Critically-acclaimed drama starring Laurence Fishburne. Eleven-year-old Akeelah Anderson's (Keke Palmer) life is not easy: her father is dead, her mom ignores her & her brother runs with the local gangbangers. She's smart, but her environment threatens to strangle her aspirations. Responding to a threat by her school's principal, Akeelah participates in a spelling bee to avoid detention for her many absences. Much to her surprise & embarrassment, she wins. Her principal asks her to seek coaching from an English professor named Dr. Larabee (Fishburne) for the more prestigious regional bee. As the possibility of making it all the way to the Scripps National Spelling Bee looms, Akeelah could provide her community with someone to rally around & be proud of, but only if she can overcome her insecurities & her distracting home life. ...

Examines the role of Akeman Street, the Roman road stretching from St Albans to Cirencester, examining its effect on the peoples of the surrounding landscape. This book presents a look at the people who would have travelled this road, what effect these travellers & the road itself had on the settlements & countryside. ...

Akhenaten is one of the most compelling & controversial figures in history. This title argues that, far from being the idealistic founder of a new faith, Akhenaten cynically used religion for purely political ends in a calculated attempt to reassert the authority of the king to concentrate all power in his own hands. ...

Box set containing the three films in Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki's 'workers trilogy'. With low-key acting, minimal dialogue & humour so deadpan it almost doesn't qualify as humour at all, Kaurismaki tells simple, devastating stories of loss, love, compassion & the urge to escape. ' Shadows in Paradise' (1986) is Kaurismaki's first collaboration with Kati Outinen, the actress whose face has become emblematic of his cinema. Dustman Nikander (Matti Pellonpaa) strikes up a platonic relationship with Ilona (Outinen), a cashier in a Helsinki supermarket. In the existential classic ' Ariel' (1987), Taisto (Turo Pajala) drives his white Cadillac through snow-strewn Finl&, looking for love. ' The Match Factory Girl' (1990) tells the tale of a modern-day Cinderella
- the down-at-heel Iris (Outinen), who works on a factory assembly line.
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Three films by acclaimed Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki. In the comedy ' Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatjana' (1994), two friends, Valto (Mato Valtonen) & Reino (( Matti Pellonpaa), take to the road in search of coffee & vodka, without which their lives are not worth living. But their reveries are interrupted by the arrival of garrulous Russian Klaudia (Kirsi Tykkylainen) & Estonian Tatjana (Kati Outinen)
- who are clearly interested in the two men, despite the language barrier. But what are the chances of getting a response from men who prefer staring at vodka bottles to talking? ' Drifting Clouds' (1996) is another offbeat comedy, set during the Finnish economic recession. Ilona (Kati Outinen) & Lauri Koponen (Kari Vaananen) are a waitress & driver who, through sheer bad luck, are made redundant at the same time. Ilona finds work in a sleazy bar, but her employer disappears without paying her wages. Lauri loses the chance of a job at a bus company as he is partially deaf. The couple then hit on the idea of opening their own restaurant, but finding the necessary funds proves to be a problem. Kaurismaki's ' Juha' (1999) is the fourth film adaptation of the tragic 1911 novel by well-known Finnish author Juhani Aho. Sakari Kuosmanen plays the eponymous protagonist, a simple cabbage farmer married to the younger Marja (Kati Outinen). It isn't long before Marja has been seduced away from him by Shemeikka (André Wilms), a seedy underworld type, who then proceeds to forego all his wild promises to her & ends up enslaving her in a brothel.
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The third collection of films from the Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki. Comprises his debut feature, a take on Dostoevsky's ' Crime & Punishment' (1983); ' Hamlet Goes Business' (1987), in which Shakespeare's tragedy is moved from Elsinore Castle to a rubber duck factory, & features an unexpected twist at the end; & ' La Vie de Boheme' (1992), in which three penniless artists become friends in modern day Paris. ...