Jordan

Bruna Guedes

Husain Kothari

FRNK

Uendi Prifti

Abdul Hasib

Loughlin Sullivan

Delaney Knopp

Auriel W

Blake Molmen

Dani Shahar

Luis Javier Campos nieto

You can find an alternative cover edition for this ISBN here and here.A rich selection of background and source materials is provided in three areas: Contexts includes probable inspirations for Dracula in the earlier works of James Malcolm Rymer and Emily Gerard. Also included are a discussion of Stoker's working notes for the novel and "Dracula's Guest," the original opening chapter to Dracula. Reviews and Reactions reprints five early reviews of the novel. "Dramatic and Film Variations" focuses on theater and film adaptations of Dracula, two indications of the novel's unwavering appeal. David J. Skal, Gregory A. Waller, and Nina Auerbach offer their varied perspectives. Checklists of both dramatic and film adaptations are included.Criticism collects seven theoretical interpretations of Dracula by Phyllis A. Roth, Carol A. Senf, Franco Moretti, Christopher Craft, Bram Dijkstra, Stephen D. Arata, and Talia Schaffer.A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography are included.

This is the story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world and did. Was he a destroyer or the greatest of liberators?Why did he have to fight his battle, not against his enemies, but against those who needed him most, and his hardest battle against the woman he loved? What is the world’s motor — and the motive power of every man? You will know the answer to these questions when you discover the reason behind the baffling events that play havoc with the lives of the characters in this story. Tremendous in its scope, this novel presents an astounding panorama of human life — from the productive genius who becomes a worthless playboy — to the great steel industrialist who does not know that he is working for his own destruction — to the philosopher who becomes a pirate — to the composer who gives up his career on the night of his triumph — to the woman who runs a transcontinental railroad — to the lowest track worker in her Terminal tunnels. You must be prepared, when you read this novel, to check every premise at the root of your convictions.This is a mystery story, not about the murder — and rebirth — of man’s spirit. It is a philosophical revolution, told in the form of an action thriller of violent events, a ruthlessly brilliant plot structure and an irresistible suspense. Do you say this is impossible? Well, that is the first of your premises to check.

The revolutionary literary vision that sowed the seeds of Objectivism, Ayn Rand's groundbreaking philosophy, and brought her immediate worldwide acclaim.This modern classic is the story of intransigent young architect Howard Roark, whose integrity was as unyielding as granite...of Dominique Francon, the exquisitely beautiful woman who loved Roark passionately, but married his worst enemy...and of the fanatic denunciation unleashed by an enraged society against a great creator. As fresh today as it was then, Rand’s provocative novel presents one of the most challenging ideas in all of fiction—that man’s ego is the fountainhead of human progress...“A writer of great power. She has a subtle and ingenious mind and the capacity of writing brilliantly, beautifully, bitterly...This is the only novel of ideas written by an American woman that I can recall.”—The New York Times

Audio book experiment II failed.I am pretty sure this book would have blown even if I had read it on the page. I listened to it while driving back and forth to Santa Clara from my home office for a project I was working on. I was sick of my iPod so I thought I'd try audio books. (I have since learned from friend recommendations and personal experience that it is not the best idea to listen to fiction while driving.)Anyway, as far as I could surmise, this book is about a young band trying to break into the music business. Some weird shit happened with a kangaroo in a bathroom, but I had totally lost track of what was going on by the time I realized there was a kangaroo in a bathroom. There was a sex scene which almost made me drive off the road, so that accounts for the second star.Why I didn't like this book:1. The writing is poor. It was read by the author himself so I thought it would at least sound the way he intended, but even that didn't help.2. The title of the book is ripped off from a Roky Erickson song. It bums me out that this crappy book is named after such a beautiful song. Erickson wasn't even acknowledged anywhere in the book. So I am here to tell you (for what it's worth): No, Jonathan Lethem didn't think of the title on his own. 3. And this is my biggest pet peeve. The band eventually gets a gig and rocks the house with their single. The crowd chants for them to play their single a second time, so they do and they rock the house again. THIS WOULD NEVER HAPPEN! NO ONE likes it when a band plays a single twice in one show! It never, ever sounds as good as the first time and it's totally lame and it kills the moment. It's like telling the audience you have no additional material and you'll never be more than that one song. It is the lamest move a band can ever make. I can't believe Lethem actually put that in his book.

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves—and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives—and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are. Inspired by the myth of a man condemned to ceaselessly push a rock up a mountain and watch it roll back to the valley below, The Myth of Sisyphus transformed twentieth-century philosophy with its impassioned argument for the value of life in a world without religious meaning.

