Jaspreet Singh

Hector Jaime Oropesa

aasta Haukland

Jayden

Alokym ya Bassa

Joseph Greer

Catalina Olmos

George Balaskas

Ojasw Upadhyay

Taylor Robinson

Carly Hylton

Daniel Mariani

A shocking, hilarious and strangely tender novel about a young woman’s experiment in narcotic hibernation, aided and abetted by one of the worst psychiatrists in the annals of literature. Our narrator has many of the advantages of life, on the surface. Young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, she lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like everything else, by her inheritance. But there is a vacuum at the heart of things, and it isn’t just the loss of her parents in college, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her alleged best friend. It’s the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?This story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs, designed to heal us from our alienation from this world, shows us how reasonable, even necessary, that alienation sometimes is. Blackly funny, both merciless and compassionate – dangling its legs over the ledge of 9/11 – this novel is a showcase for the gifts of one of America’s major young writers working at the height of her powers.

The novel is set during World War II, from 1942 to 1944. It mainly follows the life of Captain John Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier. Most of the events in the book occur while the fictional 256th Squadron is based on the island of Pianosa, in the Mediterranean Sea, west of Italy. The novel looks into the experiences of Yossarian and the other airmen in the camp, who attempt to maintain their sanity while fulfilling their service requirements so that they may return home.

The quintessential novel of the Lost Generation, The Sun Also Rises is one of Ernest Hemingway's masterpieces, and a classic example of his spare but powerful writing style. A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation, the novel introduces two of Hemingway's most unforgettable characters: Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. The story follows the flamboyant Brett and the hapless Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to the brutal bullfighting rings of Spain with a motley group of expatriates. It is an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing illusions. First published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises helped to establish Hemingway as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.

alternate cover can be found hereSumire is in love with a woman seventeen years her senior. But whereas Miu is glamorous and successful, Sumire is an aspiring writer who dresses in an oversized second-hand coat and heavy boots like a character in a Kerouac novel.Sumire spends hours on the phone talking to her best friend K about the big questions in life: what is sexual desire, and should she ever tell Miu how she feels for her? Meanwhile K wonders whether he should confess his own unrequited love for Sumire.Then, a desperate Miu calls from a small Greek island: Sumire has mysteriously vanished...

Yesno matter who I’m withpeople always say,are you still with her?my average relationship laststwo and one half years.with warsinflationunemploymentalcoholismgamblinggamblingand my own degenerate nervousnessI think I do well enough.I like reading the Sunday papers in bed.I like orange ribbons tied around the cat’s neck.I like sleeping up against a body that I know well.I like black slips at the foot of my bedat 2 in the afternoon.I like seeing how the photos turned out.I like to be helped through the holidays:4th of July, Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving,Christmas, New Year’s.they know how to ride these rapidsand they are less afraid of love than I am.they can make me laugh where professional comediansfail.there is walking out to buy a newspaper together.there is much good in being alonebut there is a strange warmth in not being alone.I like boiled red potatoes.I like eyes and fingers better than mine that canget knots out of shoelaces.I like letting her drive the car on dark nightswhen the road and the way have gotten to me,the car radio onwe light cigarettes and talk about thingsand now and thenbecome silent.I like hairpins on tables,on the floor.I like knowing the same wallsthe same people.I dislike the insane and useless fights which alwaysoccurand I dislike myself at these timesgiving nothingunderstanding nothing.I like boiled asparagusI like radishesgreen onions.I like to put my car into a car wash.I like it when I have ten win on a six to oneshot.I like my radio which keeps playingBrahms, Beethoven, Mahler.I like it when there’s a knock on the door andshe’s there.no matter who I’m withpeople always say,are you still with her?they must think I bury them inthe Hollywood Hills.The Secret of my EnduranceI still get letters in the mail, mostly from cracked-upmen in tiny rooms with factory jobs or no jobs who areliving with whores or no woman at all, no hope, justbooze and madness.Most of their letters are on lined paperwritten with an unsharpened pencilor in inkin tiny handwriting that slants to theleftand the paper is often tornusually halfway up the middleand they say they like my stuff,I’ve written from where it’s at, andthey recognize that. truly, I’ve given them a secondchance, some recognition of where they’re at.it’s true, I was there, worse off than mostof them.but I wonder if they realize where their lettersarrive?well, they are dropped into a boxbehind a six-foot hedge with a long driveway leadingto a two car garage, rose garden, fruit trees,animals, a beautiful woman, mortgage about halfpaid after a year, a new car,fireplace and a green rug two-inches thickwith a young boy to write my stuff now,I keep him in a ten-foot cage with atypewriter, feed him whiskey and raw whores,belt him pretty good three or four timesa week.I’m 59 years old now and the critics saymy stuff is getting better than ever.

