Jordan

Bruna Guedes

Husain Kothari

FRNK

Uendi Prifti

Abdul Hasib

Loughlin Sullivan

Delaney Knopp

Auriel W

Blake Molmen

Dani Shahar

Luis Javier Campos nieto

Richard Feynman (1918-1988), winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, thrived on outrageous adventures. Here he recounts in his inimitable voice his experience trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and Bohr and ideas on gambling with Nick the Greek; cracking the uncrackable safes guarding the most deeply held nuclear secrets; painting a naked female toreador—and much else of an eyebrow-raising nature.In short, here is Feynman's life in all its eccentric glory—a combustible mixture of high intelligence, unlimited curiosity, and raging chutzpah.

April, 1984. Winston Smith, thinks a thought, starts a diary, and falls in love. But Big Brother is watching him, and the door to Room 101 can swing open in the blink of an eye. Its ideas have become our ideas, and Orwell’s fiction is often said to be our reality. The definitive book of the 20th century is re-examined in a radical new adaptation exploring why Orwell’s vision of the future is as relevant as ever."This is a staging that reconsiders a classic with such steely power that it chills brain, blood and bone." - The Times"[A] pitilessly brilliant retelling." - Guardian"This risk-taking adaptation of George Orwell's masterpiece is doubleplusgood." - Telegraph"A theatrical tour de force that has the destructive power of an earthquake." - The Stage"Skilfully brought to life.... This is a very neat theatrical telling of the classic dystopian parable which is more a study of internal tension and tiny acts of defiance as it is a political drama... a work of extraordinary quality and intensity." - IndependentEric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist and journalist, whose most famous works include the novella Animal Farm, and the classic dystopia 1984.Duncan Macmillan is an award-winning writer and director. Plays include: Lungs (Paines Plough/Sheffield Crucible and Studio Theatre Washington D.C.), Platform (Old Vic Tunnels), Monster (Royal Exchange/Manchester International Festival), The Most Humane Way to Kill A Lobster (Theatre 503), I Wish To Apologise For My Part In The Apocalypse, So Say All of Us and Family Tree (all BBC Radio 4).Robert Icke was artistic director of the Arden Theatre Company in Stockton-on-Tees from 2003–7 and of the Swan Theatre Company in Cambridge from 2005–8, where he was awarded the Susie Gautier-Smith Prize for his contribution to theatre.

George Orwell's timeless and timely allegorical novel—a scathing satire on a downtrodden society’s blind march towards totalitarianism.“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned—a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible.  When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell’s masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.

Sylvia Plath's shocking, realistic, and intensely emotional novel about a woman falling into the grip of insanity. Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that her insanity becomes palpably real, even rational—as accessible an experience as going to the movies. A deep penetration into the darkest and most harrowing corners of the human psyche, The Bell Jar is an extraordinary accomplishment and a haunting American classic.

حتی نمی‌دونم از کجا باید شروع کنم راجع به این کتاب بنویسم. اول بگم که حتی نمی‌دونم به کدوم ادیشنِ کتاب باید امتیاز بدم. من مخلوطی از پنج ادیشن مختلف را خوندم: ای‌بوکِ ترجمه‌ از روسی به انگلیسی کنستانس گارنت، بعد آدیوبوک همین ترجمه با چاپی متفاوت، بعد چند فصلی آن وسط را از روی ترجمه روسی به فارسی مهری آهی خوندم، بعد از اون نسخه چاپی انگلیسی ترجمه پوی‌یر و والاخانسکی را خواندم، (خواندن این‌ها، حدود نصف بیشتر کتاب، نزدیک دو هفته وقت گرفت) و در نهایت نصفِ دوم کتاب را ظرف دو ساعت و نیم از روی ترجمه‌ی انگلیسی به فارسیِ احد عقیلیان، چاپ نشر مرکز خوندم. می‌دونم کار مسخره‌ای کردم، ولی به هرحال پیش اومد. از میان همه این ها ترجمه احد عقیلیان را خیلی دوست داشتم و سریع خوندم (طبعا چون به زبان مادریم بود)، ولی نثر و نوشتار ترجمه انگلیسی را بیشتر دوست داشتم (با این‌که کند پیش می‌رفت) و از بین اون‌ها هم ترجمه گارنت رو ترجیح دادم. ملموس‌تر بود. حالا برم سراغ خود کتاب. اولاً من اصلا کی باشم که بخوام به داستایفسکی نقد وارد کنم؟ اصلا از این مسئله که به کتاب پنج ندادم و چهار دادم خجالت می‌کشم. ولی چیکار کنم که لذتِ خوندنش برام پنج ستاره‌ی کامل نبود. خیلی سر خوندنش زجر کشیدم و بارها حوصله‌ام سر رفت و بار ها  چند صفحه رو روزنامه‌وار خوندم که به جاهای هیجان‌انگیز تر برسم. مدام منتظر بودم داستان طی یک سیر صعودی هیجان‌انگیز تر بشه؛ ولی نشد، و جذابیتش صرفا طی یک سیر سینوسی بالا پایین می‌رفت. شاید اشکال از منه که توی داستان همش به دنبال «کشش» و جذابیت می‌گردم. واقعا این ایراد بهم وارده. توی گودریدز چرخیدم و چندین و چند تا ریویو از این کتاب خوندم که همه بدون استثنا به نبوغ نویسنده و به شاهکار بودن این کتاب اشاره کردن. و بعد نشستم فکر کردم ببینم چرا من اونقدر حظ اعلا از این کتاب نبردم؟ انقدر من خنگم؟ و بی‌سواد؟ یعنی کتاب رو به طور کلی دوست داشتم، ولی واقعیت اینه که اون‌جوری که همه می‌گن به نظرم نبود! خیلی خوندم که می‌گن کتاب ما رو به اعماق تیره و تاریک ذهن راسکلنیکف می‌بره، ولی من رو که نبرد! درست، به افکارش برد، ولی جوری نبود که من کاملا مجذوب و غرق افکارش بشم. داستان برای من توی فضای بیرون می‌گذشت تا تو سرِ راسکلنیکف. شخصیت‌ها دیالوگ‌های طولانی می‌گفتن و من همش منتظر بودم راسکلنیکف تنها شه و به فکر فرو بره و من توی تار و پود افکارش گیر بیفتم و باز هم این طور نشد. نمی‌دونم. کمی از خودم ناامیدم که نتونستم اونجوری از کتاب لذت ببرم که ظاهرا هزاران نفر برده‌ن. حالا راجع به قسمت هایی که دوست داشتم:  قسمت‌های موش و گربه بازیِ بازرس پارفیری با راسکلنیکف حقیقتاً جزو جذاب‌ترین قسمت‌های داستان بودن. از بودن شخصیت‌های زن قوی و خوبی مثل دونیا و سونیا هم لذت بردم. از کل پروسه‌ی قتل، فرار کردنش از محل، خوابی که دید و صحنه‌ی مراسم ختم مارملادف هم لذت بردم. صرفا به طور کلی می‌تونم بگم اگه از حوصله سر رفتن های در طولِ خوندن بگذریم، از کل کتاب و فضاش و دیلماهاش لذت بردم. *اسپویلر در ادامه* اما بیشترین چیزی که نظرم رو نسبت به کتاب مثبت کرد، پایان بندیِ خوب و امیدوارانه و قشنگش بود. من همش انتظار داشتم راسکلنیکف رو بکشن. وقتی نکشتنش انتظار داشتم تو زندان دیوانه شه یا خودکشی کنه. ولی اون عشق و امیدی که ته داستان داشت، اون اطمینانی که داشت که این هفت سال می‌گذره و زندگیِ جدیدی بعدش شروع می‌شه، این که سونیا رو دوست داره و به امیدش زندگی می‌کنه، این که هنوز یه شانس دوباره، یه فرصتی وجود داره و زندگی به تهش نرسیده، این‌ها خیلی زیبا بود و باعث شد واقعا داستان رو دوست داشته باشم. الان به نظر خودم خیلی ریویوی سطحی ای نوشتم و حس می‌کنم اصلا عمق کتاب رو نفهمیدم. ولی چیکار می‌شه کرد دیگه!