It was to correct common misconceptions about his thought that Jean-Paul Sartre, the most dominent European intellectual of the post-World War II decades, accepted an invitation to speak on October 29, 1945, at the Club Maintenant in Paris. The unstated objective of his lecture (“Existentialism Is a Humanism”) was to expound his philosophy as a form of “existentialism,” a term much bandied about at the time. Sartre asserted that existentialism was essentially a doctrine for philosophers, though, ironically, he was about to make it accessible to a general audience. The published text of his lecture quickly became one of the bibles of existentialism and made Sartre an international celebrity.The idea of freedom occupies the center of Sartre’s doctrine. Man, born into an empty, godless universe, is nothing to begin with. He creates his essence—his self, his being—through the choices he freely makes (“existence precedes essence”). Were it not for the contingency of his death, he would never end. Choosing to be this or that is to affirm the value of what we choose. In choosing, therefore, we commit not only ourselves but all of mankind.This book presents a new English translation of Sartre’s 1945 lecture and his analysis of Camus’s The Stranger, along with a discussion of these works by acclaimed Sartre biographer Annie Cohen-Solal. This edition is a translation of the 1996 French edition, which includes Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre’s introduction and a Q&amp;A with Sartre about his lecture.

In her ethics Ayn Rand extolled the virtue of selfishness—and in her theory of art she was no less radical. Piercing the fog of mysticism and sentimentality that engulfs art, the essays in The Romantic Manifesto explain why, since time immemorial, man has created and consumed works of art.Ayn Rand argues that objective standards in art are possible because art is not a subjective luxury, but rather a critical need of human life—not a material need, but a need of man’s rational mind, the faculty on which his material survival depends.Ayn Rand explains the indispensable function of art in man’s life (ch. 1), the objective source of man’s deeply personal, emotional response to art (ch. 2), and how an artist’s fundamental, often unstated view of man and of the world shapes his creations (ch. 3).Turning to her own field of artistic creation, Rand elaborates (ch. 5) on her distinctive theory of literature and identifies principles by which to judge an artwork objectively. “What is Romanticism?” (ch. 6) sheds new light on the nature and philosophy of the school of literature under which Rand classified her own work. Later essays explain how contemporary art reveals the debased intellectual state of our culture (ch. 7, 8 and 9).In the final essay Rand articulates the goal of her own fiction writing as “the projection of an ideal man, as an end in itself”—and explains that she originated her philosophy as a means to this end.Table of ContentsIntroductionThe Psycho-Epistemology of ArtPhilosophy and Sense of LifeArt and Sense of LifeArt and CognitionBasic Principles of LiteratureWhat Is Romanticism?The Esthetic Vacuum of Our AgeBootleg RomanticismArt and Moral TreasonIntroduction to Ninety-ThreeThe Goal of My WritingThe Simplest Thing in the WorldIndex

Ayn Rand's first published novel, a timeless story that explores the struggles of the individual against the state in Soviet Russia.First published in 1936, We the Living portrays the impact of the Russian Revolution on three human beings who demand the right to live their own lives and pursue their own happiness. It tells of a young woman’s passionate love, held like a fortress against the corrupting evil of a totalitarian state.We the Living is not a story of politics, but of the men and women who have to struggle for existence behind the Red banners and slogans. It is a picture of what those slogans do to human beings. What happens to the defiant ones? What happens to those who succumb? Against a vivid panorama of political revolution and personal revolt, Ayn Rand shows what the theory of socialism means in practice.

The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh's novels, Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmains and the rapidly-disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to recognize only his spiritual and social distance from them.

