After successfully won the Tokyo qualifying tournament, Chihaya and her friends are set to go on to the nationals. As they prepare, Chihaya is faced with new personal issues as her childhood friend and inspiration, Arata, has announced that he has quit competitive karuta. Not only that, but a new rival emerges in the reigning female champion karuta player, Shinobu Wakamiya, a karuta prodigy who became the nation’s and the world’s greatest female karuta player as a 9th grader. All of this forces Chihaya to reexamine her love of the game in the midst of preparing for one of the biggest tournaments of the year.
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Two powerful, yet deeply troubled women — refugees from political and personal trauma — flee a past that haunts them. The daughter of a murdered Black Panther revolutionary, Tess, (Hamilton) lives off the grid on a Sonoma vineyard, fiercely detached from all connections. Her hermetic life cracks when she gives reluctant shelter to a desperate young woman, Anna (Rabe) who has attempted suicide in a nearby forest. An unlikely alliance forms between the two, where other close relationships have failed — David, Anna’s husband, (Linklater) and John, Tess’ employer (Weber), cannot break through their walls. But the very difference between the two women opens them up to a new vision of themselves, as not only survivors, but as heroes capable even of a thrilling shoot-out in the name of outlaw justice. Reclaiming freedom, and life, they plunge forward, towards an unknown, transformative horizon.
Director Mickey Rose’s zany send-up of teen slasher flicks features a maniacal psycho known as the Breather (played by Jerry Belson), who stalks –and murders– promiscuous students at a suburban high school. The fanatical killer’s unusual weapons include paper clips, blackboard erasers and eggplants. Kristen Riter, Matthew Goldsby, Joe Flood, Kevin Mannis and Sara Eckhardt head the cast.
Artist Traci is a once-devout Christian who has stopped believing in God after her husband tragically died despite her prayers. As her second Christmas without him approaches, she tries going to a support group for inspiration and comfort.
Marion is a woman who has learned to shield herself from her emotions. She rents an apartment to work undisturbed on her new book, but by some acoustic anomaly she can hear all that is said in the next apartment in which a psychiatrist holds his office. When she hears a young woman tell that she finds it harder and harder to bear her life, Marion starts to reflect on her own life. After a series of events she comes to understand how her unemotional attitude towards the people around her affected them and herself.
Set in the island Kinmen, often seen as the most dangerous military base because it’s geographically close to China, “Paradise in Service” follows the adventure of a boy who serves his military service in Unit 831 from 1969 to 1972, in preparation for a war that could erupt anytime. Through an unlucky lottery draw result, Pao, a twenty-something young man from Southern Taiwan has to serve the military in the remote and perilous Kinmen. Moreover, he is assigned to the Sea Dragon (ARB), a unit noted for the toughest physical training. It never occurs to Pao, however, that the greatest challenge in his military service lies not in the Sea Dragon but in Unit 831, a special task he is later appointed to… In this peculiar assignment, Pao vows to keep his virginity against all odds.
Rianne Angers has spent the last nine years obsessing over the vicious murder of Gwen Anderson. And it is understandable: Her brother Nick went to prison for the crime. Now that Nick is back, he needs her help to find who really killed Gwen. About to finish school and take the next step in her relationship, Rianne realizes she has too much to lose with her older brother pulling her back into the past.
Natsumi (Kie Kitano) moves to Tokyo to enter a fine arts university. In Tokyo, Natsumi meets Ryosuke and they soon become a couple. Ryosuke is a good person, but he doesn’t have a job. Every day he just loafs around. To pay for her living expenses, Natsumi begins work at bar. Natsumi and Ryosuke become estranged from each other. They decide to break up. Natsumi’s book is finally published.
A lonely young man (Haruma Miura) happens to meet RuoLan who has an identical twin sister RuMei. They are older than him. RuoLan tells him about her wound from a painful breakup and her troubles being a twin. While supporting RuoLan, the young man gets close to her.
Youngsters called Kildren, who are destined to live eternally in their adolescence. The Kildren are conscious that every day could be the last, because they fight a war as entertainment, organized and operated by adults. But as they embrace the reality they are faced with, they live their day-to-day lives to the full.