people are not good to each other.perhaps if they wereour deaths would not be so sad.Love him or hate him, Charles Bukowski was a bitter, drunken asshole with a gift for putting onto paper all the ugliness and baseness hiding in the human heart. Before jumping into the discovery and thoughts that are the inspiration for this ramble about the dirty old writer, a few moments should be spent on the actual poetry found in this volume. I’ve always enjoyed the earlier Bukowski, before he became too jaded and bitter and let a few really tender moments flower within all the crassness. Love, and more specifically the failures and loss of it, are the heart of this collection. All through the poems here are allusions to the ‘red haired woman’, whom Bukowski shows a deep regret in loosing. Much of the crassness feels reactionary to this loss of love as Bukowski documents a spiral into dirty, drunken debauchery and madness as a method of hardening the heart against such pains. Love is replaced with lust to erase loneliness, yet, ironically, it only instills further self-hatred and builds towards a crippling loneliness.\
  there is always one womanto save you from anotherand as that woman saves youshe makes ready todestroy.\
Bukowski is that drunk asshole always diving to the bottom of a glass, keeping shallow relationships and never trusting women. He is, at best, a rude misogynist, but under the layers of dysphemism, we see a heart drowning in sorrow (and booze). There is still some charm though, he is often humorous in his crassness, and there are moments where he truly shows remorse for the terrible manner in which human beings treat one another. He  did not really like people, probably a lot of that having to do with his fear of being hurt by others. His poetry is rather simple, nothing complex to pick apart, and very rarely uses many poetic devices, but that is what makes it so powerful. It cuts right to the heart. He often describes the writing process as pounding the keys like a prizefighter, and often refers to his typewriter as his 'piano' (Bukowski was a huge fan of classical music, especially Brahms, and compares music and writing often).This collection contains a poem that not only introduced me to Knut Hamsun (who is now one of my favorite authors), but I’ve always kept in mind as a darkly comical motivation for being a writer:How to be a Good Writeryou've got to fuck a great many womenbeautiful womenand write a few decent love poems. and don't worry about ageand/or freshly-arrived talents. just drink more beermore and more beer and attend the racetrack at least once a week and winif possible learning to win is hard -any slob can be a good loser. and don't forget your Brahmsand your Bach and yourbeer. don't overexercise. sleep until moon. avoid paying credit cardsor paying for anything ontime. remember that there isn't a piece of assin this world over $50(in 1977). and if you have the ability to lovelove yourself firstbut always be aware of the possibility oftotal defeatwhether the reason for that defeatseems right or wrong - an early taste of death is not necessarilya bad thing. stay out of churches and bars and museums, and like the spider bepatient -time is everybody's cross, plusexiledefeat treachery all that dross. stay with the beer. beer is continuous blood. a continuous lover. get a large typewriterand as the footsteps go up and downoutside your window hit that thinghit it hard make it a heavyweight fight make it the bull when he first charges in and remember the old dogswho fought so well: Hemingway, Celine, Dostoevsky, Hamsun. If you think they didn't go crazyin tiny roomsjust like you're doing now without womenwithout foodwithout hope then you're not ready. drink more beer. there's time. and if there's notthat's all righttoo. While looking to find more references to Hamsun in this collection, I noticed that within the margins, my own handwriting was mixed with that of another’s. It turns out that one of my closest friends, a friend I have not seen in years and have been separated from by the circumstances of life that separate even the closest of people, had gone through this book and left me all sorts of comments for me to think about, as well as comment upon my own reaction. It was like having a conversation across 3 years time with an old friend, the type of friend that is more like a brother. The power of language and writing seemed more important than ever suddenly, as it is a tool tying people together across space and time. This particular collection couldn’t be more fitting to find these notes written years earlier (I have a few other books where we both wrote notes to each other, such as Thus Spoke Zarathustra which we were both reading at the same time while he was our ‘guy on couch’ at an old apartment), both with Bukowski’s discussions of loneliness, but as it was indicative of my current state at that time. A few years ago was a bit of a darker period where the group of us had close ties and stayed rather under the radar of society. I would go to class, return to our apartment and we would spend all our time playing music, drinking and discussing film and books. This was a bitter period, as I had been in that post-heartbreak stage where the world seems ugly