Jessie lives with her family in the frontier village of Clifton, Indiana. When diphtheria strikes the village and the children of Clifton start dying, Jessie's mother sends her on a dangerous mission to bring back help. But beyond the walls of Clifton, Jessie discovers a world even more alien and threatening than she could have imagined, and soon she finds her own life in jeopardy. Can she get help before the children of Clifton, and Jessie herself, run out of time?

The Pulitzer Prize and Drama Critics Circle Award winning play—reissued with an introduction by Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman and The Crucible), and Williams’ essay “The World I Live In.”It is a very short list of 20th-century American plays that continue to have the same power and impact as when they first appeared—57 years after its Broadway premiere, Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire is one of those plays. The story famously recounts how the faded and promiscuous Blanche DuBois is pushed over the edge by her sexy and brutal brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Streetcar launched the careers of Marlon Brando, Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden, and solidified the position of Tennessee Williams as one of the most important young playwrights of his generation, as well as that of Elia Kazan as the greatest American stage director of the ’40s and ’50s.

Heart of Darkness, a novel by Joseph Conrad, was originally a three-part series in Blackwood's Magazine in 1899. It is a story within a story, following a character named Charlie Marlow, who recounts his adventure to a group of men onboard an anchored ship. The story told is of his early life as a ferry boat captain. Although his job was to transport ivory downriver, Charlie develops an interest in investing an ivory procurement agent, Kurtz, who is employed by the government. Preceded by his reputation as a brilliant emissary of progress, Kurtz has now established himself as a god among the natives in “one of the darkest places on earth.” Marlow suspects something else of Kurtz: he has gone mad.A reflection on corruptive European colonialism and a journey into the nightmare psyche of one of the corrupted, Heart of Darkness is considered one of the most influential works ever written.

Written in 1914 but not published until 1925, a year after Kafka’s death, The Trial is the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information. Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness of totalitarianism, The Trial has resonated with chilling truth for generations of readers.

Don Quixote has become so entranced by reading chivalric romances that he determines to become a knight-errant himself. In the company of his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, his exploits blossom in all sorts of wonderful ways. While Quixote's fancy often leads him astray—he tilts at windmills, imagining them to be giants—Sancho acquires cunning and a certain sagacity. Sane madman and wise fool, they roam the world together, and together they have haunted readers' imaginations for nearly four hundred years.With its experimental form and literary playfulness, Don Quixote has been generally recognized as the first modern novel. The book has been enormously influential on a host of writers, from Fielding and Sterne to Flaubert, Dickens, Melville, and Faulkner, who reread it once a year, "just as some people read the Bible."

'For a salesman, there is no rock bottom to life. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine. He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine.'Willy Loman has been a salesman for 34 years. At 60, he is cast aside, his usefulness now exhausted. With no future to dream about he must face the crushing disappointments of his past. He takes one final brave action, but is he heroic at last?, or a self-deluding fool?

Doesn't talk enough about the film, considering it's a BFI book. The book has so much to talk about that I thought it just ended up weakening the argument to split it up so evenly between book and film. However, aside from that, he does have some interesting things to say about both, and analyzes both together in a good way. It's worth looking at if you want to learn more about the film, but be aware that 1) it's not exclusively about it in the way that other BFI books are, and 2) DON'T read this if you haven't read the novel -- spoilers everywhere, even if you've seen the film.

Just after midnight, a snowdrift stops the Orient Express in its tracks. The luxurious train is surprisingly full for the time of the year, but by the morning it is one passenger fewer. An American tycoon lies dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside.Isolated and with a killer in their midst, detective Hercule Poirot must identify the murderer—in case he or she decides to strike again.

"I believe that the reader will discover here the essential nature of one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history," Arthur Miller wrote of his classic play about the witch-hunts and trials in seventeenth-century Salem, Massachusetts. Based on historical people and real events, Miller's drama is a searing portrait of a community engulfed by hysteria. In the rigid theocracy of Salem, rumors that women are practicing witchcraft galvanize the town's most basic fears and suspicions; and when a young girl accuses Elizabeth Proctor of being a witch, self-righteous church leaders and townspeople insist that Elizabeth be brought to trial. The ruthlessness of the prosecutors and the eagerness of neighbor to testify against neighbor brilliantly illuminates the destructive power of socially sanctioned violence.Written in 1953, The Crucible is a mirror Miller uses to reflect the anti-communist hysteria inspired by Senator Joseph McCarthy's "witch-hunts" in the United States. Within the text itself, Miller contemplates the parallels, writing, "Political opposition... is given an inhumane overlay, which then justifies the abrogation of all normally applied customs of civilized behavior. A political policy is equated with moral right, and opposition to it with diabolical malevolence."WIth an introduction by Christopher Bigsby.(back cover)

This edition presents Parts I and II complete. Cyrus Hamlin provides essential supporting material for this difficult text, and his Interpretive Notes have been expanded and reset in larger, easy-to-read type. "Comments by Contemporaries" includes short pieces by Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Carlyle, and Wilhelm von Humboldt. "Modern Criticism"--comprised of ten essays newly added to the Second Edition--presents the perspectives of Stuart Atkins, Jaroslav Pelikan, Benjamin Bennett, Franco Moretti, Friedrich A. Kittler, Neil M. Flax, Marc Shell, Jane Brown, Hans Rudolf Vaget, and Marshall Berman. A Selected Bibliography is included.