The central theory of 'synchronicity' relies on an unfortunate combination of flawed research and misapplied statistics. Jung hems and haws but is never able to demonstrate that any acausal connection between events exists.The first problem is his reliance on research by Joseph Rhine, who coined the term 'parapsychology' to describe his studies. Throughout his career, Rhine's work was plagued with errors, and his ESP experiments were so poorly-designed as to be useless.To produce good results means setting up a good test. If there are flaws in the test, the results will be useless. When Rhine began to speak about the 'remarkable findings' in his research, he gained interest and his papers were widely read. Sadly, it was immediately clear to professionals in the field that the results were unreliable.Through the course of his early experiments, Rhine did not lay out a system by which the testing took place. He used a set of twenty-five Zener cards to test his subjects, but never specified any method by which the cards be randomized or presented. One of the most successful tests took place in a moving car.The expected outcomes were also underestimated, so that subjects reported as performing 'above chance' were in fact quite average. Each deck contained five symbols with five cards each, and Rhine reported this meant a one-in-five (20%) chance of guessing the correct card. However, the cards were not returned to the deck and reshuffled after each one was drawn, so every card after the first had a greater than 20% chance of being guessed.If the first card drawn is a star, the subject knows that only four star cards remain. That means the other symbols in the deck now have a greater than 20% chance of being drawn. If eight cards have been drawn and none of them are a cross, the subject now has a 30% chance of being correct if he guesses a cross, since there are more crosses remaining in the deck than any other card. The odds of guessing correctly increase for every card drawn.Beyond counting cards, it was later discovered that several of Rhine's assistants were helping certain subjects to cheat, that subjects were often allowed to handle the cards, and that the original cards were often thin enough that the symbols could be seen through them when backlit.After changing the tests to make cheating more difficult and getting rid of assistants caught cheating, Rhine never again produced any meaningful results. Sadly, he revealed his prejudice when he refused to publish any experiment that did not support his theories.He then tried to excuse his lack of evidence by the so-called 'Decline Effect', which is just another misunderstanding of how statistics operate. Imagine you roll a large number of dice, then get rid of any that roll five or lower. You continue rolling, and continue keeping only those that roll high. Eventually, you're down to a handful of dice. If you keep rolling them, they will average out.They were never super dice, after all, we just happened to decide to keep the ones that rolled high--which some of the dice were bound to do, by sheer chance. That's not an anomaly, it's our own selection bias. It's like someone who doesn't like red skittles, and so only eats the other ones, and then is surprised when the bag has only red skittles remaining by the end.Rhine did the same thing: he tested large numbers of people, and kept only those who scored highly. He was selecting only the data that confirmed his theory. Then, when he retested them, they averaged out. This is not a magic 'decline effect', it is the natural correction of his own selection bias averaging out over time.The fact that Jung did not recognize the flawed methodology throughout the experiments troubled me. A theorist needs to be able to recognize and avoid using flawed data, and the fact that Jung has so quickly embraced it suggests a lack of rigor in his own approach.Besides these contentious studies, Jung often relies on anecdotes--examples from his life, or from other people which suggest that coincidences are in some way important. For example, he remarks that one patient was telling of a dream she had about a beetle, at which point a beetle flew into the window of his office.Anecdotes are like metaphors: they are useful for illustrating an idea, but only a fool mistakes the illustration for the idea. One can 'burn the midnight oil' without actually having any oil at hand, and just because a man gets attacked by an escaped tiger in NYC, that is not evidence of an urban tiger epidemic. Beyond that, memory is an untrustworthy thing, and human beings assign more importance to events which confirm what they already believe, tending not to remember things that conflict with their beliefs.In this specific case, coincidences like the kind he describes are not actually uncommon. While it is unlikely that a bug would fly in while a woman spoke about bugs, that is only one of many coincidences that might have happened that day. If a person has a thousand small moments in a day where a coincidence might happen, then statistically, each person will experience a one-in-a-thousand coincidence every day.Given enough time, the coincidence actually becomes more likely to occur than not to occur. It is unlikely that a roulette wheel will land on seven if you spin it once. If you spin it a thousand times, it would be miraculous if it didn't eventually land on seven. With a world population of 6.8 billion, 6,800 people are experiencing a one-in-a-million coincidence right now.Unfortunately, Jung never overcomes either the flawed studies or the vague arguments which undermine his theory. He speaks back and forth at some length about various suppositions and possibilities, but never develops any convincing insight. A good piece of philosophy contains not only an interesting theory, but also presents the flaws and contradictions which that theory must overcome in order to be relevant. It is impossible to discuss the necessity of an idea without first dealing with the problems amassed against it. Only if its power and accuracy prove greater than these problems can the idea truly emerge as a workable concept. Jung never manages to cross this important threshold.It is clear that he has passion, and that there is a great desire within him to explore and understand, but this is simply not enough. He tells us that there have been many ideas throughout history which were considered unpalatable, which were rejected outright, and only accepted as truth later. He reminds us that it is vital to keep pushing the boundary--yet again he forgets statistics--for every great idea that was rejected for being before its time, there are ten or a hundred ideas which ended up being flat out wrong. The lesson of history is that the odds are against the radical idea. We might think of great successes like Kepler or Newton, who changed our conception of the world with radical notions--but both men also had passionate ideas which they worked on their whole lives, and which turned out to be baseless--for Kepler, the notion that the orbits of the planets were based on the platonic solids, and for Newton the study of alchemy.While reading, I had my own moment of synchronous coincidence, when Jung quoted Kepler's notion of 'Geometric Unity' as an example of a philosophy of synchronicity--despite the fact that it turned out to be incorrect. Mankind is better served by thinkers who work on likely theories rather than ones who chase white rabbits. Yet, I am not numb to the passion that drives a man who works to prove the impossible. There is a part of me that has always wanted magic to exist. A world with magic seems a more interesting and wonderful world. Part of the reason I am skeptical, the reason that I searched so hard for truth, for proofs, was that I wanted to believe. But a simple desire does not make reality:\
  "Do you want a piece of cake?""Yes!""Then have one.""I don't see it . . .""You aren't looking hard enough.""I've checked the whole kitchen and I still don't see any cake.""You just don't want the cake enough. If you really wanted the cake, you'd be eating it already.""But there isn't any cake here!""Well, you can't expect to find the cake with a negative outlook like that. Cakes don't respond well to negative energy.""I'm pretty sure that even if I wanted this cake more than I ever wanted anything, it still wouldn't be here.""What a hopeless cynic!"\
One of my favorite articles is a piece by Dr. Susan Blackmore, entitled 'Why I Have Given Up", which goes into great detail about how difficult it is to try to study unusual theories. She searched in vain for evidence of fantastical claims for a quarter century. In the beginning, she hoped they were true--that she would find something definitive, and that the way we look at the world might be changed forever. By the end, she had still not found a single shred of evidence.Believers attacked her. They said she didn't have an open mind. All the people who had contacted her over the years, sure that they had proof, blamed her when they couldn't demonstrate it. People have a passion for wondrous notions, even when there is nothing to suggest they might be true. It's important to have an open mind as a student of the world, but it's also important to make sure you don't open it so wide that your brain falls out.A place with unicorns and psychic powers where all things are connected and directed by fate seems exciting and interesting. Yet these things are only interesting because they are impossible. They are only fantastical because they do not exist. If they did exist, we would come to expect them. They would be normal to us, and we would no longer find them wondrous.Yet that would not decrease how remarkable they were. The ability to communicate one's thoughts remotely and immediately to a person across the world is terribly fantastical--yet it is something we can now do at a whim. It is no less fantastical to do it with a cellphone, rather than psychic energies, and the only reason the psychic power seems interesting is because we cannot do it. It is the lure of the thing we cannot possess.Instead of losing the self in the contemplation of things that are wondrous because they are impossible, why not contemplate things which are wondrous, but which are all around us all the time? Is it not fantastical that we can see and measure stars as they were countless years before our race was born? Is it not fantastical that we can comprehend the invisible particles which make up all substance in the world?God is a fantastical impossibility: contemplating him means withdrawing from the world and wishing for another existence. Natural laws are a fantastical reality: to contemplate them is to come closer to a grand understanding.If you were walking in the middle of the woods with a friend and came across an arched bridge of stone that gracefully spanned a deep ravine, it would be a beautiful and awing thing to behold. If you asked your friend where it came from, which would be the more fantastical answer: that the natural laws which govern the depositing and erosion of stone naturally created this wonder, or that some guy built it? And yet what is god besides the notion that 'some guy built it'?To me, the notions of gods, angels, psychic powers, magic, astrology, and all the rest do not make the world a more remarkable place, because they are all of man, not of the world. They are not explanations, they provide no understanding, and they indicate no grander existence. They are attempts to make the world more like us.We are programmed to see ourselves everywhere--we see a face in the light socket, we yell at the car for breaking down, we apply complex psychological motivations to our cat. What is god but the attempt to make the universe more like us--to make it living, breathing, thinking, moral, creative, thoughtful, emotional, and answerable? It allows us to pretend for a moment that we are important, that we are in control in some grand, real way. The man-shaped universe does not appeal to me. It is not necessary, nor is it remarkable. It does not make things grander and more wonderful, it makes it small and personal and simple. This world is already magical and fantastical to me. I already find it beautiful and surprising and beyond comprehension. To sit and study the tiny fraction of what we know and understand delights and overwhelms me. Why obsess over a world of false fantasies when there is a world of real, living, breathing miracles out there waiting for you, every day?When a thinker creates and inhabits an empty world of hopes and sympathies, he murders everything sublime and touching in life. It is a tragic thing to kill real wonder in the name of false ones.

