Peter Donat

A man receives a strange birthday gift: he`s chosen to participate in a live-action game that penetrates all aspects of his life. But when it goes out of control - can he escape?

An American attorney on business in China is wrongfully arrested and put on trial for murder, with a female defense lawyer from the country the only key to proving his innocence. American lawyer Jack Moore is in Beijing on what looks to be a successful business trip for his company to enter into a film and television distribution deal with the Chinese government, their main competitor for that distribution deal being HoffCo Telecom out of Germany. Before Jack's boss David McAndrews and the Chinese government sign on the dotted line of the contract, Jack is implicated in a murder, the victim who was discovered in his hotel room. The police were alerted to an incident in his hotel room based on the report of hearing a scream emanating from his room, such a scream which Jack, asleep in the room when the police entered, did not hear. Jack being charged with murder quashes the distribution deal, which instead is awarded to HoffCo. The situation is made all the worse for Jack due to the known connections between the victim and people within high places in China, who may try to manipulate the situation to see Jack sentenced to death for the murder. Jack also has language, cultural and political obstacles to overcome, the Chinese government and thus the court system which seems already to have convicted him to make him, a foreigner, an example. As such, Jack does not trust his court appointed lawyer, a young woman named Shen Yuelin who has always seen her role to carry out Chinese government policy. Things may change when Yuelin begins to believe that Jack is being framed for the murder, the death of an innocent man which she may not be able to tolerate if she has any sway within the Chinese justice system, which she may find she does not. The key to discovering the truth behind the murder, the reason for Jack being framed for it and Jack possibly coming out the other end with his life is an important piece of physical evidence which he knows exists but which seems to be missing. —Huggo A lawyer goes to China, has a one night stand with a Chinese woman he meets there, and she ends up dead. The law immediately points the finger at him, and he must stand trial in China, facing their corrupt and unfair system. A young Chinese lawyer who is assigned to Gere's case starts believing him, and they both fight for his rights in an unfair system. —ShowBob <showbob@geocities.com> Jack Moore, a high-profile international lawyer, is in China for business. Moore sleeps with a young woman, and wakes up to find her dead in his bed. Falsely accused of murder, Moore's only chance is his Chinese advocate Yuelin. The rules and laws are different, and Moore must convince Yuelin of his innocence and unravel the chain of events that has entrapped him. —John Hawkinson <jhawk@mit.edu>

Babe Ruth becomes a baseball legend but is unheroic to those who know him. The Babe is a biopic of George Herman 'Babe' Ruth. The film follows his seemingly bi-polar life from being abandoned by his father at an orphanage, to the discovery of his tremendous home-run hitting ability and finally to his later days. Several items from his legend are included (whether true or not) including: His calling of of a home run, the promise to a dying youngster to hit two home runs in a game that day, and the quote that he had a better year than the president.

