Ajeossi - 2010

In Italy it’s called “The man from nowhere". Why had I never seen Korean movies before? Lately I’ve seen a few and they’re awesome! Sure they are all starting at 11pm which is not the easiest hour when someone goes to school or has to wake up too early for work, so I can’t say if they were ever transmitted before or not. I can say that each one of those I’ve seen lately was really good. This one in particular was very tough, with criminals using children to work, make and smuggle drugs, and then they took their organs. It’s so awful I was looking at the screen thinking “kill him, kill the shit kill them all”, I would have screamed it out loud had it not been past midnight. The movie has lots of action, enjoyable, well made action, and lots of feelings around the figure of the protagonist. This Cha Tae-sik (Bin Won or Won Bin, depending on where I read it, with the result I don’t know which one is the name or the surname) has a sad past, is lonely and develops a strong affection for a neighbour, a sweet child called So-mi. Her mother is a drug addict and hides stolen drugs in his pawn shop without him knowing. This way he gets involved in this big mess. The child’s mother is tortured until she reveals where she has hidden it, then they kill her for her organs. They also abduct So-mi, and our hero wants to save her; he has had a special training, he knows how to find what he’s looking for, he has no fear or concern for his own safety, the only thing he cares about is to find So-mi. He was special forces once, but when his beloved pregnant wife was killed he lost everything.  He follows every track, doesn’t stop even after he’s shot. He finds someone that will help get the bullet out of him, but as soon as he can he goes back looking for the only person in the world he cares about. He finds out the whole horrid truth, saves a group of children, kills every criminal on his way, and goes on unstoppable. At the last battle, he’s shown a pair of human eyes, he’s told they are So-mi’s, he’s led to believe she’s already dead, and this breaks his heart, but for no reason he’ll let So-mi’s murderer escape. He fights all his men, then kills him. A big action scene, quick and well-done, engaging and yet bitter because he goes on as if it was his last battle; after he kills the last one he’s like completely out of energy, like he has no more reason to go on. This actor was good, I really liked him, he looked so sad, you could read it on his face even before he lift the gun to his own head, but I knew, well, I strongly believed So-mi could not be really dead, that would have been a terrible ending. Right there and then, when he has the gun to his head, he hears So-mi’s voice near him, he hides his gun, tells her something like “I’m dirty, stay away”, but she runs to him saying “you came to save me!” and hugs him and he cries and it’s so touching, and he wants to hug her back but doesn’t, like he can’t; the police arrest him, of course, but let’s him stay with her for a bit while, and the last scene is him asking his little friend if he can just hug her, just this one time, and the little thing lifts her arms in that irresistible way children do, he goes down to her height and hugs her tight, crying. I liked it. Well, I liked it because it was well done and I liked the actor protagonist very much. The story was so painful.

Edit a few days after: I’ve seen it again. Yes, it was painful, from beginning to end. The beginning, all the scenes between the little girl and him were touching; when he saw his painted nail and smiled it was touching, so meaningful, such a precious smile. When she said to the police that he was her father, was touching. When he walked away and the police understood it was a lie, it was touching. But when he heard the little girl’s voice, prisoner of those shit men and his eyes opened wide in fear, and then he ran behind the car that was taking her away, shouting for him to save her, even more now that I know what they did, his fear for her was totally heartbreaking. This actor is really good in this movie. Every scene with him is so heartbreaking it’s painful, and yet I kept watching because I couldn’t leave him alone..

This actor really makes me wish I could understand his language to watch this movie in original. Obviously I watched it dubbed in Italian, because if I had read all the subtitles I would have missed the expressions, his eyes, and that would have been a crime.

Mystic Pizza - 1988

A nice little film. I like it now as I liked it when I was as little girl, with the little difference that now I appreciate better how sexy Vincent D'Onofrio looked here. I mean, he was less than thirty and had not yet exploded. He's always handsome, but here he was sexy :-) The story is simple and predictable, very easily from the beginning. Only a few minutes of the movie are gone and we know everything already. First-We've seen Jojo (Lili Taylor) fainting and therefore not marrying her boyfriend Bill or Billy (Vincent D'Onofrio) and yet confessing to her best friends to be crazy about him: "I get really turned on just looking at his wrists"; Second-We've seen Kat (Annabeth Gish) the serious girl, future Yale student accepting lots of jobs to make money, and among them a babysitting job. As soon as I saw Tim (William R. Moses), so cute and even sweet with his little daughter, it was all there; she looked at him with the if-I-weren't-a-serious-girl-who-has-never-done-these-things-I'd-jump-on-you-right-now look, and since we learn immediately that he's married, there can be no surprise, right? She falls for him, has a little affair, then his wife comes back and Kat's heart is hurting. Obviously. Third-We've seen Daisy (Julia Roberts) feeling hopelessly trapped in her waitress job, glancing or better staring invitingly at the blonde rich stranger that enters the pub. Again, no doubts are possible: Charles (Adam Storke) falls for her irresistible smile, of course. A bit of rich-spoiled-guy versus poor-working-girl conflict, and the inevitable happy ending. It is indeed very predictable, but it doesn't really matter because the charm of this film stays, it's in the girls' friendship, in their deciding what their adult lives are going to be, in the characters of the three girls, so very different, it's in the nice happy ending. I liked the village of Mystic where poor people are either fishermen or waitresses. A funny scene is when Daisy is dining with Charles' family, and being them rich they all get served lobsters, but Daisy's mom brings lobsters home all the time from work and she's kinda sick of them :lol:
There's a scene when Daisy wrongly things Charles is cheating on her and fills his red porsche with wet fish, completely covering it, and she's right saying "you're weird" to him. She ruined his porsche and he seemed even more charmed than before by her :-/ The pizza place was owned by Leona (Conchata Ferrell) a very nice woman, and her special "Mystic pizza" gets a fantastic review on tv, so happy ending even for her. She was sweet at the end telling Kat that them three girls are like daughters to her.
Jojo and Bill's relationship was nice too, so crazy about each other, and yet Bill left her because she refused to marry him, scared to death by marriage, and he thought she did not love him like he loved her, but of course she does, so the movie ends at her wedding party :-) The only thing I didn't like is how angry Daisy was at Kat the one time that Kat left her working alone to go with Tim, and Daisy missed a meeting with Charles' parents. It's a thing I didn't like about the character, not about the movie. Daisy always make Kat do what she wanted, and the only time they exchange roles she gets mad. Not nice at all, but sisters often fight for things like this. All was forgiven when Daisy was there for her to console her broken heart.
My favourite story is Jojo's: both so much in love, their almost-sex scene is both sexy and funny, Bill leaving her after yelling at her face and in front of other fishermen "I'm telling you that I love you and all you love is my dick, do you know how that makes me feel? Do ya?", Jojo in tears after that, coming to terms with how much she really loves him, and the two of the dancing at their wedding party. Yep, he looked sexy dancing :-) and I also love how easily Bill lifts her :-D
I cared little for Charles, but that's okay, I liked the fact that there were three stories, more or less equally important.
It's a sort of coming-of-age movie; there are dozens of movies like this with male lead characters (usually more vulgar and silly though) but Mystic Pizza was all about the girls :-)
I went on the internet and found a brief interview with the cast reunited maybe in 2013 or so, and I can say this: they still look damn cute, all of them; when they got asked who was the most intense actor of the group and the three girls said Vince at the same time I laughed too :lol: maybe just because of the way they said it together made it funny I guess. Is it makeup or what, but the girls look so much the same, specially Lily. Annabeth even looks better now. William is the same and Vincent has exploded a bit so his face had doubled, but he was  still charming and I like his smile a lot :-)

I had not recognized a young Matt Damon as Charles' brother.

One nite in Mongkok - 2004

Oh God, one of the toughest movies I’ve ever watched. Such a sad finale, too. Very well done, well acted, well scripted, good enough, a good movie, but so so hard, bitter, though. It’s a good versus evil story, but in a police-action with the cops looking for a paid assassin the only evil appears to be in the little pathetic bullies, ready to gang up in numbers against a single man or against girls. The cops are Milo (Alex Fong), the leader, a good man who knows how big a thing it is to shoot someone. He did once, and can’t forget it, but at the end is able to shoot Laifu (Daniel Wu) to protect one of his men. Brandon (Kar Lok Chin) is his second, a man who understands him very well. Among the others there’s a young cop, new to the group, who thinks that it’s not a bad thing to shoot the bad guys, on the contrary he’s all for it, and during a raid when they enter a room, he shoots a man in the head as soon as he sees him. The man was not armed, but Milo and Brandon work immediately to make it look like the action was justified, and Milo tells him “we are not protecting you, but your family and the team”. 

I could almost say that fate is the big bastard in the movie, playing with their lives. In this specific case, Fate helps the cops, because that big trouble turns out to be a big success when they uncover a huge amount of drugs. It’s a big scene when Milo is alone with the young cop and puts his hand in front of a car’s red light so that his hand appears all red, and he tells him ‘we are alike’.

On the other side there is the assassin, who is actually a young man who has never before killed anyone, and who came from China to Mongkok to find a girl he loved. He helps Dandan (Cecilia Cheung) against a bully, then he runs away with her to avoid the consequences of his act.

They help each other: she shows him the way, he buys her a gold necklace and runs after a thief who had taken her bag. Left alone with his bag, she looks inside, can’t resist the temptation to take a bit of money, but is afraid when she sees the gun. She goes back to him anyway, and they try to find his girl. She makes him abandon the”assassin” thing, stopping him when she sees he’s strangling a man who had double-crossed him. That scene was intense. The man at first begged him not to kill him, but after he stopped, listening to Dandan, Laifu told him he would talk, put word around of what he did, so that his family would be in danger, and he has a big family, and now the man is all “kill me , don’t say anything please” but Laifu went away and the man walked on the road crying, and crying for him not to say anything, afraid for his family, to the only people who could hear him: the cops that were there for Laifu but could not get him. 