From the author of the underground sensation Fight Club comes this wickedly incisive second novel, a mesmerizing, unnerving, and hilarious vision of cult and post-cult life.Tender Branson—last surviving member of the so-called Creedish Death Cult—is dictating his life story into the flight recorder of Flight 2039, cruising on autopilot at 39,000 feet somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. He is all alone in the airplane, which will crash shortly into the vast Australian outback. Before it does, he will unfold the tale of his journey from an obedient Creedish child and humble domestic servant to an ultra-buffed, steroid- and collagen-packed media messiah, author of a best-selling autobiography, Saved from Salvation, and the even better selling Book of Very Common Prayer (The Prayer to Delay Orgasm, The Prayer to Prevent Hair Loss, The Prayer to Silence Car Alarms). He'll reveal the truth of his tortured romance with the elusive and prescient Fertility Hollis, share his insight that "the only difference between suicide and martyrdom is press coverage," and deny responsibility for the Tender Branson Sensitive Materials Sanitary Landfill, a 20,000-acre repository for the nation's outdated pornography. Among other matters both bizarre and trenchant.Not since Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night and Jerzy Kosinski's Being There has there been as dark and telling a satire on the wages of fame and the bedrock lunacy of the modern world. Unpredictable, compelling, and unforgettable, Survivor is Chuck Palahniuk at his deadpan peak; and it cements his place as one of the most original writers in fiction today.

The bestselling novel by Irvine Welsh that provided the inspiration for Danny Boyle’s hit film Choose us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments; choose washing machines; choose cars; choose sitting oan a couch watching mind-numbing and spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fuckin junk food intae yir mooth. Choose rotting away, pishing and shiteing yersel in a home, a total fuckin embarrassment tae the selfish, fucked-up brats ye've produced. Choose life.

Misty Wilmot has had it. Once a promising young artist, she’s now stuck on an island ruined by tourism, drinking too much and working as a waitress in a hotel. Her husband, a contractor, is in a coma after a suicide attempt, but that doesn’t stop his clients from threatening Misty with lawsuits over a series of vile messages they’ve found on the walls of houses he remodeled.Suddenly, though, Misty finds her artistic talent returning as she begins a period of compulsive painting. Inspired but confused by this burst of creativity, she soon finds herself a pawn in a larger conspiracy that threatens to cost hundreds of lives. What unfolds is a dark, hilarious story from America’s most inventive nihilist, and Palahniuk’s most impressive work to date.

