On location in southeast Vietnam, they are the stars of "Tropic Thunder", based on Vietnam war veteran 'Four Leaf' Tayback's memoirs of his rescue during the war, that rescue which was considered a near suicide mission for the assigned army force and resulted in him losing both hands. For his role, Caucasian Australian Lazarus even went through a controversial surgical skin dying procedure so that he could convincingly play a black man. Production is not going well since rookie director Damien Cockburn is unable to control the prima-donna attitude of his three stars. Cockburn and Tayback decide that the five primary actors - Speedman, Portnoy, Lazarus, rapper Alpa Chino, and newcomer Kevin Sandusky - need to work together as a unit as did their real life characters. The five are placed in the middle of the jungle, and with only a map and their prop machine guns in hand, are asked to work together to battle through the stunt pyrotechnics in their way. What none of the seven of them know is that they have been dropped into a real life drug war led by the Flaming Dragons. It isn't until Speedman is captured by the Flaming Dragons and tortured that they all realize that what they believed was make believe gunfire and land mines was actually real life. As the four actors try to figure out what to do concerning Speedman's situation, all five go through their own journey of self-discovery. Meanwhile, the movie's megalomaniacal profanity spewing producer Les Grossman and Speedman's faithful agent Rick Peck argue about what to do about Speedman's situation. And Tayback inadvertently shows a little of his true self.

From controlling our weight, to helping us learn, to washing our brain, and fighting off disease like Alzheimer's, around the world researchers are penetrating the mysterious world of sleep and deciphering its secrets.

Barry Egan hates himself and hates his life. The only male among eight siblings, Barry is treated poorly by his overbearing sisters. Despite owning his own business, he has gotten nowhere in life largely because of his insecurities. He leads a solitary life, which allows him to hide his violent outbursts that occur when he's frustrated. His solitude however allows him to think, he stumbling upon a scheme to travel the world on a pittance, travel which he has never done. Concurrently, he meets two people who pull him in two different directions. The first is Lena Leonard, a friend of his sister Elizabeth. Barry is slow to realize that Lena is attracted to him, he making her make all the first moves. Lena is eventually able to get Barry out of his shell, she who sticks around despite his obvious problems. His burgeoning relationship and thus new life with Lena is threatened by the second, "Georgia", who he contacted in an effort to alleviate his loneliness. Georgia and her "band of brothers" do whatever they can get get out of Barry what they want, no matter the price to Barry.

Scottish singer, songwriter and guitarist

American singer, songwriter and guitarist (1926–2017)

Canadian singer, songwriter and filmmaker (born 1945)

American singer, guitarist and songwriter

The body of a young girl (Laura Palmer) is washed up on a beach near the small Washington state town of Twin Peaks. FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper is called in to investigate her strange demise only to uncover a web of mystery that ultimately leads him deep into the heart of the surrounding woodland and his very own soul.

American drama television series from 1990–1991

Two FBI agents, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully work in an unassigned detail of the bureau called the X-Files investigating cases dealing with unexplained paranormal phenomena. Mulder, a true believer, and Scully, a skeptic, perceive their cases from stand points of science and the paranormal.

American science fiction drama television series

Elizabeth "Liz" Lemon (Tina Fey) is the executive show runner for a late night sketch comedy show called "The Girlie Show", that stars her close friend and major drama queen Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski). When GE hires a new Executive Vice President for NBC named Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), he decides to take Liz Lemon under his wing and turn around TGS, which for years has been unable to find the proper audience it deserves. So to do so, he brings on unhinged, wildly unpredictable star Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) to turn the series into a ratings hit. But Liz soon finds out that controlling her oddball writing staff, the NBC page program, keeping Tracy on a short leash, and getting him to get along with Jenna proves to be one disaster after another. Will TGS ever see true success? And will Liz find the right partner to get married and start a family?

An offshoot of The Daily Show (1996), The Colbert Report (the Ts in Colbert and in Report are silent) is a parody of shows like "The O'Reilly Factor". Colbert begins the show with teasers about the show's content and then the credits go by, with a giant eagle and the stars and stripes featured predominantly. Colbert will pepper commentaries with phrases like, "Look, I don't have time to read books", or, "President Bush isn't a head thinker, he's a gut thinker." Aspects of talking head programs are exaggerated and Colbert presents a host overwhelmed by his own importance. Guests do not walk on-stage but are seated at a small table to the side. Colbert runs over to them, encouraging the audience to applaud and high five him as he passes. He is then likely to begin an interview by asking a guest something like, "Explain evolution in twenty seconds", or "Isn't everyone who disagrees with the President guilty of treason?" Colbert is also very clear about our number one threat, "Bears". His distrust of bears was a continuing theme.

When zany mad scientist Dr. Clayton Forrester and his loopy assistant Frank get bored with their work at the Deep Thirteen research center, they kidnap Joel the janitor and shoot him into orbit on the Satellite of Love. While in space Joel builds wacky robot sidekicks Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot to help him withstand an onslaught of grade 'Z' movies that the mad scientists force him to watch.

In this sitcom, the suddenly risen film star Vince Chase, a 'jeune premiere' of humble origins, learns the ropes of the business and the high-profile world of the wealthy happy few in and around Hollywood, but not alone: he brings from his native New York his atypical 'entourage (hence the title), not glitterati or professionals but a close circle of friends since childhood, and his professional agent finds they often make his job harder as the Queens boys not only sponge on the star but also have his ear, so Vince is much harder to counsel. Vince chooses his friend from home Eric as his manager, and LA professional Ari Gold as his agent. Over the course of the Series, they progress from kids from Queens, to actors, to producers and chase the funding and support to try to make the perfect movie for Vincent.

The irreverent Monty Python comedy troupe present a series of skits which are often surreal, bawdy, uncompromising and/or tasteless, but nearly always hilarious.

A mediocre paper company in the hands of Scranton, PA branch manager Michael Scott. This mockumentary follows the everyday lives of the manager and the employees he "manages." The crew follows the employees around 24/7 and captures their quite humorous and bizarre encounters as they will do what it takes to keep the company thriving.

Jerry Seinfeld stars in this television comedy series as himself, a comedian. The premise of this sitcom is Jerry and his friends going through everyday life, discussing various quirky situations, to which we can all relate (especially if we live in New York City). The eccentric personalities of the offbeat characters who make up Jerry's social circle contribute to the fun.

The gang, 5 raging alcoholic, narcissists run a failing dive bar in south philly. The gang make up some scheme for sex, money, fame or for any other terrible reason you could think of. It always goes south however, as the gang (sometimes literally) have their plans blow up in their face.

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