Laifu and Dandan go back to her room to get her things and rest, then he goes out to get a medicine for her (poor girl is on her period, apparently) and as she asked he threw his gun into a bin. He comes back with a newspaper with his girl’s picture on it: it says she’s had a bad accident, and he’s so desperate he doesn’t notice when the bully silently enters with some bully friends: they badly beat him then the bully number one rapes Dandan, and then the shits go away. Dandan had cried while they were beating him, and now she’s all worried for him because he’s all covered in blood, his face is all red. He stands up and in the bad shape that he is, he still goes out, finds back his gun and wants to kill those guys. He can only hurt one because the cops are near and the young cop runs towards him. He can barely see through all the blood in his face and eyes, and shoots this guy that is running towards him. The young cop dies, and Milo and another one runs after him, and this is when Milo has to kill him. Another great moment: the young cop has his hand taken by a cop friend, and he’ll die in the hospital. Laifu held out his hand too, and Milo made the attempt of taking it! He had just seen him shoot a cop and almost shooting another, and yet his soul was leading him to take this dying man’s hand, only he didn’t make it in time and Laifu died there, alone. I don’t know what happened to the bully-gang, but I hoped they were thrown in a cell to rot. Honestly I doubt it, because the cops know nothing of what they did, Laifu can’t tell them and Dandan is not there at the moment. You see? The only ones that deserved to be skinned alive have no consequences, are all safe and sound. How unfair, isn’t it?

The movie ends with Dandan leaving Mongkok never to return again. She looks in her bag and she sees Laifu had given her the rest of his money.  He had seen that she had taken some, but instead of getting angry he had understood and had given her more. She cries and asks why is it that it is called Hong Kong, something like the Door of the Fragrance, or something like that, I don’t remember exactly, but she says it while crying, meaning that it has a beautiful name but then horribly, desperate things happen. The movie ends there, with written on screen that the name was given to it because it was the place that produced incense, so Hong Kong means incense door. Interesting. 

It was a good film, but personally I don’t want to see it again, it was too cruel for me. Still, it’s not so often I have so many good things to say and nothing against it. The final scene with Dandan’s question was a great finale, and a touching one. Milo had all the great moments I said above, and more. The little smile Laifu made when Dandan asked him to lose the gun passed almost unnoticed at the moment, but the memory of it will break my heart in a bunch of minutes, when all hopes are shattered. Laifu was not one of the good guys like Milo, but was not at all evil, like the bullies. He had had a difficult life, and now he had a difficult death. I guess fate was grinning, at the end.

Siu lam juk kau - 2001

In Italy Shaolin Soccer. It's such a stupid film :lol: meant to be that way, I mean. Sort of funny, though, but not something I’d like to watch again. It pictures a bunch of losers who get together to form a soccer team. There’s a championship and they want to win it, to win the prize in money. They know kung-fu, and use it to play. They know absolutely nothing about the game, but become champions. The final game shows people making such moves and such strong kicks like you haven’t seen even in Capitan Tsubasa, and that should say it all, but likely the games are much shorter :-p they win all the games, but the last team has taken some strong drugs that made them super-strong. 

Half of the shaolin team is out, injured, but at the right moment the girl friend of the protagonist comes to help. She doesn’t just know kung-fu, she masters it, she can do the impossible and they win. They get married ( I guess watching her win the game was too much, enough to win him over) and thanks to the kung-fu couple now the population is crazy about kung-fu, and they all practice it, not to fight each other, but in every day life. 

One of those idiot movies that are somehow funny, the first time you watch it, but definitely not enough to watch it again and again. Absolutely not, once is enough. Not one wit line, it’s all about demential scenes and looks.

Bù èr Shéntàn - 2013

In Italy “Badges of fury”. I didn’t like it. I found it stupid and boring. There was something good, but not enough. Sometimes a movie is meant to be stupid, in order to be funny, but I didn’t have fun here. About the fight scenes, I usually love them: they can be funny, like in the Jackie Chan’s movies, or cool like in the other Jet Li’s movies, or poetic/symbolic as in “crouching tiger hidden dragon”, but here they were boring. They were absurd like in a comic manga, and long and somehow pointless, since they get nowhere. The story is this: Angela (Michelle Chen), Wang Bu’er (Zhang Wen) and older cop Huang Feihong (Jet Li) must solve the case of four men that died with a smile, but murdered. They all had had a relationship with beautiful actress Liu Jinshui (Shi Shi Liu), so she’s the first suspect at first. She has a sister, beautiful and showy Dai Yiyi (Yan Liu) that is very sexy and jealous of her sister, having fun in taking her boyfriends away from her. She’s the second suspect, but at the end it was her uncle to avoid her getting married and inherit all the money of her father. That’s all. I usually love a scene with Jet Li, but there were very few of them here, and not all that special. Wang Bu’er was too stupid for my taste. The things I liked most were the two sisters, very beautiful and funnily different, but there was always Wang Bu’er, it was all him, everywhere. Boring.

Ai zuozhan - 2004

In Italy is “Love Battlefield”. An Hong Kong movie I think, but not sure. Sad, well made yeah, but violent and sad. Didn’t like it too much. It starts like a romance movie with Ching meeting her future husband K ( I didn’t get the exact name, something like Kayoi). They hit it off immediately, but life together is complicated; they love each other a great deal, but those thousands of annoying little things come between them: she wants him to cook but then doesn’t like the results; he doesn’t want to vacation in Europe because he doesn’t like the cold; a lot of stupid everyday things. One morning they’re about to leave for the airport when surprise! their car has been stolen and she goes out of her mind: she doesn’t want him to report the fact because they’d lose time and maybe miss the flight, and since she paid for it she doesn’t wanna miss it. They fight, all the things left unsaid come out and they break up. He’s about to go to the police in a taxi when he sees his car. He approaches, it’s really his car, and he does the stupidest thing: he stops in the car to make a phone call, to put things in order, then goes to check if his bags are still in the back. How silly was that, I was yelling. Someone must have driven the car there, it didn’t move by itself, so don’t just hang around quietly, with no worry in the world! It turns out his bags are gone: instead there’s a wounded man with a gun, and then his friends arrive and take K prisoner, making him help them, since he’s a nurse. They kill people and policemen very easily with no remorse, so K does what he’s told. Ching sees him in the car and he’s sure he’s been abducted (well, the blood, the yelling, now him in a car with strangers…) but her cop friend suspects K to be an accomplice and wants to hold her for questioning. What a good friend, huh? Ching knows her husband is a good, caring person, so she won’t believe he might have a part in all those killings, and runs away to find him. Thanks to a watch-walkie-talkie-gadget they know when they are near each other. The injured man died, K tried to escape but once they killed a guard and brought him back, and another time he was tricked by a pregnant woman asking for help that turned out to be the criminal gang’s leader’s wife. Frustrated, K threw out of the car the bag full of drugs they had stolen. One of them 

got out of the car to retrieve it and was killed by other cars in the road. Now without money, the gang assaults a police-armored-car forcing his help. Ching sees it and tries to free him, but the boss’ wife hits her and they escape. The remaining two men of the gang are badly injured in the fight with the police, so they need blood. The boss uses K’s phone to call Ching and have her collect some blood bags and bring them to the wife. Ching reacts, takes her gun and tries to force them to release K, but it’s not so easy. They won’t ever give up, they’re desperate now. Ching then wants to be taken to him. Hearing that Ching has been involved, fearing for her life, K loses it and fights the two men, and eventually kills them right when Ching and the wife arrive. At this point the wife hits Ching and leaves her trapped in the car sinking in the water. The wife shoots K, goes close to her now-dead husband and kills herself. K is afraid for Ching, and even if he can’t swim and is badly injured now, and very tired, he throws himself in the water, swims until he finds the car at the bottom, fights to open the door so to free her. Wow, really, amazing, how long did he swim under water? Very resistant, huh? Anyway, he’s at his limit now. She goes up for breath then comes down again and again trying to save him too, but she can’t , he’s suffered too many things.  The movie ends with her and her friends watching the baby that was saved from the dead body of the wife. I guess that’s supposed to be a happy ending, a new hope for the future, that sort of thing…

Blade - 1998

Designed to be cool, nothing special but cool enough. The boring part was the usual "forget what you've seen in the movies, the cross doesn't work, to kill vampires use silver, and of course sun-light",  like they do in all vampires-movies. Everytime they say the same speech about how in reality it's different from what you've seen in the movies. Boring. Only thing is that this time out bad guy Frost (Stephen Dorff) was not born a vampire, he was a human, he was turned into a vampire, so he can simply put on a lot of sunlotion and he can watch the sun rise, and walk during the day, as he does when he takes that little girl hostage to talk to Blade (Wesley Snipes) . There's also a lot of splatter scenes: when the old vampire burns in the sun, and every time evil vampires feed on humans, covering their faces with blood. It must be because they like to make a mess, being bad, because when Blade was so weak that Karen offered him his neck (like Buffy did for Angel), he fed for many long seconds, and not a drop of blood was wasted/visible on his face or on her neck, and when he stopped she was still strong enough to walk and take action. Every time a bad guy feeds it lasts a second and the victim is dead or transformed. Well, it's not an error per se, because they're evil so they like to kill and they like a bloodbath (they're quite disgusting, yes) but he has his soul in the right place so he doesn't kill her. It makes sense, it's not necessarily a mistake.
The story is simple: Blade hunts vampires down everywhere, killing as many as he can. Blade is a half-vampire because his mother was bitten while she was pregnant. He was found by Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) when he was thirteen, about to feel in him the bad sides of his vampire blood. Whistler helped him. Whistler also gives Blade a vaccine to keep his bloodthirst under control, and since then Blade has kept taking it every tot hours. During an attack he saves Dr Karen (N'Bushe Wright) and now she sticks to him and helps him, which is the second boring thing of the movie. Not her, I like her, but the fact that a common person, a doctor even, can take a gun and become a fighter without a second of training. This is more than boring, this is annoying. Moving on, Blade wants to kill them all to avenge his mother, while Frost wants to rule the Earth, to stop hiding like the old vampires did; he wants to bring out the power he read of in a prophecy (yep, a prophecy, it's so simple to invent a plot with a good prophecy at hand) for which he needs Blade's blood. They kill Whistler, kidnap Karen and imprison Blade, cutting his wrists to have his blood. Frost also kills the old vampires in the rite. It was a cool scene when a sort of skull-ghosts came out of them, funny. Karen escapes, frees Blade and gives him her blood to gain strength. He finds his mother turned into a vampire by Frost. He kills her and fights all the vampires on his way, although it's not clear why they don't keep fighting after he punches them. A few are killed, but many others are just punched, that could not be enough to kill them! The final battle is with Frost of course, but he has in him the power the prophecy told about, so even after Blade cuts him in half Frost gets whole again without a flinch and keeps fighting. Very conveniently Blade finds there is his vaccine, so he threw five or six syringes to Frost and he exploded. It happens in movies, sometimes, that to be stung by a syringe is enough, but it's usually not, and it wasn't for Blade, he needed Whistler to push it in, the vaccine. The movie ends with Blade refusing to try Karen's cure for his condition, because he still needs his abilities to go on with his fight. It's a mystery how can he know exactly when and where he will find vampires, but it doesn't matter. I was surprised, there was no word on him drinking Karen's blood. She had been infected before and she had survived without transformation, cured, so I had a thought on her blood helping him as a natural vaccine or something like that, but there was no word about that. I liked Dorff, he portrayed well this psycho, that had not only the powers and blood thirst of vampires, but also the greed, ambition, arrogance of humans. I also liked our two protagonists, very cool, and I'm glad there was no love story between them, this was not the movie for that. I kind of liked the old vampire too, pity he died and won't be present in the sequels. It's not a bad movie, although nothing special. It's designed to look cool, but it should have looked a bit more gothic/dark, and the action-scenes lacked something, they were not perfectly constructed, they looked to rehearsed. Of course they were, obviously, but a movie scene should not 'look' rehearsed, should not 'feel' rehearsed.