Victor Mancini, a medical-school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times. Needing to pay elder care for his mother, Victor has devised an ingenious scam: he pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants. He then allows himself to be “saved” by fellow patrons who, feeling responsible for Victor’s life, go on to send checks to support him. When he’s not pulling this stunt, Victor cruises sexual addiction recovery workshops for action, visits his addled mom, and spends his days working at a colonial theme park. His creator, Chuck Palahniuk, is the visionary we need and the satirist we deserve.

Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow.Although gifted with a superbly logical brain, for fifteen-year-old Christopher everyday interactions and admonishments have little meaning. He lives on patterns, rules, and a diagram kept in his pocket. Then one day, a neighbor's dog, Wellington, is killed and his carefully constructive universe is threatened. Christopher sets out to solve the murder in the style of his favourite (logical) detective, Sherlock Holmes. What follows makes for a novel that is funny, poignant and fascinating in its portrayal of a person whose curse and blessing are a mind that perceives the world entirely literally.

Robert Neville is the last living man on Earth... but he is not alone. Every other man, woman and child on the planet has succumbed to the vampire plague, and they are hungry for Neville's blood.By day he is the hunter, stalking the undead through the ruins of civilisation. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn.How long can one man survive like this?

Thirty years after the publication of The Female Eunuch, Germaine Greer is back with the sequel she vowed never to write."A marvelous performance--. No feminist writer can match her for eloquence or energy; none makes [us] laugh the way she does."--The Washington PostIn this thoroughly engaging new book, the fervent, rollicking, straight-shooting Greer, is, as ever, "the ultimate agent provocateur" (Mirabella).  With passionate rhetoric, outrageous humor, and the authority of a lifetime of thought and observation, she trains a sharp eye on the issues women face at the turn of the century.From the workplace to the kitchen, from the supermarket to the bedroom, Greer exposes the innumerable forms of insidious discrimination and exploitation that continue to plague women around the globe.  She mordantly attacks "lifestyle feminists" who blithely believe they can have it all, and argues for a fuller, more organic idea of womanhood.  Whether it's liposuction or abortion, Barbie or Lady Diana, housework or sex work, Greer always has an opinion, and as one of the most brilliant, glamorous, and dynamic feminists of all time, her opinions matter.  For anyone interested in the future of womanhood, The Whole Woman is a must-read.

After his death sometime in his 43rd year, suburbanite Lester Burnham tells of the last few weeks of his life, during which he had no idea of his imminent passing. He is a husband to real estate agent Carolyn Burnham and father to high school student Jane Burnham. Although Lester and Carolyn once loved each other, they now merely tolerate each other. Typical wallflower Jane also hates both her parents; the three suffer individually in silence in their home life. Jane tries to steer clear of both her parents. Carolyn, relatively new to the real estate business, wants to create the persona of success to further her career, aspiring to the professional life of Buddy Kane, the king of the real estate business in their neighborhood. Lester merely walks mindlessly through life, including at his job in advertising. His company is downsizing, and he, like all the other employees, has to justify his position to the newly hired efficiency expert to keep his job. Things change for Lester when he falls in love at first sight with Jane's more experienced classmate, Angela Hayes. Both Janie and Angela can see Lester's sexual infatuation with Angela, who courts such attention from any man as a sign that she is model material, she having once appeared in Seventeen and is a career to which she aspires. Lester's infatuation with Angela gives him a reenergized view on life, where he openly doesn't care anymore what anyone thinks about what he does, anyone except Angela. This infatuation coincides with the Fittses moving in next door: homophobic disciplinarian US Marine Colonel Frank Fitts who rules the house with a military fist (that fist being both figurative and literal), his semi-comatose wife Barbara Fitts, and their bright and quietly subversive 18-year-old son Ricky Fitts, who openly abides by his father's rules while behind the scenes lives by his own quite different perspective. Much like Lester's infatuation, Ricky immediately becomes infatuated with Jane; he considers girls like Angela as ordinary. The entry of Angela and the Fittses into the Burnhams' lives ultimately leads to each of the players confronting what is truly in his or her heart.

Protagonist Alex DeLarge is an "ultraviolent" youth in futuristic Britain. As with all luck, his eventually runs out and he's arrested and convicted of murder. While in prison, Alex learns of an experimental program in which convicts are programmed to detest violence. If he goes through the program, his sentence will be reduced and he will be back on the streets sooner than expected. But Alex's ordeals are far from over once he hits the streets of Britain..

A man about forty years of age tells the story from when he was a teenager in upscale suburban Detroit of his and three of his friends' fascination with the mysterious and doomed Lisbon sisters. In 1974, the sisters were seventeen year old Therese, sixteen year old Mary, fifteen year old Bonnie, fourteen year old Lux, and thirteen year old Cecilia. Their fascination still remains as they try to piece together the entire story. The sisters were mysteries if only because of having a strict and overprotective upbringing by their father, who taught math at the girls' private co-ed school, and overly devout Catholic mother, who largely dictated the household rules. The story focuses primarily on two incidents and the resulting situations on the girls' lives. The first was an action by Cecilia to deal with her emotions over her life. And the second was the relationship between Lux - the sister who pushed the boundaries of the household rules most overtly in doing what most teenagers want to do - and Trip Fontaine, he who could have any girl he wanted but wanting solely Lux.

