Someone took Johnny’s golden locket while Johnny was laying in the leaves. Now Johnny wants it back. The post In a Violent Nature appeared first on Plugged In ..read more

With a ticketty, tic, tac sound and a splash of digital copy on a computer screen, the ship Nostromo comes back to life. But for the ship’s guidance systems, everything onboard was supposed to stay inert, stay quiet, stay frozen in suspended animation. But that has changed. When the ship’s pilot, Ripley, crawls out of her stasis pod and makes her way to the meal station with the other crew members, her thoughts are simple: First she’ll feed her appetite. Then she’ll feed her curiosity. How close to home are they? Earth and a long space-flight payday is pretty much all that any of the seven com ..read more

It could be worse. At least the kid has a roof over his head … sometimes. Where he sleeps, on the floor, with a couple dozen other folks. At least he has a job … donning a monkey mask, climbing into a ring and getting beat up in front of jeering, bottle-throwing fans. And hey, if he bleeds? He gets a nice little bonus. At least he—um … at least he … OK, so maybe things can’t get that much worse. In the have-and-have-not world of Mumbai, Kid is certainly a have-not. In a country where family is so important, he has none. The only family he had, his mother, was killed years earlier during a vici ..read more

Elwood Dalton is on the ropes. After the tragedy of his last UFC fight, he’s been kinda staggering through life. He killed a man. And that’s left Dalton so emotionally wrung out that he can’t seem to move forward. But he can’t call it quits either. He parked his car on the railroad tracks at one point, but couldn’t force himself to stay there. So, when Dalton gets a job offer, he reluctantly grabs a bus down to the Florida Keys to check it out. The place is called the Road House, but ironically it looks like a pretty sweet set up with a cool thatched roof and a huge deck facing the ocean. It’s ..read more

James Bond? Psh. The guy might as well be a valet attendant when you stand ol’ 007 next to Agent Argylle. Yes, Argylle, he of the dimpled chin and towering physique, the sparkling eyes and the charismatic half-smile. He’s the handsomest, suavest, most lethal spy this side of a vodka martini—equal parts debonair and deadly, all wrapped up in one perfectly tailored Nehru suit. One look at the guy, and you’ll say, “Yes, clearly, this man must be a spy.”  And while all those attributes might not be ideal for, y’know, going undercover and stuff, author Elly Conway doesn’t care. And neither do ..read more

“I’m not a monster,” Sandra tells her son as he lays silently in his bed, shadowed by the dark night. That, however, is exactly what the court is accusing Daniel’s mother of being: A heartless, cold-blooded murderer. The evidence? Well, there isn’t much. But there definitely was a fall. A fall that left Daniel’s dad, Samuel, quite dead. It all took place on a typically ice-and-snow-covered day in the family’s isolated French mountainside chalet. Sandra, who happens to be a successful writer, was being interviewed by a young female writing student. Meanwhile her visually impaired son, Daniel, w ..read more

Orbiting approximately 250 miles above Earth is the International Space Station. Though YouTube videos have offered us terrestrials a peek at life in space, nobody but the people who have traveled there truly know what the experience is like. When you brush your teeth, you can’t spit the toothpaste into the sink because it’ll float in the air instead of going down the drain. For that matter, there aren’t sinks, because zero gravity means the water would float out of the faucet. And if you care to catch a few z’s, you’d better be prepared to strap yourself in or get used to drifting around your ..read more

In the year 2118, Japan has stepped away from a system of laws. Instead, the nation relies on the Sibyl System, an AI biomechatronic computer program. Not only does it instantly evaluate situations and control police officials’ ability to discharge their weapons, it continuously monitors the biometrics of Japanese citizens’ brains as well. This system’s “Psycho-Pass” reveals a person’s criminal potential and gives them a color-coded Hue that notifies enforcement officials to any potential problems. You could say it’s an always-watching monitor that keeps worries about deadly conflict and messy ..read more

Perhaps, deep in the vast ocean, Tom and Charlie can fish up meaning. Tom’s a struggling fisherman—and not only in the financial realm. He’s grappling with the emptiness he feels in his life, too. Meanwhile, the scatterbrained Charlie, pressured into Boston University’s law school by his father, isn’t so sure his life is going the way he wants, either. That’s why Charlie’s approached his stepbrother, Tom, hoping that maybe the fisherman has room for one more crew member on his boat. He hopes that somehow, the ocean will offer up more than sea creatures for his future. Turns out, Charlie loves ..read more

John McClane isn’t a guy with superhuman abilities or great wisdom. He’s just a New York City cop with police-officer skills and a salty East Coast perspective. And he tosses a bag full of all that over his shoulder and flies off from New York to California on Christmas Eve. Of course, it was those NYPD sensibilities that led to fly out to California in the first place. You see, his wife, Holly, had gotten a huge promotion with the Nakatomi Corporation. And that meant she had to move to the L.A. corporate office—a glittering glass-and-steel high rise. John, however, dug his heels in and refuse ..read more