The high window by Raymond Chandler

Well, not too bad, Marlowe is nicer than usual, I'd say. As always the story is a bit complicated, and Marlowe bumps in a corpse after the other, but at the end he reveals the whole truth. Just like that. Part of it he can deduce from the clues he finds, part of it he simply says he's thought about it a lot and knows how it is... he gets it right, of course, but it left me with the feeling that he just guessed it, that he couldn't 'know'...
The story: Mrs Murdock hires him because her very valuable coin has been stolen: 'the Brasher Doubloon', and she's sure her daughter-in-law Linda took it. His first lead is a coin expert: Morningstar, who called the house asking about the coin. Marlowe notices he's being followed and talks to the man who says he's Phillips, a private detective like him. A simple, not very bright one, but their jobs are connected so they plan to meet later. Mrs Murdock's son Leslie owes money to little boss Morny, and his wife Lois is often in the company of vicious Vannier. When Marlowe finds Phillips dead he calls the police, but he has trouble because he refuses to tell them all about his job and his client. When he finds Morningstar dead, he goes away, so not to be connected to it. Mrs Murdock tells him to stop because the coin has been given back to her, which surprises him since he has a doubloon in his pocket that Phillips sent to him before being killed. Of Phillips' murder is blamed Hench, a drunk who had the murder weapon in the house, only it's not his own weapon, his gun has disappeared. When Merle, Mrs Murdock's secretary, goes to Marlowe still in shock, she tells him a strange story: that she's killed Vannier, that she was going there to pay him because he had been blackmailing her for eight years, and Mrs Murdock was paying the money. Vannier knew her secret, that eight years ago Merle had murdered Mrs Murdock's first husband, who had behaved badly with her. Marlowe goes to Vannier himself. He's been dead a long time, a whole day, so she did not kill him. Morny thinks Lois did it, Lois thinks Morny did it, Marlowe finds Hench's gun and the pictures Vannier kept secret to blackmail Mrs Murdock, and is sure Leslie did it! He could deduce it all in a moment. Leslie took the doubloon and gave it to Vannier for money, to use it to make copies of it, copies to be sold for lots of money. To test the idea Vannier and Lois had used Phillips to try to sell it to Morningstar, who had thought it was the real one, stolen. After Marlowe was hired Vannier had been afraid, and Leslie too, so Leslie demanded the original back and gave it back to his mother. Vannier killed Phillips to get back the one he did not know was now in Marlowe's hands, and also assaulted Morningstar for the same reason. That night Leslie went to him to stop the blackmail, threatened him with the gun he found there and (he says) a shot was accidentally fired. Marlowe cleaned the gun and make it look like suicide. After the police could connect Vannier to the two deaths, they accepted the suicide happily. Marlowe did not involve the Murdock family, although he had Vannier's proof that the old woman had killed her first husband, letting little crazy Merle think she did it all that time. Marlowe took Merle back to her family. Marlowe deeply disliked the Murdock family, but he liked Merle and wanted to protect her . He could not convince that crazy head of hers of the truth, that she was innocent and Mrs Murdock used her as a scapegoat, but she let him take her back to her family. Marlowe cared about her, and was angry for what the Murdocks had done to her.
There were a lot of descriptions, I didn't need so many, but Marlowe was sweet to Merle, nice.

Farewell, my lovely by Raymond Chandler

I liked this book more than the other one. My book says that this story too was written merging into it some of his short stories, but I haven't read them so can't comment on that.
It's a complicated story. I'll try to explain. It all starts by chance, with Marlowe meeting Moose Malloy, a giant so strong he could carry Marlowe like a doll. Malloy has been eight years in prison. Now that he's out he goes looking for his old girlfriend Velma. The club where she used to sing is now a club for black people who know nothing about her. They make him angry and he kills one of them without even turning green. He's like Hulk without Banner.
At this point nothing much has happened, apparently. The case is given to Nulty who cares very little of "shines killings", which surprised me because I only knew 'shine' as in 'the sun shines' so I searched it and I found this "derogatory meaning: black person, is from 1908 perhaps from glossiness of skin or from frequent employment as shoeshines" and I can only say I'm glad I've never heard it said before, I don't like it. Anyway, back to the story, Marlowe feels involved and starts looking for Velma too. He goes to see the widow of the old owner of the club: Mrs Florian. Later on Malloy goes to her and he kills her, probably unintentionally, he's just too strong... says Marlowe . Anyway, he gets called by a man, Marriott, saying he needs his help. Marriott tells him this story: a lady friend has been robbed, and as it often happens she's been contacted to buy it back. She's asked Marriott to buy back her precious jade necklace, and he wants Marlowe with him to feel safer. Marlowe goes, but gets hit on the head and Marriott gets killed. The daughter of a dead policeman (Anne Riordan) finds him apparently by chance and starts helping him a little, for some reason she fancies him, but she has no great role, only as far as finding for him the name of the lady-friend. Mrs Grayle is the femme fatale, she's beautiful and married to a very rich man. She hires Marlowe and flirts with him. Marlowe goes to meet Amthor, a sort of psychologist, because who knows why Marriott has his cards inside some marijuana cigarettes, or something like that. Amthor probably thinks Marlowe wants to blackmail him so he calls two corrupt cops to handle the matter. Marlowe gets beaten and taken away. He wakes up two days later in a house where a man calling himself Dr Sonderborg kept him drugged, probably to find out what he really knew, but it's sort of speculation because he'll never be found again after Marlowe escapes. Marlowe says it all to the policeman Randall, in charge of the Florian murder. Marlowe goes back to the town where he was imprisoned, to try to talk to the big local boss on one of his ships for gambling. He's helped by an ex-cop (ex because honest, apparently) and simply leaves a message for Malloy, and somehow Malloy receives it and goes to Marlowe's house the same night he invited Mrs Grayle there. He tells him to hide while he sends her away, but he doesn't. Instead, he reveals the truth while he's hidden, listening. Mrs Grayle is Velma, she told on him to the cops eight years before to get rid of him and then married a rich man. Knowing that he was looking for her, she asked (paid) Marriott to kill him, and she herself killed Marriott. Now, it's absurd that Marlowe was not killed, but it's not a writer-mistake, because Chandler has Marlowe say the same thing, so the mistake was Velma's. She either didn't want him dead, thinking maybe it was too dangerous to kill a private cop, or maybe she left him for dead, miscalculating how badly he had been hit on the head (again, not clear if she hit him or if Marriott did it. What is clear is why she wanted Marriott dead. He was a danger because he knew of her past and real identity. When Malloy comes out and sees her and recognizes her, he shoots him five times, then runs away when she's left with no bullets to use against Marlowe. He calls Randall. Eventually she'll be found: she'll kill a policeman and then, when other people will burst in, she'll shoot herself twice. Marlowe says this might be the only good thing she ever did, tired of running away, to save her husband everything that  might have come out of a trial, since he was the only person who was always good to her and loved her deeply. Marlowe is left with Anne who has a big crush on him, thinking him so brave and extraordinary, asking to be kissed. Who knows why.
A piece I liked was this: "I thought of dead eyes looking at a moonless sky, with black blood at the corners of the mouths beneath them. I thought of nasty old women beaten to death against the posts of their dirty beds. I thought of a man with bright blond hair who was afraid and didn't quite know what he was afraid of, who was sensitive enough to know that something was wrong, and too vain or too dull to guess what it was that was wrong. I thought of beautiful rich women who could he had. I thought of nice slim curious girls who lived alone and could be had too, in a different way. I thought of cops, tough cops that could be greased and yet were not by any means all bad, like Hemingway. Fat prosperous cops with chamber of commerce voices, like chief Wax. Slim, smart and deadly cops like Randall, who for all their smartness and deadliness were not free to do a clean job in a clean way. I thought of sour old goats like Nulty who had given up trying. I thought of indians and psychics and dope doctors. I thought of lots of things. It got darker."
Marriott was the vain man, Hemingway is how he called cop Galbraith, the cop that followed Captain Blade's orders when they took him away from Amthor's house. Indian was the man working for Amthor, so strong that he almost strangled Marlowe. Amthor will be caught, internationally wanted. One last thing: curiously, Marlowe says his friend Ohls works in the vice squad, but in 'the big sleep' he worked homocide. Didn't he?