In the Autumn of 1955, working-class Hebrew teenager David Greene (Brendan Fraser), from Scranton, Pennsylvania, receives a football scholarship to St. Matthew's, an exclusive Massachusetts prep school, for his senior year due to his grades and ability to play football. Even back home David was used to dealing with Anti-Semitism and frequently got into fights with the white Neo-Nazi gangs who targeted David due to his Hebrew race. Alan Greene (Ed Lauter) tells David that St Matthews is a school that 2 presidents went to. He asks David to fit in and not fight through life. Upon arrival, he meets his teammates Rip Van Kelt (Randall Batinkoff), Charlie Dillon (Matt Damon), Jack Connors (Cole Hauser), and his roommate Chris Reece (Chris O'Donnell), the most well-known and popular students who are from well-to-do families and learns of the school's cherished honor code system. Soon learning that his new friends are Anti-Semites, he suppresses his background. "Mack" McGivern (Andrew Lowery) is the joker of the bunch, but not in the team as he is frail. Mr. Cleary (Zeljko Ivanek), French language teacher is also the hostel warden, and doesn't like the boys as they mock him on his rounds. Dillon doesn't like David as Dillon was supposed to be the team quarterback until the coach decided to bring in David. The school had been losing to their rivals for 3 yrs in a row and the alums were upset and wanted the coach to do something to break the losing streak. David was the answer. Dillon also struggles in the history class. McGivern is flunking French and is worried that he might not get into Princeton as 5 generations of his family have gone there. Cleary assigns 25% of the grade to a class monologue in French and consistently harasses McGivern during his speech. He humiliates McGivern. That night Mcgivern is found in his French class, alone in the catatonic state. David confronts Cleary for pushing McGivern till he broke. David and the entire student community retaliates by putting Cleary's beloved vintage car inside his room and filling the room with smoke. David becomes the team hero (Coach McDevitt (Kevin Tighe), football coach) and attracts beautiful debutante Sally Wheeler (Amy Locane), whom Dillon claims is his girlfriend (But David spoke to Sally and she told him that she not was seeing Dillon. She starts dating David). At a alum dinner, Dillon finally realizes that Sally and David are together and is even more angry. After a victory over the school's chief rival St. Luke's (in which David is hailed as the hero by everyone), Dillon inadvertently discovers David's Judaism (when he speaks to the school trustee, who says that St Luke's would never have taken a Hebrew to win a game). Out of jealousy, Dillon sensationalizes this, causing Sally and his teammates to turn against David. David's classmates, led by Richard "McGoo" Collins (Anthony Rapp) and his bodyguard-like roommate Chesty Smith (Ben Affleck), constantly harass him, with only Reece and another unnamed student remaining loyal. The final straw comes when he finds a sign above his bed bearing a swastika and the words "Go home Hebrew." Finally having enough, he furiously posts a public confrontation with whoever made the sign outside the building the following night. No one shows up, however, and David calls out the students' cowardice when he sees them looking out their dorm windows. Sally refuses to meet David anymore and breaks up with him. Overwhelmed by pressure from his prestigious family, Dillon uses a crib sheet to cheat in an important history exam. David and Van Kelt spot him doing so but keep quiet. After the exam, Dillon gets pushed while leaving class and drops the sheet on the floor. When the teacher, Mr. Geirasch (Michael Higgins), discovers it, he informs the class that he will fail all of them if the cheater keeps silent. He instructs the students, led by Van Kelt, the head prefect, to find the cheat. When David confronts Dillon and threatens to turn him in if he does not confess, Dillon tells him about his pressure, apologizes for his actions against him and unsuccessfully attempts to buy David's silence with money. Just when David is about to reveal Dillon to the other students as the cheat, Dillon accuses David. They fight until Van Kelt breaks it up and tells them to leave and let the rest of the class decide who is being honest. Both agree to do so. The majority of the class blame David out of antisemitic prejudice, while Reece, the unnamed student, and Connors, going against his own self-professed antisemitism, argue that it is unlike David to cheat or lie. Despite this, the class votes to convict David, prompting Van Kelt to tell him to report to the elitist headmaster, Dr. Bartram (Peter Donat), to confess to cheating. David goes to Bartram's office and says that he was the cheater. Unbeknownst to him, Van Kelt has already told the headmaster that the real offender was Dillon. Bartram tells David and Van Kelt that they should have reported the offense, but he absolves the both of them. As David leaves the headmaster's office, he sees an expelled Dillon leaving the school. Dillon says that he will be accepted to Harvard anyway and that years later everybody will have forgotten about his incident. The two coldly exchange final insults to each other before Dillon leaves.

A womanizing alcoholic writer, whose life seems to be falling apart at the seams, repeatedly finds himself in trouble of one sort or another with the law, ex-girlfriends, and jealous boyfriends. Zach Hutton is a womanizing, drunken writer whose life seems to be falling apart at the seams. He's still in love with his ex-wife (whose family can't stand him), writer's block is keeping him from completing his latest novel, and he repeatedly finds himself in trouble of one sort or another with the law, ex-girlfriends, and jealous boyfriends.