1999 American film directed by Sofia Coppola

After being kicked out of his rock band, guitarist slacker Dewey Finn faces a mountain of debts and depression. He shares an apartment with his best friend, Ned Schneebly, an old band member who is now a substitute teacher. Dewey accepts a job as a substitute teacher at a snobbish private elementary school where his attitude and hijinks have a powerful result on his students. He learns they are talented young musicians, and he decides to form a rock band with them to win the $10,000 prize money in a local band contest. Once Dewey wins a competition called "Battle of the Bands", the prize money would solve his financial problems and put him back in the rock music spotlight.

Following the death of his father from cancer, Stéphane - Mexican on his father's side, French on his mother's side - agrees, despite his less than proficient use of the French language, on his mother's request to move back to France from Mexico, she not only letting him live in her apartment in his old bedroom in the building she owns while she stays with her current boyfriend Gérard, a magician, but she having found him a job using his graphic art skills at a calendar shop. The job ends up not being quite as she had made it out to be - it more a dead end menial job - but Stéphane is still able to eke out a friendship of sorts with his new coworkers, especially Guy, the senior employee, a bully of a man-child who obsesses about sex and who becomes Stéphane's confidante. Concurrently, Stéphane strikes a friendship with his neighbor, Stéphanie, and her friend, Zoé, Stéphane and their friendship stemming out of some mistruths, including the two artistically inclined women not divulging they, like him, lead dead end nine-to-five jobs, and Stéphane also not divulging that he is actually Stéphanie's neighbor and the son of her landlady which allows him to spy on Stéphanie's apartment without notice. While Stéphane is romantically interested in Zoé, he believes Stéphanie in turn is interested in him. Regardless, Stéphane forms a special bond with Stéphanie, their similar names only one of the many factors which may indicate that the cosmos meant for them to have this bond. Despite what Stéphanie may feel for Stéphane in return, their friendship/relationship will be affected by Stéphane often not being able to differentiate between reality and what are, to him, his very vivid dreams.

Amélie is a story about a girl named Amélie whose childhood was suppressed by her Father's mistaken concerns of a heart defect. With these concerns Amélie gets hardly any real-life contact with other people. This leads Amélie to resort to her own fantastical world and dreams of love and beauty. She later on becomes a young woman and moves to the central part of Paris as a waitress. After finding a lost treasure belonging to the former occupant of her apartment, she decides to return it to him. After seeing his reaction and his new found perspective - she decides to devote her life to the people around her. Such as, her father who is obsessed with his garden-gnome, a failed writer, a hypochondriac, a man who stalks his ex girlfriends, the "ghost," a suppressed young soul, the love of her life and a man whose bones are as brittle as glass. But after consuming herself with these escapades - she finds out that she is disregarding her own life and damaging her quest for love. Amélie then discovers she must become more aggressive and take a hold of her life and capture the beauty of love she has always dreamed of.

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.

In the Battle of Thermopylae of 480 BC an alliance of Greek city-states fought the invading Persian army in the mountain pass of Thermopylae. Vastly outnumbered, the Greeks held back the enemy in one of the most famous last stands of history. Persian King Xerxes led a Army of well over 100,000 (Persian king Xerxes before war has about 170,000 army) men to Greece and was confronted by 300 Spartans, 700 Thespians, and 400 Thebans. Xerxes waited for 10 days for King Leonidas to surrender or withdraw but left with no options he pushed forward. After 3 days of battle all the Greeks were killed. The Spartan defeat was not the one expected, as a local shepherd, named Ephialtes, defected to the Persians and informed Xerxes that the separate path through Thermopylae, which the Persians could use to outflank the Greeks, was not as heavily guarded as they thought.

Six thugs, who are strangers to each other, are hired by a crime boss, Joe Cabot, to carry out a diamond robbery. Right at the outset, they are given false names with the intention that they won't get too close and will concentrate on the job instead. They are completely sure that the robbery is going to be a success. But, when the police show up right at the time and the site of the robbery, panic spreads amongst the group members, and two of them are killed in the subsequent shootout, along with a few policemen and civilians. When the remaining people assemble at the premeditated rendezvous point (a warehouse), they begin to suspect that one of them is an undercover cop.

Three stories - one each from the past, present, and future - about men in pursuit of eternity with their love. A conquistador in Mayan country searches for the tree of life to free his captive queen; a medical researcher, working with various trees, looks for a cure that will save his dying wife; a space traveler, traveling with an aged tree encapsulated within a bubble, moves toward a dying star that's wrapped in a nebula; he seeks eternity with his love. The stories intersect and parallel; the quests fail and succeed.

Dreams. What are they? An escape from reality or reality itself? Waking Life follows the dream(s) of one man and his attempt to find and discern the absolute difference between waking life and the dreamworld. While trying to figure out a way to wake up, he runs into many people on his way; some of which offer one sentence asides on life, others delving deeply into existential questions and life's mysteries. We become the main character. It becomes our dream and our questions being asked and answered. Can we control our dreams? What are they telling us about life? About death? About ourselves and where we come from and where we are going? The film does not answer all these for us. Instead, it inspires us to ask the questions and find the answers ourselves.