TWO DIFFERENT WORLDS -WE LIVE IN TWO DIFFERENT WORLDS.1960's song.If Sophocles' version of this is the best, Anouilh's is the one that's most like we all are INSIDE.When I was 16, a callow youth, I thought Anouilh's heroine just couldn't compromise. I thought, how dumb! Creon was right to imprison her… But later in life, when my personal shibboleths were challenged by my seniors I wouldn't budge. How come?Well, our personal experiences in an amoral world can force our ethical hand, and then we create personal principles. That’s the change that youth endures. We must FIND ourselves.And when we do, it’s: My way or the highway! Not all our moral choices come from upbringing, schooling, or culture. Some are created OURSELVES by our personal idiosyncrasies and histories. A traumatic childhood event can begin the personal conditioning process. So can parental abuse or sibling rivalry. Or, a sudden, earth-shaking shock. We are all different because of our private reactions as well as our parental conditioning. And especially today, because we are freer to choose. But are we luckier? Would Antigone be luckier today? No, because the law is the law, and Creon's law is the Law in Athens. As it is here now.Our freedom becomes a thorn in our side in the end with the endless conditions imposed on it. So we choose sides. And we naturally go for the most personally satisfying side. The other side chooses practical Necessity. Same thing: My way or the highway! But come, says the Law as the Lord says to Isaiah - let us reason together...YES. Let us Reason! For we can indeed lead with our heart - BUT WE MUST FOLLOW WITH OUR HEAD. Exactly as Creon says to Antigone…Like Antigone, and like all kids when faced with their seniors' ultimatums, reasoning is PASSIONATE. For Creon, and us adults, reasoning is HUMAN. It bends. As WE must bend, though not to the extent of committing a Wrong action. And Reason and our Heart TOGETHER will lead us to the Golden Mean.We must charitably bend. And that will Hurt.But you know, adults see kids as unreasonable, and kids sometimes see adults as middle-class moral mediocrities. The impasse isn't going to go away without the Balm of Time. Unfortunately neither Creon or Antigone HAS time! And, really, neither do we.It’s DOWN TO THE CRUNCH time! Time, as Auden says, to face the music:We would rather be ruined than changedWe would rather die in our dreadThan climb the cross of the momentAnd let our illusions die.And we must face that blaring music over, and over again - without sacrificing our personal values. Our personal Cross will turn it to Harmony. And one day its “music will untune the sky.” On that day we will see our life as it really is.And we can finally Face the Face of truth. For it is Good...Anouilh's characters are as real as we are.And his play isn't about compromise, as I thought at 16. It's about living a real life among real people, WIDE AWAKE - with ALL our differences intact!

In this madcap journey, a bestselling journalist investigates psychopaths and the industry of doctors, scientists, and everyone else who studies them. The Psychopath Test is a fascinating journey through the minds of madness. Jon Ronson's exploration of a potential hoax being played on the world's top neurologists takes him, unexpectedly, into the heart of the madness industry. An influential psychologist who is convinced that many important CEOs and politicians are, in fact, psychopaths teaches Ronson how to spot these high-flying individuals by looking out for little telltale verbal and nonverbal clues. And so Ronson, armed with his new psychopath-spotting abilities, enters the corridors of power. He spends time with a death-squad leader institutionalized for mortgage fraud in Coxsackie, New York; a legendary CEO whose psychopathy has been speculated about in the press; and a patient in an asylum for the criminally insane who insists he's sane and certainly not a psychopath. Ronson not only solves the mystery of the hoax but also discovers, disturbingly, that sometimes the personalities at the helm of the madness industry are, with their drives and obsessions, as mad in their own way as those they study. And that relatively ordinary people are, more and more, defined by their maddest edges.

‘It is stripped off - the paper - in great patches . . . The colour is repellent . . . In the places where it isn’t faded and where the sun is just so - I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about . . .’Based on the author’s own experiences, 'The Yellow Wallpaper' is the chilling tale of a woman driven to the brink of insanity by the ‘rest cure’ prescribed after the birth of her child. Isolated in a crumbling colonial mansion, in a room with bars on the windows, the tortuous pattern of the yellow wallpaper winds its way into the recesses of her mind.Charlotte Perkins Gilman was America’s leading feminist intellectual of the early twentieth century. In addition to her masterpiece 'The Yellow Wallpaper', this new edition includes a selection of her best short fiction and extracts from her autobiography.

Science Imitating ArtJackson’s story was published in 1948. At the time, and since, it has been praised as insightful and criticised as obscure. But almost 20 years later, the French philosopher, Rene Girard, produced a theory which has a remarkable congruence with its theme and, I think, provides the best explanation of what Jackson was getting at in The Lottery.Girard argued that our individual desires are never the product of some inner longing but always rather of the imitation of others. We want what other people want. This he called ‘mimetic desire’ and Girard went on to explore the implications of this insight for the next half century.Mimetic desire, according to Girard, has a predictable trajectory that is familiar to advertising executives around the world. One person wants what another has, just because the other has it. This attracts the desire of others in a sort of exponential wave of wanting. But widespread wanting of anything means, first, a shortage of that commodity, and consequently the mutual antagonism of all those who share the same desire. Girard’s contention is that this incipient hostility threatens to create a sort of Hobbesian world, a non-society, in which no cooperative or coordinated action, including effective government, can be established.Human beings, Girard believed, deal with this situation unconsciously and instinctively by the mechanism of ‘scape-goating’, through which a group identifies one of its own members as the cause of its mimetic tension. This individual is both sacred and an object of communal hatred. The elimination of this individual is therefore not just necessary for the welfare of the community, but also forms the basis of religious practice in which the role of the scape-goat is transformed into a noble duty.Girard goes even further in his later work to claim that the ritual establishment of the scape-goat is the most primitive form of representation, and consequently of language, that human beings have demonstrated. In a sense the essential foundation for human power in the world is religious violence which victimizes random members or groups in modern society.Whether or not one agrees with Girard’s anthropology, and there is a substantial body of evidence to recommend it, his literary usefulness is demonstrated by the application of his theory to The Lottery. The theory explains, among other things the liturgical character of the story; its origins in a distant past; its particular relevance to a relatively isolated agricultural community; and its connection to a paternalistic hierarchy whose continued existence depends on the ritual. As far as I am aware, Girard did not read The Lottery; but since he was in America at the time he might have done. In any case, it is certainly remarkable that an author of fiction like Jackson could have written such a tight short story which captures so much of subsequent academic work. Thus demonstrating, if demonstration were needed, the tremendous importance of fiction to cultural life.For an introduction to Girard’s work see: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now . . . Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.

Two things about Jane: she never says no to her friends (she's been a bridesmaid 27 times and selflessly plans friends' weddings), and she's in love with her boss, George, nurturing dreams of a lovely, romantic wedding of her own. She meets Kevin, a cynical writer who finds her attractive, and that same week her flirtatious younger sister Tess comes to town. Jane silently watches George fall for Tess, a manipulative pretender. Worse, Jane may be called upon to plan their wedding. Meanwhile, Kevin tries to get Jane's attention and has an idea that may advance his career. Can Jane uncork her feelings?