Corrine Burns (Diane Lane) is a 17-year-old girl whose mother has recently died from lung cancer and father was killed fighting in Vietnam over 10 years ago. Working in a fast food restaurant to help support herself and her younger sister in the small steel mill Pennsylvania town of Charleston, Corrine is interviewed by a local television station for a story about her small town's dwindling economy among the early 1980s recession. During the interview, Corrine becomes angry and hostile towards the reporter, eventually lashing out at her overbearing and condescending boss and getting fired. The segment resonates with the station's teenage viewers, who see Connie as a kindred spirit. The station does a follow-up interview, which primarily consists of Connie acting flippant and making sarcastic remarks to the reporter. However, she does manage to slip in a plug for her garage band "The Stains", which consists of her, her sister Tracy (Marin Kanter), and their cousin Jessica (Laura Dern). Emboldened by appearing on television, Corrine attends a concert organized by small-time promoter, a hip Jamacian named Lawnboy (Barry Ford), featuring the washed-up metal band The Metal Corpses and their opening act, an up-and-coming British punk band called The Looters. Eager to end the hostilities between the exhausted Metal Corpses and the hedonistic Looters, Lawnboy signs the Stains without having heard them perform. Corrine, Jessica and Tracy join the tour, witnessing firsthand the bands' animosity towards each other, largely the result of the conflict between the aging Lou (Fee Waybill), the frontman of the Metal Corpses, and Billy (Ray Winstone), the volatile lead singer of the Looters. At their first show, the Stains prove to be completely incompetent as a band: Neither Jessica nor Tracy can play their instruments, and Corrine sings in an off-key monotone. The audience reacts angrily, prompting Corrine to lash out at them for a variety of real and perceived mistakes. After the show, the Metal Corpses guitar player Jerry (Vince Welnick) has fatally overdosed in the bathroom, and the band leaves the tour. Soon after, Lawnboy makes the Looters the new headliners with the Stains as their opening act. However, a dissatisfied Billy asks Lawnboy to replace the Stains with another band as soon as possible. At their next show, Corrine debuts a more extreme punk look, with her hair dyed to resemble a skunk and see-through blouse worn over a pair of bikini briefs. Announcing that she "never puts out", she goes on another angry speech, grabbing more media attention. While male reporters focus on Corrine's antisocial attitude and the band's need of talent, female reporters understand Corrine's criticisms as calls for female empowerment and hail the Stains as a new voice of feminism. The Stains soon become a national sensation, with girls all over the country emulating Corrine in every way possible, from dyeing their hair to running away from home. During a stop at a motel, Billy attempts to seduce Corrine by sharing his feelings about the band and his alleged private shame of being illiterate. Over the course of their conversation, Billy recites the lyrics to a song, "Join the Professionals" which sums up his most personal feelings about the state of the world. Corrine responds to his advances in which she and Billy have sex for the first time. At their next stop, the band is met by Lawnboy's agent, Dave Robell (David Clennon), with the intended replacement act for the Stains (Black Randy and the Metrosquad). Although Billy tells Corrine that he only wanted her replaced early on for the tour, Corrine lashes out at him, and at the Stains' next show, they play a cover version of Billy's song, which skyrockets the band to even further stardom. With Robell's encouragement, Corrine signs a new contract, cutting Lawnboy out of any royalties and making the Stains the new headliners of the tour. At the next show, Billy delivers a speech to the crowd about how the Stains have betrayed their "never put out" mantra by becoming corporate sellouts. When the Stains come onstage, the fans raise an uproar and Corrine is attacked by a girl with a tube of hair dye. The tour becomes a financial disaster and Robell cancels the Stains' contract. Corrine responds by threatening him with a bottle opener and taking the money he's been withholding from her; Corrine then gives the money to Lawnboy an an apology. The next morning, Corrine appears on television, where a hostile male reporter chastises her for being a poor role model to her fans. Billy apologizes for ruining Corrine's career and asks her to come back as the Looters' opening act for the tour. Corrine refuses; as she wanders the streets, she overhears a radio broadcast identifying the Stains' first song as a hit record. In the final scene, set sometime in the future, the Stains made their debut on MTV, having become a successful act on Lawnboy's new record label.

An ambitious TV reporter on assignment with her photographer at a southern California power plant learns of an impending control room crisis involving the plant`s supervisor.