The big sleep by Raymond Chandler

A different story than I imagined, much more complicated. I've read in this book that this is his first novel and he put in it some of his previous stort stories. I know only one, and i found it easily. The whole scene with Vivian playing roulette is taken from Finger man almost word for word. I liked it enough, I was even curious to know how it would end, and the descriptions here and there were not too much as to become boring. Maybe it's because it's an old book (1939), I don't know, or maybe it's just the way it works because it's narrated by Marlowe in the first person, so we only get to know what he knows; fact is , it's not clear to me what is really Carmen't problem: she has some kind of addiction, but not alcohol I'd say because she's way beyond what alcohol can do to you. Maybe. Maybe it is alcohol, and it's just a matter of 'how much'. I don't know. Anyway, Marlowe found her, totally naked, with crazy eyes, oblivious to the world and to the just-murdered-man on the floor. They say she has epileptic crisis, but can that make you do things and than forget you've done it? So she has epilepsy and she has a bad addiction to something.. too much money is not good for your health, I've always thought that. Let's try to explain what happens. Old general Guy Sternwood hires Marlowe. Geiger tried to blackmail him and he wants him to deal with the matter. He finds out that Geiger lends pornographic books for money, and is there when he's killed under the crazy spirited eyes of naked Carmen. Her driver had killed him because in love with her. Little criminal Joe Brody has her naked picture and tries to get money out of her sister Vivian. Carmen goes to Joe's house with a gun to get it back, tries to kill him but fails. Marlowe gets the picture back before Joe is killed by another guy, Geiger's boyfriend or something like that. Big criminal Eddie Mars is involved somehow, he has something to blackmail Vivian with and through Geiger had tried to blackmail the old man too, only to find out he could get no money out of him and he had to wait for Vivian to inherit (not very long, anyway, the general's health is not good); Marlowe doesn't yet know the secret Eddie knows and can use against Vivian. The old man also asks him to find his son-in-law Rusty Regan, who disappeared a few months back. The old man was fond of the guy. For all this time Eddie kept him own wife hidden to make the world think that Regan went away with her voluntarily, but Marlowe finds her thanks to information that Joe's old girlfriend gives him for money. Still, no traces of Regan. Young Carmen had got into Marlowe's apartment, so he found her naked on his bed. He refused her strongly, he did not like the corrupted girl at all.
Towards the end, Marlowe gives Carmen back her little gun, and she asks him to teach her to shoot, They drive to an isolated spot, and he puts a target for her to aim at, but instead the crazy girl turns on him and shoots him instead, four or five times, but Marlowe had put blanks in the gun. After that scene she had a crisis, an epileptic fit: he put her in the car and drove her home. He went to talk to Vivian, now knowing everything. She admitted that this was what Eddie had on her, because she asked his help to hide Regan's body after Carmen had killed him. Marlowe suggested that Vivian should have Carmen institutionalized, then he goes away. The final words are nice, I want to copy them here: "what did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn't have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a brief, uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep. On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double scotches. They didn't do me any good. All they did was make me think of Silver-wig, and I never saw her again"
I like how it ends. Silver-wig is how he called Eddie's wife, who had freed him and helped him, allowing him to shoot a murderer. That was the only time he really used a gun. Throughout the book he had always threatened to use it, but never did. This man here though, he was a dirty murderer, and he killed him. It's not clear if he'll do anything to stop Eddie from blackmailing Vivian or not, and I can't see how he could manage that without killing him, and therefore have a lot of explanations to give to the police. He seems to have no intention of telling the police about Carmen, these last words seem clear about this. Vivian will take her away , end of his role in the matter.

Finger man by Raymond Chandler

I don't know if I should call it a short story or a short book... it has 55 pages in my edition. Nice anyway. Lots of action, told in the first person by Marlowe, few descriptions now and then just to create the atmosphere or to give a good sense of where they are. I mean, writers sometimes add so many descriptions, useless to the story, of every angle of the street and of every person met on the street, and a 55-pages-long story would have become a 150-pages-long book. It's a nice reading, so easy to imagine it in your mind like a noir film. Strangely I did not give Marlowe any actor's face, and I'm glad of it, but I couldn't help picture the scenes as if I was seeing a noir film.
The story: Lou, a little criminal, asks Marlowe a favor, to be a sort of bodyguard for him while he wins at the roulette. He's sure of it, he once owned it and says he knows how it works. Unable to change his mind, Marlowe goes, but he's knocked off and Lou is killed. Not for the money, though, but victim of a plot to stop both him and Marlowe from testifying against something like a man working for a corrupt politician, or whatever. When Marlowe was hit on the head, his gun was stolen and used to kill Lou, but there is who believes him: the chief of police (I think he was). They manage to save his alibi: a taxi-driver he had spoken to that night. The bad guys had gotten to him first, but they arrive on time to help him. He had been very scared but they had made the mistake of threatening to take away his little girl, so he got his rifle against them, and was fighting when Marlowe and his ally arrived to help. The ending is less thrilling than I expected, but well described and captivating enough. He goes to talk to the boss. Unable now to have Marlowe charged with Lou's murder, the boss wants to throw it upon Canales, the man the money were 'stolen' from, but he comes for revenge. He can only wound one of the boss Frank Dorr's men before being killed, but at that point it all ends with Marlowe hastily calling the police to the place while the redhead girl who had been forced to help them runs away undisturbed. It was well-written, I liked it enough. Sure, none of these old books are something I'd like to read again and again, but this one time was enjoyable enough. There's only one thing: the title. Why finger-man? What does it mean?

Beullaindeu - 2011

I'm still crying; gosh, that guy was one of the worst bastards I've seen. The movie is good, the story and the actors are too; I'd say the actress that Played Soo-ah was good, I mean one of the best performances of a blind person I've ever seen (well, talking as one who knows nothing of the condition personally). The interesting story: police cadet Soo-ah has a car accident, her orphanage-brother dies and she becomes blind. In the city there's someone who abducts, tortures and then kills women. A rainy night she's alone waiting for a taxi when a car stops. While driving, the man at the wheel runs someone over but tells her it was a dog. She doubts it, so he leaves her there and drives away because another car is approaching. She tells the police she's sure it was a girl, not a dog. A messy cop listens to her story. A kid comes forward saying it was not a taxi, but a foreign car, but he also adds details he clearly made up so they don't believe him. The cop searches all the taxi-drivers to find the right one, until he and Soo-ah realize it was not a taxi after all (from the noise when you open the windows..). The kid was right, so they go to him, only to find an ambulance there. The killer got to him first, and hit him on the head, but the doctor will say that he has a hard skull and in relatively good health.
Soo-ah now feels the others were right all along, she's no help being blind. At home the killer phones her, scaring her, and she rushes to the hospital, to tell the kid to stay there because the murderer's watching them. He doesn't care about her and leaves, but when he sees her on a train, followed by the man he saw that night in the foreign car, he's scared for her.  Luckily he had an excellent memory for the faces and everything, I did not recognize him first time I saw him without glasses, they changed a lot his appearance, actually they looked good on him, better with than without.
He calls her (she had called him from the car, so he had the number. The cop had given her his) telling her he'll make a video call, so she moved the phone around and the kid saw the killer in front of her. She got out as soon as she could but he followed her. The kid told her where to go, seeing through the camera where she was, but the killer got to her. She managed to spray him and run ahead, following the kid's instructions, to the lift that will take her out, to the surface; she's in, she presses the button but he gets there in time. He's about to kill her when her guide dog, and adorable labrador , saves her by hanging on to his clothes and drawing him out of the lift, away from her. It was the hardest scene of all, because we see him actually stabbing the poor dog repeatedly, but the dog left him only when he was out, and then died. That was painful.
When the doors were closed, the lift went up and people saw her and she was brought to the hospital; when she woke up she asked about her dog, and cried desperately after learning about its death. The kid is sorry for her; the police have now all the details both him and her remembers, and slowly they find the right name, but only too late to save the cop who, despite the silly appearance, was a good cop and stayed at it until he found him, but the bad guy killed him. It was a strange scene, maybe the cop hesitated in disturbing him because he was a doctor? Even when he was convinced he had found the murderer, he was so hesitant and kind, why wasn't he more... anyway, he wasn't, and he was caught off guard, and they fought but the doctor had a scalpel with him, so it was not a fair fight. The cop would have won, but the bad guy slid his throat with it.
Soo-ah and the kid are together at the orphanage, now alone, when the killer comes, kills the cop guarding (more or less) the place and goes after them. He was most of all determined to get her, more than him, which was not logic because it was him who had seen his face, but the reason is probably that she was a girl, and the scum liked, took pleasure in hurting women. The three of them fight a lot, it was a captivating fight, the kid took a lot of beating, but still made it out alive in the end. She used all she could, switching off the lights in the place, and using her special device to know when he was near her, so she could hit him with a brick; it was very well done, you know, really tough story but very well done movie. It ends with a smile, showing that a year later she's back at the police academy and the kid is about to do the same. He convinced her that there are things she can do, that she can help even without sight, that she could do it from an office, as a sort of profiler maybe, or something like that. The cop had told her the same thing, poor guy.

In Italy: Blind

Beetlejuice - 1988

Yes, it's a stupid film, and you can see from the make-up how old it is, but it's an 80s cult, and has its charm in that 80s aura and in a funny Michael Keaton. Alec Baldwin (as Adam) and Geena Davis (as Barbara) are ok too playing these two peaceful and nice ghosts who are trying to scare away the new owners of their house but fail, miserably, becoming an attraction instead. To be ghosts they are quite 'physical', meaning that they open doors, and pain, and generally act like living people, only when Lydia (Winona Ryder) photographs them they appear as floating figures, but that's because they don't appear in pictures at all, being ghosts, and only the sheets they borrowed from them to scare them are visible.
Adam and Barbara are so nice that can't think of anything actually scary, so out of desperation they call Beetlejuice (that in the plastic model where he lives now is written Betergeuse or something like that, but pronounced Beetlejuice) by saying his name three times. He turns out to be too dangerous and way too scary, so they put him back by calling his name again, and keep trying their own way, but the new family's friend Otto stole the book of the deceased and now makes a rite to call back the ghosts of the house. Poor Adam and Barbara are back in their wedding dresses in flesh and bone, only, being dead, their flesh is rapidly decaying and Lydia feels pity for them but Otto doesn't know what to do now, he simply read one thing in the book, he has no idea how to stop it now, so Lydia runs to Beetlejuice for help, and he promises to help them if she lets him out by calling his name. Trouble is, he has now learned his lesson and wants to stay out and free without the possibility of being put back in the plastic again, and apparently to accomplish this all he has to do is get married, and Lydia accepts, to save her ghost-friends. Once free, he's dangerous and apparently unstoppable. At the wedding moment, both Adam and Barbara try to call his name three time, but are stopped every time. Adam is sent inside the plastic and Barbara in some kind of 'Dune' world, where she finds one giant worm and rides it to get back home and the worm eats Beetlejuice, freeing them all. Now the ghosts give up scaring them, instead they all line in the same house, happily. They help Lydia with her studying, and everybody's happy. What I liked less of all is the last scene, when as a reward for her good school test results they make her sing and dance floating in the air. Now, the music is good, but Lydia's dancing was awful, she was kept in the air with cords or however you call it, and her moving was so unnatural, her legs going left and right in an awkward way. I understand why that is, but I don't like the scene at all.
Beetlejuice is funny, I like Michael Keaton. It's not an award-winning role, but it's funny how he speaks, the voice he makes :-) He has big makeup on, so it's basically all body-language and voice, mostly voice. Ok, it's not a great film, but it's still enjoyable and it has its own charm. It's a cult, in its own way.