and, like Bukowski, just wanted to revel in my bitterness for awhile. Finding these notes brings back only the happy memories of those times and makes you realize that the loss of someone you loved as a brother is far more important to you than the loss of any former lover, and these are the people you miss most down the line in the birth pangs of some lonely, introspective morning. This all reminds me very much of the Savage Detectives and that sadness of people spreading out across the map as friendships rust and wash away in the changing tides. What struck me most was his notes about the sadness that permeates this collection. In one margin is written: ‘Bukowski seems genuinely troubled/depressed by the imagery of failed relationships and their aftermath – the failings of love and the intended + unintended ways we hurt one another’. That more or less sums this book up. I also enjoyed moments where he circled lines such as ‘oh brothers, we are the sickest and lowest of the breed’, which summed up that summer we all spent together in our tiny, dirty Ypsilanti apartment. He was also kind enough to highlight every mention of the ‘redhead’ and string together the story that is told through fragments.Enough of that emotional reflection though, nobody likes that sort of stuff. Which leads me to a quote from Neil Young (my favorite, and it pains me to be referencing such an obvious song instead of some lesser-known greater one) that ‘every junky is like a setting sun’. They are on their way out, difficult, if not painful, to look right at, yet beautiful. Bukowski fits this bill, as his life and works are painful to watch, but there is some beauty in there. Also like a setting sun, people like this aren’t something you can hang around long or you will get hurt (or loose your vision if you stare at the sun too long!). This is a messy metaphor, but I swear it’s going somewhere. Poems like those of Bukowski, or people who fit this bill such as drinking buddies, are good for certain times and places, however, you can’t linger there. When you are feeling dirty and ugly and crass, Bukowski is wonderful fun. Works like his are empowering at those times because you can relate and laugh along with, and, primarily, because it is reassuring to see that others with this same ugliness are able to create something beautiful. Once you’ve had your fill though, the time comes to move forward, as this sort of ugliness can only lead to more ugliness and eventually it will fill you and drag you down with it. These types of works are very reactionary, only as a venomous bite toward what hurts you and not a truly constructive method of moving on. The mid to late 2000s was full of this sort of behavior, look at the emo culture, where people wanted to express their disdain for the world around them (the emo culture did it with more self loathing and tears, whereas something like Bukowski is more about pushing someone away through acting depraved and hard when you actually truly want them to get close to you). However, we can’t always be angry and we have to move on, get over our problems, or they win. They become us. We can’t be simply made up of only our failures and sadness, we must learn to deal with them, get past them, and win by being stronger than our problems. I tend to rag on Chuck Palahniuk a lot, but he really fits this idea for me, and if I can quickly explain it, perhaps I won’t have to keep using him as an example anymore. His works were very popular in the era mentioned above (okay, I know Bukowski wasn’t writing then, but this has transcended Bukowski’s works into a discussion about getting over problems), because they were a gripe against social forces. Chuck P. took hold of many adolescents through writing stories with adults who are characterized like angsty teenagers. They view the world and societal constructs as threatening, as something holding them down, and turn to nihilism to deal with that. However, nihilism will only negate things, it won’t transcend them. I lost interest in Palahniuk once I realized that he would never offer a true solution to the problems he imposes on his characters (as well as simply recycling characters and techniques, but that is a different discussion). I couldn’t wallow in his cynicism and darkness any longer, and turned to bigger, better and brighter authors. I have never looked back. Yet, I can’t condemn him entirely, because he fit my 17 year old needs for awhile. I enjoyed Fight Club at the time, Choke made me laugh, and sometimes it is good to wallow in the ugliness. But stay to long and the pity-party, because that is all it really is, becomes sad and pathetic.All in all, I’m glad I’ve read Bukowski, but I feel like my life has taken me places where his opinions no longer really reach me. I can’t wallow in that sadness, and I find his lusts rather creepy and his woman-bashing rather offensive. However, that is exactly what he was striving for. Still, those moments of beauty are worth coming back for, and I can’t express enough how cool it was to find the notes from my friend. Mostly, being able to reminisce about those days of stupid, wild youth is what really holds my heart.3.5/5Okay, and this poem, Dinosauria, We is great (although not from this collection)