Here's the thing! Viola's soccer team at Cornwall gets cut. She wants to join the boys' team, but they do not allow girls. So she thinks, "If you can't beat them, join them". So she does! She disguises herself as her twin brother, Sebastian and goes out for the rival school, Illyria Boys' Soccer Team and makes it. Unfortunately, she didn't plan falling in love with her roommate Duke. But Duke has his eyes on Olivia. What makes matters worse is that Olivia starts to fall for Sebastian because he/she has a sensitive side. If things couldn't get more problematic, the real Sebastian (who was in London working on his music) comes home early. He arrives on campus and has no clue that he was replaced by his twin sister.

A guy who danced with what could be the girl of his dreams at a valentine mascarade ball only has one hint at her identity: the Zune she left behind as she rushed home in order to make her curfew. And with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in front of him, he sets out to find his masked beauty.

Princess Mia Thermopolis (Anne Hathaway) has just turned twenty-one and is supposed to succeed her grandmother as the Queen of Genovia. But Viscount Mabrey (John Rhys-Davies), who wishes that his nephew who is also in line to the throne to be the new ruler, reminds everyone of a law that states that an unmarried woman can't be made Queen, and with the backing of Parliament, he opposes Mia's coronation. Queen Clarisse Renaldi (Dame Julie Andrews) asks that Mia be allowed time to find a husband, and she is given thirty days, but Mabrey tries to do what he can to stop that: his nephew, Nicholas Devereaux (Chris Pine) has met Mia and they are both attracted to each other, but Mia, upon learning who he is, dislikes and doesn't trust him, but Queen Clarisse has invited him to stay with them for the thirty day period to keep an eye on him.

Loosely based on The Reluctant Debutante (1958) starring Sandra Dee, this family-friendly comedy features popular Nickelodeon teen star Amanda Bynes in her first feature-starring performance after her debut in Big Fat Liar (2002). She plays teenager Daphne Reynolds, who lives in New York City with her musician mother, Libby Reynolds (Kelly Preston). After she turns seventeen, Daphne is undecided about her future, so she takes off by herself to London in search of her father. She immediately meets cute musician Ian Wallace (Oliver James) before sneaking in to her father's estate to surprise him. He turns out to be Lord Henry Dashwood (Colin Firth), a fabulously wealthy aristocrat who doesn't even know that she exists. He had met her mother in Morocco and the two were married in a tribal ceremony. Upon their return to England, she left him and went back to the U.S. without ever revealing that she was pregnant. The uptight Henry is already flustered by his campaign for election, advised by doting aide Alistair Payne (Jonathan Pryce). His no-nonsense fiancée, Glynnis Payne (Anna Chancellor), and her bratty daughter, Clarissa Payne (Christina Cole), are threatened by Daphne's presence, thinking that she will hurt Henry's political aspirations by causing a scandal. However, family matriarch, Jocelyn Dashwood (Dame Eileen Atkins), takes a liking to her and she soon finds herself trying to liven things up at several stuffy aristocratic parties. Meanwhile, the evil Glynnis and Clarissa conspire against her by trying to sabotage her appearance, leading up to the conclusion at Daphne's coming-out party.

In Manhattan, the lawyer Liv and the school teacher Emma have been best friends since their childhood. They both are proposed to by their boyfriends on the same day and they plan their wedding parties in Plaza Hotel, using the services of the famous Marion St. Claire. However, due to Marion's secretary's mistake, their weddings are scheduled for the same day. None of them agrees to change the date and they become enemies, trying to sabotage the wedding party of the rival.

With the vivid memory of his long-gone childhood friends Max, Patsy, and Cockeye etched in his mind, his ferociously loyal partners-in-crime during their rise to prominence in New York's Prohibition-era Lower East Side, the defeated, penniless, and guilt-ridden former gangster David "Noodles" Aaronson returns to Manhattan. Not knowing what to expect on his mission to shed light on his opaque past, grizzled Noodles reunites with his only living friend Fat Moe after 35 haunted years of self-exile. However, the relentless, piercing sound of culpability stands in the way of finding closure, as the inscrutable content of a well-worn leather suitcase further complicates matters. And now, against the backdrop of a torn conscience, the sad, bittersweet recollections of more than 50 years of love, death, and everything in-between become inextricably intertwined, leading to even more puzzling questions. But what are a man's options when he is left with nothing?

Having been away for four months, Hildy Johnson walks into the offices of the New York City based The Morning Post, where she is a star reporter, to tell her boss, editor Walter Burns, that she is quitting. The reason for her absence was among other things to get a Reno divorce, from, of all people, Walter, who admits he was a bad husband. Hildy divorced Walter largely because she wanted more of a home life, whereas Walter saw her more as a driven hard-boiled reporter than subservient homemaker. Hildy has also come to tell Walter that she is taking the afternoon train to Albany, where she will be getting married tomorrow to staid straight-laced insurance agent, Bruce Baldwin, with whose mother they will live, at least for the first year. Walter doesn't want to lose Hildy, either as a reporter or a wife, and if he does, doesn't believe Bruce is worthy of her. Walter does whatever he can at least to delay Hildy and Bruce's trip, long enough to persuade Hildy to stay for good. His plan includes doing whatever he can to place Bruce in a bad light, while dangling a big story under her nose, namely covering what the newspaper believes is the unfair imminent execution of convicted cop killer, Earl Williams. Hildy doesn't trust Walter in dealing with her and Bruce in an above board manner, but the lure of what potentially may become the biggest story in years, which includes true love, a bumbling sheriff and a corrupt mayor, the latter's actions largely in light of an upcoming election, may prove to be too much for Hildy to resist, especially if it ends up being an exclusive. Regardless of the story outcome, Hildy will have to decide if the thrill of the chase was worth the anguish on her personal life.

It's nearing the end of the school year. High school senior Carrie White is a social outcast, largely due to being unwise to the ways of the world based on her upbringing. Her mother, Margaret White, is a religious fanatic, her extreme views primarily targeted against sex, which she believes is a sin. She even believes natural associated processes such as menstruation are a sin, about which she has refused to mention to Carrie. Mrs. White's beliefs were taken to that extreme largely because of her own failed marriage and her husband Ralph long ago having run off with another woman. The only adult authority figure who tries to help Carrie with her life is her phys ed teacher, Miss Collins, who is nonetheless warned not to get too close to go against how Mrs. White chooses to raise Carrie, Mrs. White whose beliefs are well known in the community. An impromptu event that happens among Carrie's phys ed classmates against her leads to her classmates being punished. One of those students, self absorbed Chris Hargensen, vows revenge against Carrie for that punishment, the method of the revenge associated to the phys ed class incident. Another student however, the popular Sue Snell, begins to feel sorry for Carrie. In wanting to help her get out of her shell, Sue asks her boyfriend, the equally popular Tommy Ross, to take Carrie to the senior prom instead of her. This move does not sit well with Mrs. White, who in her extreme view believes Carrie will fall prey to sin. All these competing issues lead to Carrie deciding on an impulse to use a newfound skill to free herself from the figurative chains that have long been placed around her, with tragic consequences.