Chloe - 2009

What a stupid ending. It annoys me when they do this things: make things difficult without really knowing how to resolve the situation, so they just end it abruptly and without a reasonable mean. The story: Catherine (Julianne Moore) is a doctor married to David (Liam Neeson) , a professor. For his birthday she's planning a surprise party, but he hates the idea and misses his flight and the party. Catherine goes out of her mind, she thinks he's unfaithful, and when she meets young beautiful Chloe (Amanda Seyfried) she hires her to flirt with her husband, to tempt him to see his reaction. Chloe tells Catherine every detail: at first he flirted, then met her in an isolated garden and kissed her, then another time she met him in a hotel room to have sex. Catherine hears it all, it's absurd to watch her standing there, hearing these things, but we had seen nothing of what Chloe was telling her about, and was not difficult to suspect that she was making it up, and then Chloe kissed her. Clearly Chloe wanted her, but Catherine never suspected the truth of her words, and for some reason she met her again and spent the night with her. She has become the only cheater in the family now, and of course David suspects her to have an affair. Catherine would like now to stop any relation with Chloe, but Chloe doesn't accept to be discarded with a cheque, and keeps calling her. Catherine is tired of lies and sets a date with Chloe, also calling David. She tells David she wants to get clear, wants a new honesty between them; when Chloe arrives and sees them both, she goes away, but Catherine is shocked to see absolute indifference in David's face when he asks her who that girl is. Catherine tells him everything, of how she felt old and insignificant while he was every day more handsome, and they made up. She had believed all Chloe's lies, but now she wants a new chance with him. Chloe however won't just go away like that: she goes to their house where their son Michael is alone, and has sex with him in his parents' bed. Catherine arrives to see them asleep in bed and Chloe starts telling her she can't just discard her like that, order her to disappear when she wants. They argue, Chloe tells her she loves her, and demands a kiss, threatening her with her pointed hair pin. While she's kissing her, Catherine notices her son watching and startles, causing Chloe to fall back and break the window. We clearly see that Chloe had been able to get hold of the wall, but she intentionally let go and fell back to her death, and you know what this is? The happy solution! The happy ending! Isn't it absurd? Chloe's body is taken away, the troublemaker won't bother Catherine and David ever again and the family is happily reunited  and Catherine wears Chloe's hair pin, for whatever reason! It's absurd this ending. The police make no questions about Chloe's death, Chloe simply chose to kill herself for no particular reason, thus doing exactly what she said she didn't want: she left Catherine. The only thing she obtained is that Catherine will never forget her now. Honestly, Catherine would have never forgotten that whole story anyway, Chloe killing herself makes no sense at all. On the contrary, it is so unlike-her. A stupid, simplistic ending.

Second name - 2002

This was a pure waste of time. There was nothing else on tv, so I watched this. Note for future me: do not watch this nonsense again!
There was an original idea, or at least it looked so to me but probably isn't: people thinking Abraham really killed his son, because the angel did not stop him, on the contrary he urged Abraham to do it. Followers of this cult, the Abrahamites, think they must kill their first born as a tribute to God. Original maybe, I don't know, but still awful and sick. Anyway, this is not the movie's problem.
Daniella (Erica Prior)'s father commits suicide. Her mother is in a mental hospital, has been for years, never speaking or reacting in any way. Now, out of the blue she calls her "Josephine". A priest asks her to meet him, and tells her the story of the Abrahamites. A man, Harris, comes to tell her that he's her real father, that his drunk wife sold their baby for money. The day of her birthday Daniella receives flowers and a videotape sent by her father (it's not specified how he did it, but this things happen a lot in movies). In the tape he confesses to be one of the Abrahamites; he had to kill his first born, so he bought a child and killed her instead, and let the other Abrahamites believe Daniella was his second. Somehow they discovered the truth and demanded that he should kill Daniella, his real first born, but he wouldn't; instead he killed himself to save her. Now she thinks of her pregnant friend, about to have her first child. She rushes to them, alone, telling the old man she knows everything. At that point he has no more reserves and says she has been sterilized because she's an insult to God. You know, we should have another name for cases like this. The God I believe in is good, and would not like tortures and killings. Sick people should stop using God as an easy scapegoat for their evil actions. Anyway, she tells him she has proof (*rolling eyes* very smart, after all a child murderer would never hurt her, would he?) then she ignores his threat of misterious consequences if she goes on, and she runs upstairs to the baby's room to find the father coming out of the room already. She's late and the baby's already dead. She cries and holds the baby. Another wrong move. Everybody comes in and her friend enters the room to find her holding her dead baby and says : you killed my son. Their doctor friend injects her with something. Next scene is the baby's authopsy where they say she killed her friend's baby because she was jealous, because she could not have children. Next scene she's in the mental hospital, catatonic like her mother was, and we see Harris coming to visit her, sure she's his daughter, unaware of everything that really happened, and he takes care of her, while she doesn't react at all. The end. Just like that. Yep.
A bad movie. The actors that played the priest and the evil man Hastings were not bad, but the movie was terrible anyway.

Star Trek Deep Space Nine - season 1

I've always been a Star Trek fan. Of DS9 I liked that it was set on a space station, with a dynamics very different from a starship's. The characters take time to evolve, but already from this first season I like the friendship growing between Kira and Dax and between Dax and Quark. Among the characters of this first season I like Gul Dukat and Garak, always thought he deserved more screentime; I was never fond of Nog and Rom and Odo, sorry, and I never liked Zek and Winn.
I like that they are already hinting at the changelings and at the Dominion, slowly adding a piece of the puzzle at a time. I don't like Odo, but I understand his purpose in the story, they needed another character to explore and learn things that are normal to us. There was Spock, then Data, now Odo, then we'll have Seven of Nine. Every series has one :-)