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 0553213695 / 9780553213690"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was laying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes." With it's startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first opening, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing—though absurdly comic—meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction. As W.H. Auden wrote, "Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man."

The hero-narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it. There are many voices in this novel: children's voices, adult voices, underground voices-but Holden's voice is the most eloquent of all. Transcending his own vernacular, yet remaining marvelously faithful to it, he issues a perfectly articulated cry of mixed pain and pleasure. However, like most lovers and clowns and poets of the higher orders, he keeps most of the pain to, and for, himself. The pleasure he gives away, or sets aside, with all his heart. It is there for the reader who can handle it to keep. J.D. Salinger's classic novel of teenage angst and rebellion was first published in 1951. The novel was included on Time's 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923. It was named by Modern Library and its readers as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. It has been frequently challenged in the court for its liberal use of profanity and portrayal of sexuality and in the 1950's and 60's it was the novel that every teenage boy wants to read.

An acclaimed bestseller and international sensation, Patrick Suskind's classic novel provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one man's indulgence in his greatest passion—his sense of smell—leads to murder.In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift—an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille's genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and fresh-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the "ultimate perfume"—the scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brilliance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity.

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.

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.

The terrifyingly prophetic novel of a post-literate future.Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so, Montag is unhappy; there is discord in his marriage. Are books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound of the Fire Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic, escorted by helicopters, is ready to track down those dissidents who defy society to preserve and read books.The classic dystopian novel of a post-literate future, Fahrenheit 451 stands alongside Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World as a prophetic account of Western civilization’s enslavement by the media, drugs and conformity.Bradbury’s powerful and poetic prose combines with uncanny insight into the potential of technology to create a novel which, decades on from first publication, still has the power to dazzle and shock.--back cover

Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and unbending routine, unopposed by her patients, who remain cowed by mind-numbing medication and the threat of electric shock therapy. But her regime is disrupted by the arrival of McMurphy – the swaggering, fun-loving trickster with a devilish grin who resolves to oppose her rules on behalf of his fellow inmates. His struggle is seen through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a seemingly mute half-Indian patient who understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them imprisoned. Ken Kesey's extraordinary first novel is an exuberant, ribald and devastatingly honest portrayal of the boundaries between sanity and madness.

With only a yellowing photograph in hand, a young man -- also named Jonathan Safran Foer -- sets out to find the woman who may or may not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of the war; an amorous dog named Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior; and the unforgettable Alex, a young Ukrainian translator who speaks in a sublimely butchered English, Jonathan is led on a quixotic journey over a devastated landscape and into an unexpected past.