A tale told over four seasons, starting in autumn when Juno, a 16-year-old high-school junior in Minnesota, discovers she's pregnant after one event in a chair with her best friend, Bleeker. In the waiting room of an abortion clinic, the quirky and whip-sharp Juno decides to give birth and to place the child with an adoptive couple. She finds one in the PennySaver personals, contacts them, tells her dad and step-mother, and carries on with school. The chosen parents, upscale yuppies (one of whom is cool and laid back, the other meticulous and uptight), meet Juno, sign papers, and the year unfolds. Will Juno's plan work, can she improvise, and what about Bleeker?

16-year-old Genevieve and 20-year-old Guy are very much in love. Her kind mother, who runs an umbrella shop, won't hear of her marrying, particularly as Guy has yet to complete his compulsory military service. Genevieve is heartbroken when he leaves for his army service in colonial Algeria and is upset to have received only one letter from him in two months. Her mother's solution to this situation is kind diamond-merchant Roland Cassard, who has helped them in the past.

Ian Curtis is a quiet and rather sad lad who works for an employment agency and sings in a band called Warsaw. He meets a girl named Debbie whom he promptly marries and his band, of which the name in the meantime has been changed to Joy Division, gets more and more successful. Even though Debbie and he become parents, their relationship is going downhill rapidly and Ian starts an affair with Belgium Annik whom he met after one of the gigs and he's almost never at home. Ian also suffers from epilepsy and has no-good medication for it. He doesn't know how to handle the feelings he has for Debbie and Annik and the pressure the popularity of Joy Division and the energy performing costs him.

A love triangle emerges around a rock and roll musician, his protege and his wife in 1980s Russia.

2018 film directed by Kirill Serebrennikov

Three separate but parallel stories of the U.S mortgage housing crisis of 2005 are told. Michael Burry, an eccentric ex-physician turned one-eyed Scion Capital hedge fund manager, has traded traditional office attire for shorts, bare feet and a Supercuts haircut. He believes that the US housing market is built on a bubble that will burst within the next few years. Autonomy within the company allows Burry to do largely as he pleases, so Burry proceeds to bet against the housing market with the banks, who are more than happy to accept his proposal for something that has never happened in American history. The banks believe that Burry is a crackpot and therefore are confident in that they will win the deal. Jared Vennett with Deutschebank gets wind of what Burry is doing and, as an investor believes he too can cash in on Burry's beliefs. An errant telephone call to FrontPoint Partners gets this information into the hands of Mark Baum, an idealist who is fed up with the corruption in the financial industry. Baum and his associates, who work at an arms length under Morgan Stanley, decide to join forces with Vennett despite not totally trusting him. In addition to Burry's information, they further believe that most of the mortgages are overrated by the bond agencies, with the banks collating all the sub-prime mortgages under AAA packages. Charlie Geller and Jamie Shipley, who are minor players in a $30 million start-up garage company called Brownfield, get a hold of Vennett's prospectus on the matter. Wanting in on the action but not having the official clout to play, they decide to call an old "friend", retired investment banker Ben Rickert, to help out. All three of these groups work on the premise that the banks are stupid and don't know what's going on, while for them to win, the general economy has to lose, which means the suffering of the general investor who trusts the financial institutions. That latter aspect may not sit well with Baum. Some of these assumptions may be incorrect and may be far more manipulative than they could have ever imagined, which in turn may throw curves into the process.

In 1930s Italy, a carefree Jewish waiter named Guido starts a fairy tale life by courting and marrying a lovely woman from a nearby city. Guido and his wife have a son and live happily together until the occupation of Italy by German forces. In an attempt to hold his family together and help his son survive the horrors of a Jewish Concentration Camp, Guido imagines that the Holocaust is a game and that the grand prize for winning is a tank.

84 years later, a 100 year-old woman named Rose DeWitt Bukater tells the story to her granddaughter Lizzy Calvert, Brock Lovett, Lewis Bodine, Bobby Buell and Anatoly Mikailavich on the Keldysh about her life set in April 10th 1912, on a ship called Titanic when young Rose boards the departing ship with the upper-class passengers and her mother, Ruth DeWitt Bukater, and her fiancé, Caledon Hockley. Meanwhile, a drifter and artist named Jack Dawson and his best friend Fabrizio De Rossi win third-class tickets to the ship in a game. And she explains the whole story from departure until the death of Titanic on its first and last voyage April 15th, 1912 at 2:20 in the morning.

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.

It's the last day of school at a high school in a small town in Texas in 1976. The upperclassmen are hazing the incoming freshmen, and everyone is trying to get stoned, drunk, or laid, even the football players that signed a pledge not to.

Jumanji, one of the most unique--and dangerous--board games ever, falls into the hands of the curious teen, Alan Parrish, in 1969. Mysterious and magical, the game strands the unsuspecting boy in the lush, savage forests of a mythical realm. Nearly three decades later, the game releases him before the awed eyes of the young orphaned siblings, Judy and Peter Shepherd. Now, the wild and incessant beat of the jungle's tribal drums is calling for the now-adult Alan and the other hesitant players, as the one who rolls the dice must never leave undone what the roll has started. Has anyone ever escaped from the game and Jumanji's formidable foes?

In this comedy, Lars Lindstrom is an awkwardly shy young man in a small northern town who finally brings home the girl of his dreams to his brother and sister-in-law's home. The only problem is that she's not real - she's a sex doll Lars ordered off the Internet. But sex is not what Lars has in mind, but rather a deep, meaningful relationship. His sister-in-law is worried for him, his brother thinks he's nuts, but eventually the entire town goes along with his delusion in support of this sweet natured boy that they've always loved.

In the distant past, a Japanese samurai (Phil LaMarr) embarks on a mission to defeat the evil shape-shifting wizard Aku (Mako and Greg Baldwin). Before he can complete his task, though, he is catapulted thousands of years into the future. He finds himself in a world where Aku now enjoys complete power over every living thing. Dubbing himself "Jack", he sets out on a new quest - to right the wrongs that have been done by his enemy, and to find a way back to his own time so he can destroy the evil for good.

From the mind of Genndy Tartakovsky, the visionary creator behind the Emmy® award-winning series Samurai Jack, comes a new tale that follows a caveman at the dawn of evolution as he forms an unlikely friendship with an almost extinct dinosaur. With suspense, heartbreak, excitement, love and fear all without a single word of dialogue, the series is a painting come to life, relying solely on music and graphic imagery to tell the story of two unlikely allies as they navigate through a treacherous world. After bonding over unfortunate tragedies, they seem to become each other's only hope of survival against a common enemy.