ep 1 - Emissary - 721 on my dvd. A double episode. It starts remembering when Picard was a Borg and attacked the Federation and Sisko was Commander of a ship that was destroyed. He could save his son Jake but he could do nothing for his wife Jennifer. He didn't want to leave her but his men dragged him away kicking and screaming. Three years later Sisko and his son move to Deep Space Nine.
A date mentioned is 46388.2
The station is in ruin because the occupation of Bajor has just finished, the Cardassians just left. It is all Cardassian architecture.
Chief says:"when my wife Keiko saw our quarters, she started talking about visiting her mother in Kumamoto". We see O'Brien leaving the Enterprise definitely, and Picard coming to transporter room 3 to say goodbye. He simply says that he doesn't know what to say, and "permission granted" to leave :-) Picard always was a man of few words :-)
Sisko still hates Picard for it, and clearly shows it now when the two meet. "we met in battle. I was in the Saratoga at Wolf 359" so at first he asks to be reassigned, but after a while he takes it back "I've come to know the Bajorans". I so don't like how Sisko spits his words every time he's being aggressive or angry.
 Kira thinks the Federation has no business there, she disagrees with Bajor's Provisional Government. She thinks that 'the Federation is here to help? Yeah, that's what the Cardassians said 60 years ago'.
Yet, "if the Government falls, then the Federation goes away and it's civil war on Bajor. The only one that can prevent it is Opaka. Our spiritual leader. She's known as the Kai. Our religion is the only thing that holds my people together". The pagh is the life force and the path or the person. Sisko looks inside one Tear of the Prophets and relives the day he met Jennifer on the beach. There were nine orbs, kept by the Cardassians, and now Sisko must find the Temple of the Prophets. Opaka gives him this orb. Sisko puts Dax to look for the other 8 orbs and for the Temple. She looks into it and we see when they operated to move Dax from Curzon to her. She finds notes leading to the Denorios Belt, could the tempe be there? Sisko and Dax take the RioGrande. They enter a wormhole and exits in the Gamma Quadrant. The first stable wormhole known to exist. They go back and inside it the ship lands on a place they see differently. He sees grey rock and a storm, she sees green fields and a warm sun. She's taken into the flying orb, and the orb takes her back to the station. Sisko speaks with the Prophets. "Linguistic communication. what is time? he's aggressive, corporeal, to destroy. what is experience? what is past? what is linear time? what is lost? what is pleasure? linear procreation." Sisko tries to explain them about him and about humans. "what is baseball?"-"it's linear!".  You exist here!" in all the memories, places he's been. "what is die? the termination of their linear existence" and while explaining and learning they can't understand why he doesn't want to remember Jennifer's death "I exist here, I never left, I see her like this every time I close my eyes"- "So you choose to exist here? It is not linear" - "no it's not" this was the best part of the whole Prophets thing. That's true, sticking to the past is not linear.
Odo was chief of security then as he is now, and he won't allow weapons on the Promenade. Kira calls him constable. He was found in the Denorious Belt. As a shapeshifter, he transforms into a sack the Cardassians put their winnings into, to enter their ship and sabotage it, so they could not follow Sisko on his mission to find the temple.Kira wants to move the station near the wormhole to reclaim it for Bajor.  When the Cardassians finally go, Dukat's ship disappears into the wormhole before the wormhole itself disappears, then another Cardassian ship comes looking for it. Gul Jasad. He threatens the station; Kira says "shields up" and O'Brian "what shields?" :lol: The Cardassians attack, after Kira's "I've fought against a hopeless case all my life. If you want a war I'll give you one". There are 13 injured, but no deaths.
The wormhole opens and Sisko brings Dukat back. The life forms inside it have agreed to allow free passage.
Quarks nephew Nog is arrested for stealing. Now that Sisko wants to rebuild the station he needs people to stay and shops to reopen, so he wants Quark's bar to stay open, doesn't want him to go away. To achieve this, he blackmails him: only if he stays Sisko will release Nog.
Morn is already at the bar, drinking and playing.
Jadzia Dax is 28 years old, although the Dax inside her is 328. Sisko calls her 'old man' because he was friend with Curzon.
Bashir is 27. He's excited to be here, he calls it "real frontier medicine, this is where adventure is, where heroes are made"- "this wilderness is my home" replies Kira.
Old Cardassian Prefect Gul Dukat comes to greet Sisko. "this was my office only two weeks ago. I miss this office".
At the end Sisko meets Picard again, and now he wants to stay.
ep 2 - A man alone - 403. Julian keeps asking Jadzia out. She plays an "Altonian brainteaser", a puzzle that looks like a big ball of mixed liquid colors. O'Brian and wife fight because she doesn't like it here. Keiko is unhappy because there is nothing here for her to do, she's a botanist. Miles says he'll ask to be transferred, but she doesn't want to because that would mean for him to lose his promotion. Keiko talks to Sisko about opening a school and he agrees to everything she asks.
Keiko speaks to Rom, Nog's father, asking him to send Nog to the new school. Miles gives her a bell as a gift for her new project :-) Molly is adorably pretty.
Keiko starts her school with Jake, Nog (turns out his father doesn't want him near Jake either) and two other children.
Odo makes a horrid speech about the horror of coupling, with the usual theme of the poor man "compromizing" and the selfish woman always having it her way, which is typical of a certain type of men. Somehow most of men who can't get a date always brag about how women wants to change them or command them, to make it look like it's actually the men themselves that don't want their relationship, prefering freedom. Just like men who are dumped and always blame it on the money, following the usual theme that they are perfect but the bad woman left them for someone rich. Yeah, right. We'll see later how Odo changes his mind about compromises when the love of his life finally falls in love with him!
Quark likes Jadzia; Sisko spends a lot of time with her, and hates the steamed azna Dax always eats.
Later Sisko asks Jadzia to lunch, and Bashir accepts instead :-p and they talk about her.
 Odo spends time in the bar, fights with Ibudan and is in contrast with Sisko because now he must obey the rules. Later Ibudan is found killed. A Bajoran man, Zayra, says Ibudan was afraid Odo might kill him, but Kira defends Odo saying there isn't a more honourable man than him. All evidence leads to Odo. (It appears Odo has to return to his natural state every 18 hours to regenerate). Bajorans on the station are quick in turning against Odo because he was chief of security during the occupation too, but Quark defends him, calling himself the closest thing Odo has to a friend :-) Still, Sisko is forced to temporarily relieve Odo of duty. At the bar, everyone goes away when Odo enters, even Morn. A mob is against Odo, most of them Bajorans. Just in time Julian discovers that Ibudan created a clone, and that the clone was killed, not him. The real Ibudan is arrested for the murder of his own clone (he was walking around with a mask) and the new clone in Bashir's lab is free.
Jake meets Nog, and they make pranks together. Sisko wants Jake to stop hanging around with Nog.
Kira has a better haircut, good:-) 46421.5
ep 3 - Past prologue - 404. It starts with Garak introducing himself to Bashir :-) Julian is not comfortable, Garak has a clothing shop but is said to be a spy :-p "Mr Garak.." -"oh it's just Garak. Plain simple Garak" :lol: yeah.
Julian runs to say everything to Miles and everyone in ops. Bashir feels himself inside a spy story, looking like a silly kid though :lol:
A Bajoran request political asylum after the Cardassians were shooting at his vessel in Bajoran space: Tahna Los. He knows Kira because they thought together. The Cardassians want him back: "he is Kohn-Ma!Not even the Bajorans would grant his kind asylum. He has committed heinous crimes against the Cardassian people". Kohn-ma is a terrorist group, and Kira knows it and...doesn't totally oppose it, she understands them although of course she knows they must stop now that the war is over. Kira calls Federation Admiral Rollman about Sisko to talk about it. Sisko to Kira: "go over my head again and I'll have yours on a platter"
Sisko grants him asylum, believing Tanah is no more a terrorist now, that he is finished with the Kohn-ma. Tahna doesn't want even the Federation there, claiming true freedom for Bajor. Miles has fought the Cardassians: "you wouldn't turn a man, any man, to their tender care". Kira wants the Bajoran Provisional Government to give amnesty to ex-Kohn-ma. Lursa and B'Etor, the Klingon sisters of the House of Duras, come to the station. They are now renegades from Klingon. Odo turns into a rat to spy on their meeting with Tahna Los. They want payment from Tahna for something, and they also try to sell him to Garak. Garak goes to Bashir, telling him to come for a new suit at exactly 20.55. Julian runs to Sisko who advices him to go get a new suit, because Sisko understands how this works. Bashir is late, really didn't understand, did he? Garak has him hide, so he hears about the thing that the Klingon are trying to sell Tahna to Cardassia.
Tahna has admitted he has a plan, a non violent one, and wants Kira's help. Kira is confused and talks to Odo. "it sounds like you're trying to talk yourself into something, or out of something" - "either way I have to betray someone" - "the only important thing is not to betray yourself" Good one, Odo.
Combined with a thing he stole from the Cardassians, an anti-matter converter, Tahna can build a powerful bomb. Kira doesn't want to help him but goes with Tahna to find out what his plans are; he threatens to explode the bomb killing the Bajoran colonies nearby, shocking Kira. Tahna wants to blow up the wormhole entrance, collapse it, stupidly thinking the Federation would leave, probably forgetting they came before it's discovery...
Kira stops him and Tahna lets himself be arrested, considering it better than being taken by the Cardassians.
ep 4 - Babel - 405. Chief O'Brien has way too much work repairing the station, where nothing seems to work. He orders a coffee to test the replicators. Meanwhile Quark's bar is empty because his replicators are broken, so he plans to use the repaired ones. Quark simply goes there with a cart, would you believe it? Odo busts him posing as the cart. "there's an old Ferengi saying: never ask when you can take. How did you figure it out?" - "you claimed Rom fixed your replicators. Rom's an idiot. He couldn't fix a straw if it was bent". That's unfair, Rom will become quite good at it with time!
O'Brien is the first to show problems: he says random words. It's a form of aphasia, he thinks clearly but can't express it correctly. Jadzia is next, then other people.
Replicators at command level are contaminated. Quark used one in a vacant crew quarter. The virus is now airborne. The whole station is infected. 46423.7 All station is in quarantine. There was a Cardassian device, activated by mistake. Jake got it too, along with many others. Bashir finds out the Bajorans make it, 18 years ago, during construction. At last Bashir got it too, so Kira goes finding the Bajoran genetist that helped creating it. He doesn't want to hear her story, so she goes near him with a runabout and abducts him, transporting him inside and taking him to the station. He doesn't think he can help, but thing is, everyone on the station is infected including Kira, so now he is too.
A ship tries to leave the station, even it it's locked. Its captain is too scared, so he puts his ship in danger. The ship's on fire.
Eventually Sisko gets it too, so Odo is alone in ops, he must help but he's alone, and Quark comes to help. He served in a Ferengi freighter for 8 years. Odo goes to help the ship's captain, so now Quark is the only one left at ops, and the one to welcome back Kira when she arrives with that doctor. Kira too, now, shows the signs. 46425.8 log: Dr Surmak found an antidote using dr Bashir's notes. All are cured and things go back to normal, which means to the replicators not working and Sisko shouting at O'Brien, after trying to get a black coffee.
Odo never learned the dabo game.
ep 5 - Captive pursuit - 406. A dabo girl protests with Sisko because she just arrived to work at Quark's and he immediately couldn't keep his hands to himself, and told her it was part of the job, and what do you know, he actually put a line in her contract that states just that! Ferengi are unbelievable!