Sister Clodagh, currently posted at the Convent of the Order of the Servants of Mary in Calcutta, has just been appointed the Sister Superior of the St. Faith convent, making her the youngest sister superior in the order. The appointment is despite the reservations of the Reverend Mother who believes Sister Clodagh not ready for such an assignment, especially because of its isolated location. The convent will be a new one located in the mountainside Palace of Mopu in the Himalayas, and is only possible through the donation by General Todo Rai of Mopu - "The Old General" - of the palace, where the Old General's father formerly kept his concubine. On the Old General's directive, the convent is to provide schooling to the children and young women, and general dispensary services to all native residents who live in the valley below the palace. Accompanying Sister Clodagh will be four of the other nuns, each chosen for a specific reason: Sister Briony for her strength, Sister Phillipa who is to tend to the garden for food, Sister Blanche - more commonly referred to as Sister Honey - for her general ability to spread happiness, and troubled Sister Ruth, who the Reverend Mother believes will truly find her faith from the change in locale. The palace comes with an elderly female caretaker, slightly off kilter Angu Ayah, and a holy man who meditates in solitude and silence outside the palace grounds night and day, he who is not to be disturbed. The General also provides a young boy, six year old Joseph Anthony, the General's cook's son, who will live at the convent to provide translation services. But the sisters' primary liaison to the General and the outside world is his agent, native Brit Mr. Dean, which may prove to be problematic in his gender and doing any work around the convent. Sister Clodagh faces early challenges in feeling the need to accept two people to the convent: seventeen year old Kanchi, who is pushing the boundaries of her sexuality; and the Old General's son, the "Young General", who wants the same educational opportunities, if not better, than that offered to his female counterparts. Beyond these issues, each of the sisters is challenged by this posting, from the cultural differences, to the isolation, to the general openness of their environment. Sister Clodagh, as the leader, feels that she has no one to turn to in her confusion, her thoughts turning back to her time in Ireland before joining the order and her love for a young man named Con that was partly the reason for her decision to devote her life to God. But it is Sister Ruth whose issues may be the most problematic as she is becoming unhinged in her growing romantic obsession with Mr. Dean, especially as jealousy emerges in she also believing that Sister Clodagh is falling in love with him as well, which may or may not be the case.

1947 film by Emeric Pressburger, Michael Powell

Jim Stark is the new kid in town. He has been in trouble elsewhere; that's why his family has had to move before. Here he hopes to find the love he doesn't get from his middle-class family. Though he finds some of this in his relation with Judy, and a form of it in both Plato's adulation and Ray's real concern for him, Jim must still prove himself to his peers in switchblade knife fights and "chickie" games in which cars race toward a seaside cliff.

1955 American film directed by Nicholas Ray

Blanche DuBois, a high school English teacher with an aristocratic background from Auriol, Mississippi, decides to move to live with her sister and brother-in-law, Stella and Stanley Kowalski, in New Orleans after creditors take over the family property, Belle Reve. Blanche has also decided to take a break from teaching as she states the situation has frayed her nerves. Knowing nothing about Stanley or the Kowalskis' lives, Blanche is shocked to find that they live in a cramped and run down ground floor apartment - which she proceeds to beautify by putting shades over the open light bulbs to soften the lighting - and that Stanley is not the gentleman that she is used to in men. As such, Blanche and Stanley have an antagonistic relationship from the start. Blanche finds that Stanley's hyper-masculinity, which often displays itself in physical outbursts, is common, coarse and vulgar, being common which in turn is what attracted Stella to him. Beyond finding Blanche's delicate hoidy-toidy act as putting on airs, Stanley, a plant worker, believes she may really have sold Belle Reve and is withholding Stella's fair share of the proceeds from them. What further affects the relationship between the three is that Stella is in the early stage of pregnancy with her and Stanley's first child. Soon after her arrival at the Kowalskis, Blanche starts to date Mitch, one of Stanley's friends and coworkers who is a little softer around the edges than most of Stanley's friends. Mitch does not hide the fact that he is looking in general to get married because of a personal issue, he wanting Blanche ultimately to be his wife. Mitch is somewhat unaware that Blanche has somewhat controlled their courtship to put herself in the best possible light, both figuratively and literally. But in Stanley's quest to find out the truth about Belle Reve and Blanche's life in Auriol, the interrelationships between Stanley, Blanche, Stella and Mitch may be irrevocably affected, with any revelation about that life which may further destroy what's left of Blanche's already damaged mental state.

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

Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) is waiting backstage to meet her idol, talented but aging Broadway star Margo Channing (Bette Davis). It seems innocent enough as Eve explains that she has seen Margo in EVERY performance of her current play. Margo and her friends take Eve under their wing but only theatre critic Addison DeWitt (George Sanders) sees through Eve's evil plan, which is to take Margo's parts and her fiancé, Bill Simpson (Gary Merrill) too.