A woman discovers she has a new relationship with time after surviving a car accident that almost killed her.

American adult animation comedy-drama web television series

The three Halliwell sisters discover that they are descendents of a line of female witches. Each has a special ability (stopping time, moving objects, seeing the future), and they can also combine their abilities into the "Power of Three" to fight demons, warlocks, and other evils.

American supernatural drama / fantasy television series (1998–2006)

For Emma Swan, life has been anything but a happy ending. But when she's reunited with Henry - the son she gave up for adoption ten years ago - on the night of her 28th birthday, everything changes. The now 10-year-old Henry is in desperate need of Emma's help because he believes from reading a book of fairy-tales that she's the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming - who sent her away from the Enchanted Forest to be protected from a curse that was enacted by the Evil Queen. Emma initially refuses to believe a word of Henry's story but soon finds that his hometown of Storybrooke, Maine is more than it seems. Because it's in Storybrooke that all of the classic characters we know are frozen in time with no memories of their former selves - except for the Evil Queen, who is Storybrooke's mayor and Henry's adoptive mother Regina Mills. Now, as the epic "Final Battle" for the future of both worlds approaches, Emma will have to accept her destiny and uncover the mystery behind a place where fairy-tales are to be believed.

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

Former insurance claims investigator Nathan Ford heads a team of former top-criminals. They handle 'unorthodox' cases of people unlikely to get their due through regular channels and legal procedures. That often involves stinging or otherwise scamming criminals. Nate's team is altered at times, and his professional as well as personal past repeatedly seems to catch up.

Richard "Rick" Castle is a millionaire playboy who recently killed off his main character when a serial killer starts killing people like he does in his books. He teams up with New York police detective Kate Beckett to solve the case. He finds inspiration in Detective Beckett and starts shadowing her for his next book.

American police procedural comedy-drama television series (2009-2016)

A former lawyer attends a community college when it is discovered he faked his Bachelor's degree. In an attempt to get with a student in his Spanish class, he forms a Spanish study group. To his surprise, more people attend the study group and the group of misfits form an unlikely community.

American comedy television series created by Dan Harmon

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?

American college football coach Ted Lasso heads to London to manage AFC Richmond, a struggling English Premier League football team.

A secret government plan to dig up historical figures and clone them has worked. It is 16 years later, and the clones are now in high school. The five main characters are Abe Lincoln, an all around nice but naive guy who lusts after the school sexpot Cleopatra, who is dating the macho JFK. Also, Abe's two best friends are Joan of Arc, an angst ridden goth girl who is in love with him, and Gandhi, a none-stop party animal. Clone High bravely tackles challenging teen issues, such as sleep deprivation, catching ADD from toilet seats, the evils of litter, and having the guy you like not like you back the same way you like him. Will Abe get together with Cleo, or be thwarted by the handsome JFK? Will Joan finally get Abe to notice her? Who's to say?

American adult animated television series

When chemistry teacher Walter White is diagnosed with Stage III cancer and given only two years to live, he decides he has nothing to lose. He lives with his teenage son, who has cerebral palsy, and his wife, in New Mexico. Determined to ensure that his family will have a secure future, Walt embarks on a career of drugs and crime. He proves to be remarkably proficient in this new world as he begins manufacturing and selling methamphetamine with one of his former students. The series tracks the impacts of a fatal diagnosis on a regular, hard working man, and explores how a fatal diagnosis affects his morality and transforms him into a major player of the drug trade.

It's been 40 years since the 12 colonies of mankind have heard from their progeny, the Cylons -- robotic creatures who rose up and declared war on their masters, then disappeared. In a sudden, devastating strike, the Cylons return and lay waste to the colonies, aided by human-looking Cylon variants and an unwitting fifth columnist. The attack forces Commander William Adama to call into action his museum-piece warship, the Battlestar Galactica, and soon its company of hotshot fighter pilots is blasting away at the invaders. But their best efforts can't prevent the colonies' obliteration. Fleeing the Cylon genocide, the Galactica leads a rag-tag fleet of survivors on a lonely quest to find humanity's fabled 13th colony -- a planet known as Earth.

The Library has chosen a new group to help safeguard magical cursed artifacts throughout time and around the world; an art historian, a thief, a mathematician, and a warrior, are sent through the doorway to help bring back the others who are protected by the Library from the evil, recently released.

The Good Place is a town where those who have been good throughout their lives go once they have passed away. Michael (Danson) is the architect who oversees the town--and this is the first one he has been in charge of creating. Eleanor (Bell) arrives at the Good Place and realizes they have her name right, but everything else is wrong. She isn't meant to be there at all. With the help of Chidi, her soul mate (Harper), Eleanor tries to right her wrongs, seeking to finally earn her spot in the Good Place.

2016 American fantasy comedy television series

Princess Tiabeanie, 'Bean', is about to be married to Prince Merkimer. It is an arranged marriage and Bean isn't too happy about it. She is fun loving and free spirited and marriage is the last thing she wants to preoccupy herself with. Then she meets Luci, a demon, and Elfo, an elf, and things get rather exciting, and dangerous.

satirical fantasy sitcom created by Matt Groening

The comedy series is a darkly absurd and cynically poignant story of love and divorce. It follows Hazel Green, a thirty-something woman on the run after 10 years in a suffocating marriage to Byron Gogol, a controlling tech billionaire.

John Tavner doesn't really fit in with his quirky colleagues at the industrial piping corporation where he works. They don't really know much about him, but what they don't realize is that his life has been anything but mundane. To prevent Iran from going nuclear, he has assumed a fake persona as an average businessman when in reality he is actually a highly skilled intelligence officer, who took the piping job because of the routine business trips to Luxembourg, and because the job is secluded and too dull to be noticed. Unfortunately for him a European cop is at his heels trying to discover who he is, his incessantly grim and nervous coworker Mr. Icabod has figured out that he isn't who he says, and Steven, a chubby employee with a recent brain injury, is starting to remember a horrible act which John may have inflicted.

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It is the height of the war in Vietnam, and U.S. Army Captain Willard is sent by Colonel Lucas and a General to carry out a mission that, officially, 'does not exist - nor will it ever exist'. The mission: To seek out a mysterious Green Beret Colonel, Walter Kurtz, whose army has crossed the border into Cambodia and is conducting hit-and-run missions against the Viet Cong and NVA. The army believes Kurtz has gone completely insane and Willard's job is to eliminate him. Willard, sent up the Nung River on a U.S. Navy patrol boat, discovers that his target is one of the most decorated officers in the U.S. Army. His crew meets up with surfer-type Lt-Colonel Kilgore, head of a U.S Army helicopter cavalry group which eliminates a Viet Cong outpost to provide an entry point into the Nung River. After some hair-raising encounters, in which some of his crew are killed, Willard, Lance and Chef reach Colonel Kurtz's outpost, beyond the Do Lung Bridge. Now, after becoming prisoners of Kurtz, will Willard & the others be able to fulfill their mission?