A little ship comes through the wormhole. It's badly damaged, so they help him, bringing the whole ship in so O'Brien can fix it. The alien says "I am Tosk", that's all he says about himself, "I live the greatest adventure one could ever desire", he says, but he can't discuss it; he's the first alien to come from the Gamma Quadrant. Tosk tries to access some weapons, he's caught and arrested. "allow me to die with honor" he says, then another ship arrives. Three aliens transports in and sort of attack. They fight, Odo never uses weapons. They try to get to Tosk and they get to him, then they stop. "what a disappointment" to find him confined in a cell. It turn out Tosk's race entertains this other race. Tosk is the prey and they hunt him, until they succeed in killing him. The oath of silence prevented Tosk to talk about it. "he is sentient only because we have made him sentient. He's been bred for the hunt. His entire reason to exist is the hunt. To make it as exciting, as interesting, as he can. We honour Tosk. They are the symbol of all that is noble and courageous. They train and condition themselves all their lives for this event. They're proud of their role in our culture". Sisko can't think of it as he does, so they say "in the future, passage through the anomaly will be considered out of bounds for the hunt".
Of course now Sisko has to release Tosk to them, to be taken home in shame. O'Brien would want him to request asylum and stay there, but "I am Tosk, the hunted. I live to outwit the hunters for another day. To survive until I die with honour." At this point O'Brien acts on his own and frees Tosk. Sisko feels there is "no hurry" to capture them. O'Brien takes Tosk to his ship and he goes away, the hunt goes on.
ep 6 - Q-less - 407. Bashir is chatting up a girl with the story of his Starfleet finals when Dax comes back from the Gamma Quadrant with Vash (Jennifer Hetrick): she was there two years; Miles recognizes her immediately, from the Enterprise, and tells Sisko about Vash and Picard's 'friendship'. Vash asks Miles "how's Jean-Luc?" :-) then Q (John DeLancie) comes to her. He wants her back; he calls Quark "disgusting troll" :lol: Quark offers to arrange an auction for her 'trinkets', and she gets a good deal after some oo-mox he can't resist. Bashir asks her to dinner, but Q puts him to sleep :lol: Miles sees Q and reports to Sisko: Vash and Q know each other "from the Enterprise?" and O'Brien: "I believe they actually met in Sherwood forest" :lol: true. Sisko meets Q. Q tells Vash "at least your beloved Jean-Luc knew how to turn a phrase". Sisko is supposed to know about Q but all he can do is act rough at his face, as if this could work with Q! "You hit me. Picard never hit me" :lol: "I'm not Picard" - "Indeed not. You're much easier to provoke. How fortunate for me." 46531.2 Q calls Sisko Benji :-) The station is suffering power drains. It is now being pulled towards the wormhole and its destruction, and it turns out the cause is an object brought by Vash: it was actually a living creature of some sort, an embryonic life-form that wanted to go back to the Gamma Quadrant. Vash keeps refusing Q, but is interested in an offer from Quark's :-)
ep 7 - Dax - 408. 46910.something. Miles and Keiko are goine to Earth for her mother's 100th birthday. While following Dax, Bashir sees some people abducting her. They are catched but the man in charge claims to be "Ilon Tandro, special envoy from Klaestron IV", here with an arrest warrant for  Dax, charged with treason and the murder of his father, thirty years ago, so when Dax was Curzon! Sisko is sure he knew the man well and Curzon was not a murderer or a traitor. Surprisingly, Dax refuses to defend herself. Sisko was friend with Curzon for twenty years, more or less. Klaestron IV has a treaty with the Federation, but not with Bajor, and that's why Tandro tried to get her out of there with abduction. Because of this, there will be a hearing on the station. The 'madam arbiter' is a woman of 100 years old :-) Sisko raises the point that Jadzia is not Curzon, so he buys some time. Odo is on Klaestron IV investigating; he speaks with general Tandro's widow, who is totally on Dax's side. She's sorry to hear that Curzon died two years ago. At the hearing, they explain well what being a Trill is, how any joined host is unique, different from the precedent hosts. Odo finds out the affair Curzon had with the general's wife. Sisko begs Dax to defend herself, but she won't. The widow comes to the hearing to prove that Curzon did not commit those crimes. He was with her. Jadzia wanted to keep Curzon's promise , to never say that it was the General who tried to betray his people.
ep 8 - The passenger - 409. Kira is coming back with Julian. Apparently he did something great, curing a woman that seemed already dead, and Kira was "very impressed", and Julian is very satisfied with himself. They pick up a signal, a ship is on fire. A prisoner on it started a fire to get free. Apparently he died, and they can only save Ty Kajada of the Kobliad security. She won't believe that Vantika is really dead. He was responsible for many horrors. Apparently he's faked his death so many times she just can't believe he's really dead. There's an important shipment, very important for Kobliad's lives. Vantika wanted to steal it, and Kajada is sure that somehow he survived and still wants it.
Lieutenant George Primmin of Starfleet security questions Odo's methods, but after talking to Sisko he tries to cooperate. Odo overreacts, he wants to resign and doesn't only after Sisko reassures him that he is in charge. He should have told him to stop acting like a baby, but he was more diplomatic.
Dax suspects Vantika might be hidden in someone else's brain, and they suspect Kajada. Everyone, Quark for one, is surprised to see that Vantika is Bashir. Well, not me of course, and I guess none of the viewers as well, because we know about this, we've seen it before, and we got it at once when Vantika touched Bashir saying 'make me live'.
They manage to catch him, and take Vantika out of Julian's brain. Good, I didn't like how he played Vantika at all.
At the end, Vantika is dead for real and Bashir feels a bit humiliated, which might do him some good, actually.
ep 9 - Move along home - 410. Jake starts being interested in girls, and what he knows about girls he learned from Nog :-/ Sisko and Dax are in dress uniform for the first contact with the Wadi species, while Bashir couldn't find his. Kira is there too, but the Wadi are only interested in games, and want to go to Quark's. They win a lot, so Quark rigs the game. The Wadi get angry and offer Quark to play a new one, Chula, with four pieces to move. When Odo finds that Sisko, Kira, Dax and Bashir are not on the station anymore, Quark realizes they are in the game :-D Our four pass the Allamaraine game with the little girl and the rhyme, then the room where drinking is the antidote from the gas; at the fourth shap they lose Bashir, then Quark takes the shortcut and it's Thialo, he has to sacrifice one to save the other two. Quark can't and begs forgiveness for his cheating, so the game takes one out at random: Dax, but Sisko and Kira would not leave her, so they all fall, finding themselves back on the station, losing the game. They were never in real danger: "it's only a game" says Falow :-D
The best line of the episode was Quark's: "oh yes, you were here for the groveling" :lol:
ep 10 - The Nagus - 411. Sisko wants to visit Bajor for the gratitude festival with Jake, but he prefers to stay and wait for the Andorian freighter with Nog (although we never see any Andorian, ever).
First Rule of Acquisition: "Once you have their money, you never give it back". Morn laughs. Krax comes with his father Grand Nagus Zek. Miles is doing school because Keiko is on Earth, and Jake has to lie to cover Nog. Sisko says to Miles he can't separate the two friends because against Nog he'd probably lose. Miles doesn't believe that : "that's because your daughter's three. Wait till she's fourteen" :lol: Ferengi eat with sticks like oriental people: how cool :-)
Sixth rule of Acquisition: "Never allow family to stand in the way of opportunity". Many Ferengi arrive for a big meeting with the Nagus, important Ferengi at his table, and Quark has to send Morn away :lol: The Nagus has an announcement: Quark is the new Nagus. When Zek dies, Krax sells pieces of his body, in Ferengi tradition. Quark's life is threatened now. He luckily escapes a bomb set by his brother Rom and Krax. Sisko finds out that Jake is secretly teaching Nog how to read. Rom and Krax are about to kill Quark when the Nagus comes with Odo, alive, safe and sound. It was a test, to see if his son was ready to take his place, but he failed, he should have taken the bar, gaining information. Quark, when it's all over, is not angry at Rom, instead he buys him a drink :lol: Sisko is no more angry at Jake hanging out with Nog.
ep 11 - Vortex - 412. Two twinned Miradorn try to sell stolen objects to Quark when Croden of the Rakhar world comes in to steal it, and one of the twin is killed in the fight. Croden has a key made of shapeshifting stuff, and calls Odo a "changeling" : "haven't they come through the wormhole yet?" he says, implying there are changelings in the Gamma Quadrant. Odo and Quark call Morn by name: is this the first time? I'm not sure, maybe.
Changelings on Rakhar were persecuted and driven out centuries ago. Sisko and Dax find Rakhar and learn that Croden is considered an enemy there, and they want him back. Croden says the Vortex is where he found the stone-key. It's a nebula called the Chamra Vortex, and there are millions of asteroids in it. He says there's a colony of changelings on one of them. Odo is ordered by Sisko to take Croden back to his world. Odo goes, alone with Croden. They are followed, attacked by the Miradorn ship, seeking revenge for his brother, so to save themselves Odo gives the helm to Croden and he heads for the Vortex and lands, hoping to lose the Miradorn. He finally reveals the truth, he had never seen a changeling before, they were just a legend to him. The stone is a key to "his only reason for living": they find a stasis chamber with his daughter, the only member of his family he could save when the guards killed his two wives. Croden wants Odo to protect his daughter Yareth. Rock falls and Odo is hurt, and Croden saves him. Odo has an idea to get rid of the Miradorn, letting them kill themselves, firing in an area full of gas. Because of the explosion, they are approached by a Vulcan ship offering help: Odo tells them he has two survivors from a ship that was destroyed, and they agree to take them to Vulcan. Croden gives Odo his stone, and Odo prepares to tell whoever asks him that they were killed in the explosion, then he goes back to the station.
ep 12 - Battle lines - 413. Kai Opaka comes to the station: she's never left Bajor before. She gives her necklace to Miles for his daughter. Sisko and Kira take her through the wormhole, and Bashir, well, he invited himself :-p She wants to take a look around; they are attacked by some satellite, and crash somewhere. Opaka doesn't survive the crash, and Kira cries and prays. On the planet there are people fighting. The Ennis and the Nol-Ennis are at war. This moon is a sort of prison colony, they can't escape. And they can't die. They have been at war for generations, long before they were sent here as punishment. Sisko arranges a peace meeting, to talk about a cease-fire, but it was a trap. Neither of the two factions was sincere, and they fight again. Bashir finds out that the microbes that changes the people, bringing them back to life, bind them to the moon. If they leave, they die. Kai Opaka wants to stay, to help these people. That's good, since she actually has to stay :-) Dax and O'Brien find them and transport the three of them, leaving Opaka there. She tells Sisko their path will cross again. Will it?
ep 13 - The storyteller - 414. Bajor asks Sisko to mediate between the Paqu and the Navot, they argue because of a land dispute that might cause a civil war. The tetrarch of the Paqu is a young girl, Varis Sul. Varis is helped by Nog and Jake. Ninth rule of Acquisition: Opportunity plus instinct equals profit. Thanks to Nog's help, Varis finds a compromise, something to ask in exchange for what she gives back.
Bashir and O'Brien goes on a medical mission for Bajor.  Bashir asks him "do I annoy you?" and, well, O'Brien doesn't give a direct response. O'Brien always calls him "sir" and he asks to be called Julian. The village seems fine, but a man is dying: their storyteller, the Sirah, and if he dies they believe the whole village will die. The Dal'Rok is a terrible creature that lives in the woods, and without the Sirah the village will be destroyed. The Sirah names O'Brien his successor. The Sirah's apprentice is jealous and tries to stab Miles. Once the village was divided by hate and distrust, and the first Sirah found a way to unite the people. He used an orb fragment as a catalyst to give their fear a physical form. This apprentice tried once already, and failed, and now the people don't trust him. Miles tries to tell the story, but he's not doing well, until he comes forward to help. O'Brien and Bashir come back to DS9 and Bashir says "on second thoughts, you don't really have to call me Julian", which is good because O'Brien said it in a very annoying tone.