The story of Rick Blaine, a cynical world-weary ex-patriate who runs a nightclub in Casablanca, Morocco during the early stages of WWII. Despite the pressure he constantly receives from the local authorities, Rick's cafe has become a kind of haven for refugees seeking to obtain illicit letters that will help them escape to America. But when Ilsa, a former lover of Rick's, and her husband, show up to his cafe one day, Rick faces a tough challenge which will bring up unforeseen complications, heartbreak and ultimately an excruciating decision to make.

As of November 1, 1959, mild mannered C.C. Baxter has been working at Consolidated Life, an insurance company, for close to four years, and is one of close to thirty-two thousand employees located in their Manhattan head office. To distinguish himself from all the other lowly cogs in the company in the hopes of moving up the corporate ladder, he often works late, but only because he can't get into his apartment, located off of Central Park West, since he has provided it to a handful of company executives - Mssrs. Dobisch, Kirkeby, Vanderhoff and Eichelberger - on a rotating basis for their extramarital liaisons in return for a good word to the personnel director, Jeff D. Sheldrake. When Baxter is called into Sheldrake's office for the first time, he learns that it isn't just to be promoted as he expects, but also to add married Sheldrake to the list to who he will lend his apartment. Dobisch, Kirkeby, Vanderhoff and Eichelberger are now feeling neglected as Baxter no longer needs their assistance in moving up.

After two Chicago musicians, Joe and Jerry, witness the the St. Valentine's Day massacre, they want to get out of town and get away from the gangster responsible, Spats Colombo. They're desperate to get a gig out of town but the only job they know of is in an all-girl band heading to Florida. They show up at the train station as Josephine and Daphne, the replacement saxophone and bass players. They certainly enjoy being around the girls, especially Sugar Kane Kowalczyk who sings and plays the ukulele. Joe in particular sets out to woo her while Jerry/Daphne is wooed by a millionaire, Osgood Fielding III. Mayhem ensues as the two men try to keep their true identities hidden and Spats Colombo and his crew show up for a meeting with several other crime lords.

It's November 30, 1962. Native Brit George Falconer, an English professor at a Los Angeles area college, is finding it difficult to cope with life. Jim, his personal partner of sixteen years, died in a car accident eight months earlier when he was visiting with family. Jim's family were not going to tell George of the death or accident, let alone allow him to attend the funeral. This day, George has decided to get his affairs in order before he will commit suicide that evening. As he routinely and fastidiously prepares for the suicide and post suicide, George reminisces about his life with Jim. But George spends this day with various people, who see a man sadder than usual and who affect his own thoughts about what he is going to do. Those people include Carlos, a Spanish immigrant/aspiring actor/gigolo recently arrived in Los Angeles; Charley, his best friend who he knew from England, she who is a drama queen of a woman who romantically desires her best friend despite his sexual orientation; and Kenny Potter, one of his students, who seems to be curious about his professor beyond English class.

'Me and You and Everyone We Know' is a poetic and penetrating observation of how people struggle to connect with one another in an isolating contemporary world. Christine Jesperson is a lonely artist and "Eldercab" driver who uses her fantastical artistic visions to draw her aspirations and objects of desire closer to her. Richard Swersey, a newly-single shoe salesman and father of two boys, is prepared for amazing things to happen, but when he meets the captivating Christine, he panics. Life is not so oblique for Richard's six-year-old Robby, who is having a risqué Internet romance with a stranger, or Robby's 14-year-old brother Peter, who becomes the guinea pig for neighborhood girls practicing for their future of romance and marriage.