1979 American war film directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Donnie Darko doesn't get along too well with his family, his teachers, and his classmates; but he does manage to find a sympathetic friend in Gretchen, who agrees to date him. He has a compassionate psychiatrist, who discovers hypnosis is the means to unlock hidden secrets. His other companion may not be a true ally. Donnie has a friend named Frank, a large bunny which only Donnie can see. When an engine falls off a plane and destroys his bedroom, Donnie is not there. Both the event, and Donnie's escape, seem to have been caused by supernatural events.

A wild, freeform, Rabelaisian trip through the darkest recesses of Edinburgh low-life, focusing on Mark Renton and his attempt to give up his heroin habit, and how the latter affects his relationship with family and friends: Sean Connery wannabe Sick Boy, dimbulb Spud, psycho Begbie, 14-year-old girlfriend Diane, and clean-cut athlete Tommy, who's never touched drugs but can't help being curious about them...

The curious, adventure-seeking, fourth grade group of 10 year old boys, Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny, all join in in buffoonish adventures that sometimes evolve nothing. Sometimes something that was simple at the start, turns out to get out of control. Everything is odd in the small mountain town, South Park, and the boys always find something to do with it.

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After it looks as if she's left his life for good this time, Tom Hansen reflects back on the just over one year that he knew Summer Finn. For Tom, it was love at first sight when she walked into the greeting card company where he worked, she the new administrative assistant. Soon, Tom knew that Summer was the woman with whom he wanted to spend the rest of his life. Although Summer did not believe in relationships or boyfriends - in her assertion, real life will always ultimately get in the way - Tom and Summer became more than just friends. Through the trials and tribulations of Tom and Summer's so-called relationship, Tom could always count on the advice of his two best friends, McKenzie and Paul. However, it is Tom's adolescent sister, Rachel, who is his voice of reason. After all is said and done, Tom is the one who ultimately has to make the choice to listen or not.

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.

When Coraline moves to an old house, she feels bored and neglected by her parents. She finds a hidden door with a bricked up passage. During the night, she crosses the passage and finds a parallel world where everybody has buttons instead of eyes, with caring parents and all her dreams coming true. When the Other Mother invites Coraline to stay in her world forever, the girl refuses and finds that the alternate reality where she is trapped is only a trick to lure her.

A regular girl, Veronica, tries to survive the social jungle of high school by sticking with the three most popular girls at school who are all called Heather. As she meets a sociopath named JD, her life spirals into a continuous cycle of hate, unintentional murder and indifference, as she exacts revenge on her enemies, also known as her best friends.

true favorites

book

It's the late 1980s. Twenty-seven year old Wall Streeter Patrick Bateman travels among a closed network of the proverbial beautiful people, that closed network in only they able to allow others like themselves in in a feeling of superiority. Patrick has a routinized morning regimen to maintain his appearance of attractiveness and fitness. He, like those in his network, are vain, narcissistic, egomaniacal and competitive, always having to one up everyone else in that presentation of oneself, but he, unlike the others, realizes that, for himself, all of these are masks to hide what is truly underneath, someone/something inhuman in nature. In other words, he is comprised of a shell resembling a human that contains only greed and disgust, greed in wanting what others may have, and disgust for those who do not meet his expectations and for himself in not being the first or the best. That disgust ends up manifesting itself in wanting to rid the world of those people, he not seeing them as people but only of those characteristics he wants to rid.

Set within a year after the events of Batman Begins (2005), Batman, Lieutenant James Gordon, and new District Attorney Harvey Dent successfully begin to round up the criminals that plague Gotham City, until a mysterious and sadistic criminal mastermind known only as "The Joker" appears in Gotham, creating a new wave of chaos. Batman's struggle against The Joker becomes deeply personal, forcing him to "confront everything he believes" and improve his technology to stop him. A love triangle develops between Bruce Wayne, Dent, and Rachel Dawes.

2008 superhero film directed by Christopher Nolan

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.

Meet the wildly dysfunctional Bluth family. This family was once at the height of real estate development in Orange County, California. But when the family business - the Bluth Company - goes bust, they're suddenly found penniless with their assets frozen. They move into their last remaining asset - the model home left over from their latest housing tract. Their luxury vehicles are replaced with a reminder of the family's former wealth: 'the stair car that accompanied their private jet'. The patriarch of the family is George Bluth - he's now in prison, and loving every minute of it. His wife Lucille and daughter Lindsay are spoiled socialites who can't handle getting kicked out of family restaurants. His son Buster is in his mid 30's and lives at home. His son George Oscar Bluth is a magician who started a group to get magicians to be taken seriously, and gets kicked out when his own tricks are revealed. Lindsay is married to a man named Tobias Funke, once a psychiatrist, who decides to become an actor. The only sane member of the family: Michael Bluth, along with his son George Michael, want nothing to do with the family business. But one bizarre circumstance after another keeps Michael and George Michael from leaving their eccentric family.

more than like

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.

After centuries of quarreling, Stefan and Damon Salvatore return to their original town of Mystic Fall, Virginia. Stefan, the selfless, brave, guilt-ridden brother, meets a high school girl named Elena Gilbert whom he instantly falls in love with, while Damon, the gorgeous, dangerous and selfish vampire, is after his brother's girl to pay him back for making him turn into a vampire in 1864.

2009 American supernatural teen drama television series

finish line face plant  

In the Victorian London, the barber Benjamin Barker is married to the gorgeous Lucy and they have a lovely child, Johanna. The beauty of Lucy attracts the attention of the corrupt Judge Turpin, who falsely accuses the barber of a crime that he did not commit and abuses Lucy later after gaining custody of her. After fifteen years in exile, Benjamin returns to London under the new identity of Sweeney Todd, seeking revenge against Turpin. He meets the widow Mrs. Lovett who is the owner of a meat pie shop who tells him that Lucy swallowed arsenic many years ago, and Turpin assigned himself tutor of Johanna. He opens a barber shop above her store, initiating a crime rampage against those who made him suffer and lose his beloved family.

Jack Skellington, the pumpkin king of Halloween Town, is bored with doing the same thing every year for Halloween. One day he stumbles into Christmas Town, and is so taken with the idea of Christmas that he tries to get the resident bats, ghouls, and goblins of Halloween Town to help him put on Christmas instead of Halloween -- but alas, they can't get it quite right.

1993 animated film directed by Henry Selick

Begins when an opera ghost terrorizes the cast and crew of the French Opera House while tutoring a chorus girl. He finally drives the lead soprano crazy so she and her friend leave. The girl is able to sing lead one night but the soprano doesn't want her show stolen so she comes back. The ghost demands they keep giving his protégé lead roles. Meanwhile, His pupil falls in love with the Vicomte de Chagny, but the Phantom is in love with Christine, his student. The Phantom is outraged by their love and kidnaps Christine to be his eternal bride. Will Raoul, the Vicomte, be able to stop this dastardly plan?