John Constantine is approached by Det. Angela Dodson who needs his help to prove that her twin sister Isabel's death was not a suicide. The dead woman was a devout Catholic and Angela refuses to accept she would have taken her own life. She's asked Constantine for help because he has a reputation for dealing with the mystical. In fact, he is a demon hunter whose sole purpose on Earth is to send demons back to the nether regions. John himself has been to Hell and knows that he is destined to return there on his death - but hopes his good deeds may find him a place in Heaven. As he looks into Isabel's death, he realizes demons are trying to break through to the human world, and his battles lead him into a direct conflict with Satan.

After Elizabeth, Will, and Captain Barbossa rescue Captain Jack Sparrow from the land of the dead, they must face their foes, Davy Jones and Lord Cutler Beckett. Beckett, now with control of Jones' heart, forms a dark alliance with him in order to rule the seas and wipe out the last of the Pirates. Now, Jack, Barbossa, Will, Elizabeth, Tia Dalma, and crew must call the Pirate Lords from the four corners of the globe, including the infamous Sao Feng, to gathering. The Pirate Lords want to release the goddess Calypso, Davy Jones's damned lover, from the trap they sent her to out of fear, in which the Pirate Lords must combine the 9 pieces that bound her by ritual to undo it and release her in hopes that she will help them fight. With this, all pirates will stand together and will make their final stand for freedom against Beckett, Jones, Norrington, the Flying Dutchman, and the entire East India Trading Company.

When an adorable baby boy is added to the Addams household, Wednesday and Pugsley do not hate him, they just aren't necessarily excited about his existence. OK...yeah, they do hate him. So they plot to get rid of him one way or another. Meanwhile, their parents hire a nanny for him and she charms Fester, but has evil intentions for him. The Addamses must stop her, but how?

United Press International journalist Will Bloom and his French freelance photojournalist wife Josephine Bloom, who is pregnant with their first child, leave their Paris base to return to Will's hometown of Ashton, Alabama on the news that his father, Edward Bloom, stricken with cancer, will soon die, he being taken off chemotherapy treatment. Although connected indirectly through Will's mother/Edward's wife, Sandra Bloom, Will has been estranged from his father for three years since his and Josephine's wedding. Will's issue with his father is the fanciful tales Edward has told of his life all his life, not only to Will but the whole world. As a child when Edward was largely absent as a traveling salesman, Will believed those stories, but now realizes that he does not know his father, who, as he continues to tell these stories, he will never get to know unless Edward comes clean with the truth before he dies. On the brink of his own family life beginning, Will does not want to be the kind of father Edward has been to him. One of those stories from Edward's childhood - that he saw his own death in the glass eye of a witch - led to him embracing life since he would not have to fear death knowing when and how it would eventually come. The question is whether Will will be able to reconcile Edward's stories against his real life, either directly from Edward before he dies and/or from other sources, and thus allow Will to come to a new understanding of himself and his life, past, present and future.

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.

This swash-buckling tale follows the quest of Captain Jack Sparrow, a savvy pirate, and Will Turner, a resourceful blacksmith, as they search for Elizabeth Swann. Elizabeth, the daughter of the governor and the love of Will's life, has been kidnapped by the feared Captain Barbossa. Little do they know, but the fierce and clever Barbossa has been cursed. He, along with his large crew, are under an ancient curse, doomed for eternity to neither live, nor die. That is, unless a blood sacrifice is made.

2003 American adventure fantasy film directed by Gore Verbinski

Paranoid Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper of Burpelson Air Force Base, believing that fluoridation of the American water supply is a Soviet plot to poison the U.S. populace, is able to deploy through a back door mechanism a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union without the knowledge of his superiors, including the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Buck Turgidson, and President Merkin Muffley. Only Ripper knows the code to recall the B-52 bombers and he has shut down communication in and out of Burpelson as a measure to protect this attack. Ripper's executive officer, RAF Group Captain Lionel Mandrake (on exchange from Britain), who is being held at Burpelson by Ripper, believes he knows the recall codes if he can only get a message to the outside world. Meanwhile at the Pentagon War Room, key persons including Muffley, Turgidson and nuclear scientist and adviser, a former Nazi named Dr. Strangelove, are discussing measures to stop the attack or mitigate its blow-up into an all out nuclear war with the Soviets. Against Turgidson's wishes, Muffley brings Soviet Ambassador Alexi de Sadesky into the War Room, and get his boss, Soviet Premier Dimitri Kisov, on the hot line to inform him of what's going on. The Americans in the War Room are dismayed to learn that the Soviets have an as yet unannounced Doomsday Device to detonate if any of their key targets are hit. As Ripper, Mandrake and those in the War Room try and work the situation to their end goal, Major T.J. "King" Kong, one of the B-52 bomber pilots, is working on his own agenda of deploying his bomb where ever he can on enemy soil if he can't make it to his intended target.