Joe Bradley is a reporter for the American News Service in Rome, a job he doesn't much like as he would rather work for what he considers a real news agency back in the States. He is on the verge of getting fired when he, sleeping in and getting caught in a lie by his boss Hennessy, misses an interview with HRH Princess Ann, who is on a goodwill tour of Europe, Rome only her latest stop. However, he thinks he may have stumbled upon a huge scoop. Princess Ann has officially called off all her Rome engagements due to illness. In reality, he recognizes the photograph of her as being the young well but simply dressed drunk woman he rescued off the street last night (as he didn't want to turn her into the police for being a vagrant), and who is still in his small studio apartment sleeping off her hangover. What Joe doesn't know is that she is really sleeping off the effects of a sedative given to her by her doctor to calm her down after an anxiety attack, that anxiety because she hates her regimented life where she has no freedom and must always do and say the politically correct things, not what is truly on her mind or in her heart. In wanting just a little freedom, she seized upon a chance opportunity to escape from the royal palace where she was staying, albeit with no money in her pockets. Joe believes he can get an exclusive interview with her without she even knowing that he's a reporter or that he's interviewing her. As Joe accompanies "Anya Smith" - her name as she tells him in trying to hide her true identity - around Rome on her incognito day of freedom somewhat unaware that the secret service is searching for her, along for the ride is Joe's photographer friend, Irving Radovich, who Joe has tasked with clandestinely taking photographs of her, those photos to accompany the story. As the day progresses, Joe and Ann slowly start to fall for each other. Their feelings for each other affect what both decide to do, Ann with regard to her royal duties, Joe with regard to the story, and both with regard to if there is a future for them together.

Philadelphia socialites Tracy Lord and C.K. Dexter Haven married impulsively, with their marriage and subsequent divorce being equally passionate. They broke up when Dexter's drinking became excessive, it a mechanism to cope with Tracy's unforgiving manner to the imperfect, imperfections which Dexter admits he readily has. Two years after their break-up, Tracy is about to remarry, the ceremony to take place at the Lord mansion. Tracy's bridegroom is nouveau riche businessman and aspiring politician George Kittredge, who is otherwise a rather ordinary man and who idolizes Tracy. The day before the wedding, three unexpected guests show up at the Lord mansion: Macaulay Connor (Mike to his friends), Elizabeth Imbrie - the two who are friends of Tracy's absent brother, Junius- and Dexter himself. Dexter, an employee of the tabloid Spy magazine, made a deal with its publisher and editor Sidney Kidd to get a story on Tracy's wedding - the wedding of the year - in return for Kidd not publishing a salacious story with accompanying photographs of Tracy's father, Seth Lord, with a New York showgirl named Tina Marra. In reality, Mike and Liz are the reporter and photographer respectively for Spy. Mike and Liz don't particularly like this assignment or working for Kidd, but they need to make a living as their chosen other fields as serious writer and painter don't pay the bills. A suspicious Tracy is onto them, the entire truth which Dexter admits to her. Tracy decides to turn the tables on Mike and Liz. However, hours before the wedding, as the more self-assured Dexter and Liz get to work on how to get the Lords out from under Spy's threats, Tracy and Mike, both inebriated, go on a journey of self-discovery with Tracy ultimately coming to her realizations a little faster than Mike.

Sexy, wisecracking nightclub singer Sugarpuss O'Shea is a hot tomato who needs to be kept on ice: mobster boyfriend Joe Lilac is suspected of murder and Sugarpuss' testimony could put him away. Naive Professor Bertram Potts meets Miss O'Shea while researching an article on slang and in true romantic comedy fashion the two worlds collide. When Miss O'Shea hides out with Potts and his fellow professors, everyone learns something new: the professors how to cha-cha and Potts the meaning of "yum-yum"!

Returning from a year up the Amazon studying snakes, the rich but unsophisticated Charles Pike meets con-artist Jean Harrington on a ship. They fall in love, but a misunderstanding causes them to split on bad terms. To get back at him, Jean disguises herself as an English lady, and comes back to tease and torment him.

In Budapest, Hungary, the Matuschek and Company store is owned by Mr. Hugo Matuschek and the bachelor Alfred Kralik is his best and most experienced salesman. When Klara Novak seeks a job position of saleswoman in the store, Matuschek hires her but Kralik and she do not get along. Meanwhile the lonely and dedicated Kralik has an unknown pen pal that he intends to propose very soon; however, he is fired without explanation by Matuschek on the night that he is going to meet his secret love. He goes to the bar where they have scheduled their meeting with his colleague Pirovitch and he surprisingly finds that Klara is his correspondent; however, ashamed After being let go he does not disclose his identity to her. When Matuschek discovers that he had misjudged Kralik and committed a mistake, he hires him again for the position of manager. But Klara is still fascinated with her correspondent and does not pay much attention to Alfred. Alfred works out a plan to reveal himself to Klara's who he is attracted to now that he sees past her attitude.