2004 musical film directed by Joel Schumacher

Across The Universe is a fictional love story set in the 1960s amid the turbulent years of anti-war protest, the struggle for free speech and civil rights, mind exploration and rock and roll. At once gritty, whimsical and highly theatrical, the story moves from high schools and universities in Massachusetts, Princeton and Ohio to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the Detroit riots, Vietnam and the dockyards of Liverpool. A combination of live action and animation, the film is paired with many songs by

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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.

I don’t know what to do with these stars anymore. I give stars to books and then I think, ‘god, you give five stars to everything, people will think you are terribly undiscriminating’ – so then I give four stars or even three stars to some books. Then I look back and it turns out that that I’ve given four stars to Of Human Bondage and honestly, how could I possibly have thought it was a good idea to give that book less than five stars? It is the absurdity of human conventions that has us doing such things.Now, that is what is called a segue, from the Italian ‘seguire’ – to follow. For the last thirty years I have studiously avoided reading this book. I have done that because for the last thirty years I have known exactly what this book is about and there just didn’t seem any point in reading it. In high school friends (one of them even became my ex-wife) told me it was a great book about a man condemned to die because he was an outsider. Later I was told that this book was a story about something much like the Azaria Chamberlain case. A case where someone does not react in a way that is considered to be ‘socially appropriate’ and is therefore condemned.But after 30 years of avoiding reading this book I have finally relented and read it. At first I didn’t think I was going to enjoy it. It didn’t really get off to the raciest of starts and the character's voice – it is told in first person – was a bit dull. He is a man who lives entirely in the present, how terribly Buddhist of him – although, really there doesn’t seem to be all that much to him.My opinion of the book began to change at his mother’s funeral. I particularly liked the man who kept falling behind in the march to the cemetery and would take short cuts. Okay, so it is black humour, but Camus was more or less French – so black humour is more or less obligatory.I really hadn’t expected this book to be nearly so funny as it turned out. I’d always been told it was a ponderous philosophical text – and so, to be honest, I was expecting to be bored out of my skull. I wasn’t in the least bit bored.A constant theme in my life at present is that I read ‘classics’ expecting them to be about something and they end up being about something completely different. And given I’ve called this a ‘constant’ theme then you might think I would be less than surprised when a read a new ‘classic’ and it turns out to be completely different to my expectations. I’m a little more upset about this one than some of the others, as I’ve been told about this one before, repeatedly, and by people I’d have taken as ‘reputable sources’ – although, frankly, how well one should trust one’s ex-wife in such matters is moot.I had gotten the distinct impression from all of my previous discussions about this book that the guy ends up dead. In fact, this is not the case – he ends up at the point in his life where he has no idea if he will be freed or not. The Priest who comes to him at the end is actually quite certain that he will be freed. Let’s face it, he is only guilty of having murdered an Arab, and as we have daily evidence, Westerners can murder Arabs with complete impunity. The main point of the book to me is when he realises he is no longer ‘free’. He needs this explained to him – because life up until then had been about ‘getting used to things’ and one can 'get used to just about anything'. But the prison guard helpfully informs him that he is being ‘punished’ and the manifestation of that punishment is the removal of his ‘freedom’. Interestingly, he didn’t notice the difference between his past ‘free’ life and his current ‘unfree’ one. The most interesting part of the book to me was the very end, the conversation with the priest. The religious often make the mistake of thinking that Atheists are one thing – I’ve no idea how they ever came to make this mistake, but make it they do. Given that there are thousands upon thousands of different shades of Christians – from Jesuit Catholics to Anti-Disney Episcopalians – it should be fairly obvious that something like Atheism (without any ‘organised’ church or even system of beliefs) could not be in anyway ‘homogeneous’.I am definitely not the same kind of Atheist as Camus. To Camus there is no truth, the world is essentially absurd and all that exists is the relative truth an individual places on events and ideas. This makes the conversation with the priest fascinatingly interesting. To the priest the prisoner who is facing death is – by necessity – someone who is interested in God. You can play around with ideas like the non-existence of God when it doesn’t seem to matter (life is long and blasphemy can seem fun) – but surely when confronted with the stark truth of the human condition any man would turn away from their disbelief and see the shining light.Not this little black duck. Now, if I was in that cell I would have argued with the priest too – but I would not have argued in the same way that Meursault argues. No, I do not believe in God, but I do believe in truth, and so Camus’ arguments are barred to me.Meursault essentially says, “Look, I’m bored, I’m totally uninterested in the rubbish you are talking – now go away”. Now, this is a reasonable response. What is very interesting is that the priest cannot accept this as an answer. The world is not allowed to have such a person in it – if such a person really did exist then it would be a fundamental challenge to the core beliefs of the priest. So, he has to assume Meursault is either lying to him or is trying to taunt him. But it is much worse – he is absolutely sincere, he is not interested in this ‘truth’.I don’t know that the world is completely meaningless, it is conventional rather than meaningless. That those conventions are arbitrary (decided by the culture we grew up in) doesn’t make them meaningless, it makes them conventional. I don’t think I would like to live in a world where people go up and kill Arabs pretty much at random and with impunity, but then again, we have already established this is precisely the world I do live in. My point is that it would be better if we did adhere to some sort of moral principles and that these should be better principles than ‘he should be killed because he didn’t cry at his mum’s funeral’. Camus is seeking to say that all of our ‘moral principles’ in the end come to be as meaningless as that – we judge on the basis of what we see from the framework of our own limited experience. And look, yes, there is much to this – but this ends up being too easy.The thing I like most about Existentialism, though it isn’t really as evident in this book as it is in the actual philosophy – although this is something that Meursault is supposed to have grown to understand (sorry, just one more sub-clause) even though this wasn’t something I noticed at all while reading the book, was the notion of responsibility. I didn’t think in the end Meursault was all that much more ‘responsible’ for his actions than he had been at the start. But I do think that ‘responsibility’ is a key concept in morality and one that seems increasingly to be ignored.Better by far that we feel responsible for too much in our lives than too little – better by far that we take responsibility for the actions of our governments (say) than to call these governments ‘them’. I’m not advocating believing in The Secret - but that if one must err, better to err on the side of believing you have too much responsibility for how your life has turned out, rather than too little.So, what can I say? I enjoyed this much more than I expected – but I’m still glad I waited before reading it, I really don’t think I would have gotten nearly as much out of it at 15 as I did now.

Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantes is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to unearth the treasure and use it to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration. Dumas’ epic tale of suffering and retribution, inspired by a real-life case of wrongful imprisonment, was a huge popular success when it was first serialized in the 1840s.Robin Buss’s lively English translation is complete and unabridged, and remains faithful to the style of Dumas’s original. This edition includes an introduction, explanatory notes and suggestions for further reading.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, a book that galvanized—and sometimes outraged—millions of readers.First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.

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