1964 British satire film directed by Stanley Kubrick

It's 1985 in an alternate reality. The Watchmen - comprised of the Comedian, Dr. Manhattan, Nite Owl II, Ozymandias, Rorschach and Silk Spectre II - are a disparate band of masked superheroes, modeled after the Minutemen, who were masked superheroes of a generation earlier, most of who are dead or afflicted by the ravages of life. The Comedian belongs to both groups. Despite the activities of the Watchmen leading to the west winning the Vietnam War which in turn has kept

Irish singer-songwriter, musician, and record producer

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

Dr. Cal Lightman teaches a course in body language and makes an honest fortune exploiting it. He's employed by various public authorities in various investigations, doing more when the police etc. fail to go the extra mile. So he can afford to constitute a team of his own, which like clients and others has to put up with his mind-games.

Long-running satirical news quiz featuring regular team captains Ian Hislop and Paul Merton. Originally chaired by Angus Deayton, the series has adopted "guest hosts" since 2002.

Set in modern times, vampires roam the Earth and are humans' mortal enemies. However, a substitute has been found for human blood, a substitute that vampires can consume with the same effect as human blood. This is True Blood. Now humans and vampires can co-exist in harmony, and even form relationships. But there will always be rogue elements on both sides ready to exploit the uneasy truce.

A comedy sketch show featuring David Mitchell and Robert Webb.

Vince Noir and Howard Moon have surreal adventures while working at a Zoo run by the deranged Bob Fossil (in series 1) and pursuing a career as musicians and living with the mystic Naboo the Enigma and his ape familiar Bollo (in series 2 and 3).

The past, present, and future lives of surviving Oceanic Flight 815 passengers are dramatically intertwined as a fight for survival ensues in a quest for answers after crashlanding on a mysterious island. Each discovery prompts yet more secrets, as the hastily-formed colony search for a way off the island, or is this their home?

Dr. Frasier Crane, a successful Boston therapist, moves to Seattle to get a new start on life. He has a radio talk show, which he uses to relay his wit and wisdom to others, but at times he struggles with his own problems with his salt-of-the-earth father, his pretentious brother, and his friends and co-workers.

Channel 4's long-running, award-winning investigative current affairs documentary series. Particularly noted for its undercover reporting.

British TV current affairs documentary series

Sick, twisted and politically incorrect, the animated series features the adventures of the Griffin family. Endearingly ignorant Peter and his stay-at-home wife Lois reside in Quahog, R.I., and have three kids. Meg, the eldest child, is a social outcast, and teenage Chris is awkward and clueless when it comes to the opposite sex. The youngest, Stewie, is a genius baby bent on killing his mother and destroying the world. The talking dog, Brian, keeps Stewie in check while sipping martinis and sorting through his own life issues.

"Takeshi's Castle" is a surreal gameshow in which 100 contestants join General Tani's army and go through a series of bizarre and hilarious tests, being gradually whittled down, until the finalists take to their tanks in an attempt to overthrow Count Takeshi's castle.

The show that's takes a comedic look at the world of science and asks the really important questions as well as putting stuff in microwaves

A British comedy game show were various guests would perform stunts and hidden camera acts in order to judge who has the biggest 'Balls of Steel'.

A comedy panel game in which being Quite Interesting is more important than being right. Sandi Toksvig is joined each week by four comedians to share anecdotes and trivia, and maybe answer some questions as well.

British comedy panel game television quiz show

An unambitious slob from Liverpool has been awakened from a high-tech stasis chamber 3 million years in the future to find he may be one of the last humans alive. Hopelessly lost in space, this crew of mostly sad-act bachelors kill time and share adventure aboard the mining ship Red Dwarf.

BBC science-fiction comedy drama television programme

Mark and Jez are a couple of twenty-something roommates who have nothing in common - except for the fact that their lives are anything but normal. Mayhem ensues as the pair strive to cope with day-to-day life.

The exploits of four friends, who are socially only marginally above what one of them calls "the freaks", are presented as they grow from their late teen years into adults and as they go on their quest, usually unsuccessfully, for such grown up things as beer and sex. Simon Cooper, Jay Cartwright and Neil Sutherland have been friends for some time. Insecure Simon's main quest in life is to get long time friend, Carli D'Amato, to be his girlfriend. Jay is the big talker whose stories, especially about his sexual conquests, are more fantasy than reality. And slightly dim-witted Neil is generally two steps behind everyone else in comprehension of life, and who is always defending his father from beliefs that he's a closet homosexual. Into the group comes its fourth member, Will McKenzie, who met them when he transferred into their school, Rudge Park Comprehensive, at the start of sixth form, as Will's newly divorced mum could no longer afford his private school tuition. Nerdish and straight-laced Will, ridiculed for carrying a briefcase, insinuated himself in the group - not aiming his sights too high - as he tried not to be labeled as one of the freaks. Regardless, he is still the target of the school's "psycho bully", Mark Donovan, and the head of Rudge Park's sixth form, Mr. Gilbert. Will's initial saving grace in bonding with his new mates may have been that they all want to shag his pretty but protective mother, Polly.

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