ep 14 - Progress - 415. While playing cards with Jake, Nog hears that Quark has a lot of Cardassian Yamok sauce he doesn't want, now that there are no more cardassians on the station, and Nog takes this as an opportunity. 46844.3 There's a Bajoran man on DS9, they help him with some important thing concerning Bajor, a moon and heat. Dax chats with Kira and tells her Morn invited her to dinner; she said she was busy but also that he's kind of cute. They are checking an area that should have been evacuated, and find there is still someone, a stubborn old man refusing to leave.
Nog trades his sauce with a Lissepian cargo ship captain: since he has no latinum he gives them 100 gross of self-sealing stem bolts that he had brought for a Bajoran man that can't pay. Quark just wants to get rid of the yamok sauce, and Jake and Nog trade the bolts with land. It turns out Bajor wants it, so Nog sells it to Quark for latinum :-)
Mullibok has lived there for forty years: "if I leave here I'll die so I'd rather die here". Kira likes the man a lot, but he really can't stay, so at the end she destroys his house and beams him out of there, to save his life.
ep 15 - If wishes were horses - 416. Julian hits on Dax, but she's not interested. Jake uses Quark's holosuite to play baseball, and Miles reads Rumpelstiltskin's tale to Molly. How cute is little Molly! Then, surprise, Rumpelstiltskin actually appears in her room! A basesball player appears to Jake, and a rather submissive Jadzia appears in Bashir's room. People's imagination creates things. It's snowing on the Promenade :-) There's some kind of disruption, and every time they suspect it might be something they discover it's exactly that. 46853.2 This 'creatures' talk among themselves, unable to understand why people would 'create' them if they don't like them or don't want them or are scared of them. Eventually, before the station and the whole system is destroyed, Sisko realizes they created it with their imagination, so he 'orders' the to believe there is nothing out there, and just like that it goes away. At the end, Bokai the player reveals to Sisko they are on a mission to understand other cultures. Honestly, they did nothing dangerous, the trouble was created by the crew itself, not by them directly.
ep 16 - The forsaken - 417. 46925.1 A group of Ambassadors is on the station, and Bashir has to take care of them. A female Arbazan, a male vulcan, one other and what do you know? Ambassador Troi! Luaxana!! (Majel Barrett) yeahyyyy :-) :"you are dealing with the Daughter of the Fifth house, Holder of the sacred Chalice of Rixx, Heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed! I know where it hurts most, you little troll" she says to Quark :lol: She has lost a hair brooch: "I never use this hair without it", and Odo comes to help: "Dopterians are distant relatives of the Ferengi. It made sense that since you couldn't read Quark you wouldn't be able to read this charming fellow either", and now Luaxana is fascinated by Odo! :lol: Luaxana is beautiful and amazing, but Odo goes to Sisko to complain about her, because he doesn't know what to do with her, but of course Sisko can't help him :lol: Odo tells Luaxana he turns into a liquid every 16 hours (they were 18 when this series started) and she replies: "I can swim" :lol: now that things stop working, he's stuck with her on a turbolift, no escape :lol: The other ambassadors are driving Bashir crazy too. :lol: Luaxana can stay silent, so they talk. Oko says he imitated the hairstyle of the Bajoran man that was assigned to him, to study him at the research centre. He tells her of how he tried to fit in: "Odo be a chair, Odo be a razorcat.." poor Odo.
Bashir takes his ambassadors to the habitat ring, when there's an explosion and Bashir helps them.
Odo must regenerate but doesn't want anyone to see him like that, so to help him Lwaxana takes off her blonde hair-wig: "no one's ever seen me like this. It looks ordinary. I never cared to be ordinary. So you see, Odo, even we non-shape-shifters have to change who we are once in a while" - "you are not at all what I expected" - "no one's ever paid me a greater compliment" *sweet* so he turns liquid and she holds him on her dress-skirt.
Miles has a problem with the cardassian computer :-p A probe comes out of the wormhole and they download its data. Something gets into the computer and starts creating problems. Miles believes the computer's voice personality has changed. There's something in the computer, somehow it breaks down every time Miles goes away, to bring him back. Miles creates a 'doghouse' for the 'creature' that's been downloaded from the probe, so now everything works as usual. The ambassadors are fine, Bashir had them hide and now they praise him.
ep 17 - Dramatis personae - 418. Kira is alarmed because a Valerian transport has arrived and they "ran weapons-grade dolamite to the cardassian forces during the occupation of Bajor. I believe they're continuing shipping weapons to the cardassians..", she wants to search that ship but this dolamite is also used for power generators and reactors and stuff, so Sisko tells her to come back with proof, and then he'll do something about it. Keiko has taken eleven school children to Bajor. A ship comes through the wormjhole, it explodes but a klingon's able to transport to the station: time to say "victory" and he dies. 46922.3 Odo feels bad and when he wakes up in the infirmary Bashir is weird, talking of 'unstable alliance on the station' ,and hinting at a possible mutiny. Dax giggles and forgets herself, and O'Brien too talks weird: "anyone who's against Sisko is against me". Kira looks for Odo's  'cooperation', and Sisko is careless about things. Kira flirts with Jadzia to get her on her side. At 22:48 in the show, Odo shows why he's the head of security, how quick he is: "doesn't Kira's behavious seem a little out of the ordinary?" yeah, a little indeed.
O'Brien is in Sisko's office, saying Sisko is "in his quarters, where he's safe". Odo learns the klingon ship analized some telepatic energy spheres on a world in the Gamma Quadrant, and first them and now the people on the station are re-inacting the fight that destroyed that people. Odo tricks Bashir into finding a cure, then leads the five of them into a cargo bay, activate the resonance, the energy comes out of their heads, he opens the door and the energy is sucked out. Apparently only Sisko, Kira, Dax, O'Brien and Bashir were affected. The end, and all about the Valerian ship is forgotten...
That Modela Aperitif at Quark's looks funny :-) also funny that Dax sided with Kira ... :-s
ep 18 - Duet - 419. Dax and Kira talking about their childhood :-) A patient comes to the station, he suffers from Kalla-Nohra, and Kira says "the only cases of kalla-nohra I know of were the result of a mining accident at a Bajoran forced labour camp that I helped liberate. The survivors have always been a symbol to us of strength and courage" so she goes to meet this patient and surprise! He's a cardassian, so she has him locked up as a war-criminal. Kira speaks of atrocities, at that camp that she freed twelve years ago. This Marritza says he was a file clerk, somewhere else, but they immediately find out that's a lie, he was there. He keeps saying he was a filing clerk he talks of leader Gul Darhe'el as a brilliant, extraordinary man; Odo finds that Marritza was really a filing clerk, but they find a picture where his face is traced back to Gul Darhe'el himself. Kira's found "the Butcher of Gallitep", and now he speaks of being a magnificent leader: "I admit everything, I was the best at what I did". Odo is troubled by the detail that that man knew Kira was with the Shakaar resistance cell. Gul Dukat tells Odo Gul Darhe'el is dead, he is very sure of that. The man in prison doesn't change his story: "what you call genocide, I call a day's work". Odo tells her "the man in there wanted to be caught" and that Gul Darhe'el was away on Cardassia the day of the mining accident, so he never contracted the disease. Bashir reveals that the man has cosmetic alterations done to him, to appear like Darhe'el. "I'm beginning to understand a lot about you" says Kira to him, and "why do you pretend to be Gul Darhe'el?" but he insists on his foul speaking. "You're Marritza, aren't you?" but has a hard time getting him to admit it. "Marritza was good for nothing but cowering under his bunk and weeping like a woman, who every night covered his hears because he couldn't bear the endless screaming for mercy of the Bajorans" and then he cries, and then he goes on, no more pretences "covered my ears every night, but I couldn't bear to hear those horrible screams. You have no idea what it's like to be a coward, to see these horrors and do nothing. Marritza is dead, he deserves to be dead" and Kira opens the door (well, metaphorically speaking I mean, she actually lowers the force field), letting him go, but he wants to be punished "my trial will force Cardassia to acknowledge its guilt. My death is necessary" but Kira says "enough good people have already died, I won't help kill another" thus calling him a good man. "If Cardassia is going to change, it's gonna need people like you", but a Bajoran man on the station stabs him to death. In a way, though, it's quite absurd that they couldn't save him. He was hit once with a knife, in Bashir's time this should not be enough to die. It's a sad but necessary ending, because Kira asks why, the man says "he's a Cardassian, it's reason enough" and Kira surprises herself by saying "no, it's not". A day before she might have felt the same way, but now  she's seen how there can be good Cardassians too, after all. This was a great, intense episode. Marritza was played by Harris Yulin. It was a great episode, full of depth.
ep 19 - In the hands of the prophets - 420. Keiko is on the station now, and keeping her teaching classes, but also teaching about "the entities that live in the wormhole", but Vedek Winn opposes her, calling what she teaches blasphemy. She has Kira's support on this matter, too! Unbelievable. I mean, unbelievable to see her on Winn's side. Vedek Winn calls Sisko "the Emissary to the Prophets". She says:"the prophets have spoken to me", but I don't believe it at all, knowing her she simply wants to feel important, to have power. She also says:"I cannot be responsible for the consequences". O'Brien has lost a tool, although he never misplaces his tools, and Ensign Aquino is missing. The find the tool melted, and probably Aquino too. The man who sells Jumja sticks refuses to sell them to Miles and Keiko, telling them to "seek the prophets". Keiko is firmly decided to not allow the prophets in the school, so Winn asks that she teaches nothing at all about the wormhole, to find other thing to teach. She refuses, maybe a bit too quickly. She's not religious, she doesn't understand how important it is for Bajorans, and all this "I'm a teacher" talk seems really arrogant for a botanist who's been teaching only for a few months! For over fifty years the prophets were Bajorans' only source of hope and courage, and I like what Sisko says here to Jake: "it may not be what you believe, but that doesn't make it wrong". Excellent line! So true!
O'Brien is troubled by Aquino's death because it looks like he took one of his tools, and as a Starfleet engineer "you don't take a chief's tool without asking, it's unheard of".
Sisko goes to Bajor to find help and meets Vedek Bareil, and he's immediately likable, but at first he can't be of help.
Seventh rule of Acquisition: Keep your ears open.
The school is blown up by an explosion. It's funny how people came with their Trek-version of a fire-extinguisher. Not very futuristic :-/
Winn says it's an act of the prophets, as she always does. She says Sisko is without a soul, that he wants to destroy Bajor. I so don't like how he speaks when he wants to sound intense. Bareil comes to the station to help. It turns out that O'Brien's Bajoran assistant helped Winn with the sabotage. It was all Winn's plan to get Bareil here and have Neela kill him. Fortunately she fails; well, she's stopped by Sisko in a comic way that's supposed to look heroic. Of course they'll never be able to prove Winn's involvement. I never liked Winn, even before she plotted a murder! I never liked her, at all.

End of season 1. In my dvds there are also some little 'hidden files', or so they are called but they are not very hidden, they're just not listed. From one to two minutes long, they are 1-Sisko 2-O'Brien 3-Odo 4-Odo 5-Dax 6-Dax 7-Bashir 8-Kira 9-Jake 10-Vash


The actors in the opening titles are:
Avery Brooks - Cmdr Benjamin Sisko
Rene Auberjonois - Odo
Siddig El Fadil - Doctor Julian Bashir
Terry Farrell  - Lieutenant Jadzia Dax
Cirroc Lofton - Jake Sisko
Colm Meaney - Chief Miles O'Brien
Armin Shimerman - Quark
Nana Visitor - Major Kira Nerys

Actors not in the opening titles, playing recurrent characters.
Aron Eisenberg - Nog
Max Grodénchik - Rom, but he was listed as 'Ferengi pit boss' at first.
Rosalind Chao - Keiko
Hana Hatae - Molly
Louise Fletcher - Vedek Winn
Philip Anglim - Vedek Bareil
Wallace Shawn - Zek
Andrew Robinson - Garak
Marc Alaimo - Gul Dukat

Actors or characters worth a mention, or that simply I know of.
John Hertzler - Vulcan Captain
Frank Owen Smith - Curzon