Three New York models, Shatze, Pola and Loco set up in an exclusive apartment with a plan....tired of cheap men and a lack of money, they intend to use all their talents to trap and marry three millionaires. The trouble is that it's not so easy to tell the rich men from the hucksters - and even when they can, is the money really worth it?

With his family away for their annual summer holiday, New Yorker Richard Sherman decides he has the opportunity to live a bachelor's life - to eat and drink what he wants and basically to enjoy life without wife and son. The beautiful but ditsy blond from the apartment above his catches his eye and they soon start spending time together. It's all innocent though there is little doubt that Sherman is attracted to her. Any lust he may be feeling is played out in his own imagination however.

A grieving couple retreat to their cabin in the woods, hoping to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage, but nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse.

Late one night, a beautiful and well-dressed young woman, Grace (Nicole Kidman), arrives in the mountainous old mining town of Dogville as a fugitive; following the sound of gunshots in the distance which have been heard by Tom (Paul Bettany), the self-appointed moral spokesman for the town. Persuaded by Tom, the town agree to hide Grace, and in return she freely helps the locals. However, when the Sheriff from a neighbouring town posts a Missing notice, advertising a reward for revealing her whereabouts, the townsfolk require a better deal from Grace, in return for their silence; and when the Sheriff returns some weeks later with a Wanted poster, even though the citizens know her to be innocent of the false charges against her, the town's sense of goodness takes a sinister turn and the price of Grace's freedom becomes a workload and treatment akin to that of a slave. But Grace has a deadly secret that the townsfolk will eventually encounter.

College student Jeffrey Beaumont returns to his idyllic hometown of Lumberton to manage his father's hardware store while his father is hospitalized. Walking though a grassy meadow near the family home, Jeffrey finds a severed human ear. After an initial investigation, lead police Detective John Williams advises Jeffrey not to speak to anyone about the case as they investigate further. Detective Williams also tells Jeffrey that he cannot divulge any information about what the police know. Detective Williams' high school aged daughter, Sandy Williams, tells Jeffrey what she knows about the case from overhearing her father's private conversations on the matter: that it has to do with a nightclub singer named Dorothy Vallens, who lives in an older apartment building near the Beaumont home. His curiosity getting the better of him, Jeffrey, with Sandy's help, decides to find out more about the woman at the center of the case by breaking into Dorothy's apartment while he knows she's at work. What Jeffrey finds is a world unfamiliar to him, one that he doesn't truly understand but one that he is unable to deny the lure of despite the inherent dangers of being associated with a possible murder. Still, he is torn between this world and the prospect of a relationship with Sandy, the two who are falling for each other, despite Sandy already being in a relationship with Mike, the school's star football player.

Nikol Kozin

Old Movies 

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Billy is released after five years in prison. In the next moment, he kidnaps teenage student Layla and visits his parents with her, pretending she is his girlfriend and they will soon marry (and forcing her to say the same).

Details the story of a dying breed of stage entertainer whose thunder is being stolen by emerging rock stars. Forced to accept increasingly obscure assignments in fringe theaters, garden parties and bars, he meets a young fan who changes his life forever.

2010 animated film about a French magician directed by Sylvain Chomet

Consuming Spirits 16mm to HD, is an Independent feature animation, chronicling the lives of three characters who live in a rust belt town called Magguson, and work at its local newspaper The Daily Suggester. They are: Gentian Violet 42: Victor Blue 38: and Earl gray 64: first appear to be acquaintances. But as the film unfolds, we find they have a long diabolical history, revolving around social service intervention, and foster care, romance and hatred. Each character has family secrets to hide, and family secrets to discover. An auto accident one dark and inebriated night, causes a crack in the memory vault of these intimate strangers. By films end all parties walk from the woods, both healed and wounded..enjoy..

In a fateful bumper car collision, Jake and Ella meet and become the most loving couple in the long history of romance. But when a scheming "other" woman drives a wedge of jealousy into their perfect courtship, insecurity and hatred spell out an untimely fate. With only the help of a disgraced magician and his forbidden "soul machine", Ella takes the form of Jake's numerous lovers, desperately fighting through the malfunction and deceit as they try to reclaim their destiny.

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