Boys (1996 film)

Boys is a 1996 American film starring Winona Ryder and Lukas Haas. The film was originally titled The Girl You Want. The film earned $516,350 in the United States box office. It is based on a short story called "Twenty Minutes" by James Salter.

The film is set in an East Coast boys' boarding school in the United States, and was shot in Baltimore, Maryland and on the campus of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, which represents the school.

Plot

John Baker Jr. (Lukas Haas) is a boy bored with his life at an upper middle class boarding school, and the prospect of his future running the family grocery store chain. He no longer sees the point in school, stating what's the difference if he gets a zero attendance for being three minutes late or skipping the whole class so he might as well skip the class. Now close to graduating from boarding school, his life is turned upside down when he rescues Patty Vare (Winona Ryder), a young woman he finds lying unconscious in a field. Patty regains consciousness that evening in John's dormitory. She stays awake long enough to tell him she will not go to a doctor, and then passes out and does not awaken until the next morning. She seems to recover completely and to be grateful for John's assistance; the two begin a romantic voyage of self-discovery. This is not without its problems, as other boys in the dorm quickly find out she is being hidden in his room, leading up to a dramatic confrontation with Baker's close friends where his 'best friend' becomes enraged and punches a wall, breaking his hand, while the two continue to argue over the reason as to why Baker has hidden her in his room.

Boys (The Shirelles song)

"Boys" is a song by Luther Dixon and Wes Farrell, originally performed by The Shirelles and released as the B-side of their "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" single in November 1960. It was covered by The Beatles and included on their first album released in the United Kingdom, Please Please Me (1963).

The Beatles version

The Beatles' version was recorded at Abbey Road Studios on February 11, 1963, in a single take, and is Ringo Starr's first recorded lead vocals with the Beatles; and, as the fifth track on the Beatles first album, Please Please Me, represents the first time many fans heard Starr singing on a lead vocal. February 11 was a marathon day for the Beatles, as they recorded 10 of the 14 tracks they needed for Please Please Me. The band covered an additional song by the Shirelles on their first album, "Baby It's You".

The Beatles did not concern themselves about possible homosexual undertones that go with singing a song about boys, although they altered the gender pronouns employed on the Shirelles' version (e.g. "My girl says when I kiss her lips..."). In an October 2005 Rolling Stone interview, Paul McCartney stated: "Any one of us could hold the audience. Ringo would do 'Boys', which was a fan favourite with the crowd. And it was great — though if you think about it, here's us doing a song and it was really a girls' song. 'I talk about boys now!' Or it was a gay song. But we never even listened. It's just a great song. I think that's one of the things about youth — you just don't give a shit. I love the innocence of those days." (The lyrics talk specifically about a boy kissing a girl, not another boy.)

Boys (Britney Spears song)

"Boys" is a song recorded by American singer Britney Spears for her third studio album, Britney (2001). It was written and produced by Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams (known collectively as The Neptunes). A version of the song, entitled the "The Co-Ed Remix", was released as the sixth and final single from Britney on July 29, 2002. The new version also served as the second single from the soundtrack of Austin Powers in Goldmember. "Boys" is a R&B and hip hop song, including funk influences. The remix carries a slower tempo than the album version, and both versions are noted to be reminiscent of Janet Jackson. Some critics praised Williams and Spears' chemistry, as well as the production on the track, while others did not think the song worked well.

While the song did not perform well on the Billboard charts in the United States, it reached the top ten on the Belgian charts and in Ireland and the United Kingdom, and charted in the top 20 in Australia, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark. The song would later be certified Gold in Australia. The song's accompanying music video, directed by Dave Meyers, was nominated at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards for "Best Video from a Film." The clip features Spears and Williams at a party. The singer has performed "Boys" a number of times including at the 2002 NBA All-Star Game, on Saturday Night Live, and on several of her concert tours.

Almquist shell

The Almquist shell (also known as A Shell, ash and sh) is a lightweight Unix shell originally written by Kenneth Almquist in the late 1980s. Initially a clone of the System V.4 variant of the Bourne shell, it replaced the original Bourne shell in the BSD versions of Unix released in the early 1990s. Derivative versions of ash are still installed as the default shell (/bin/sh) on FreeBSD, NetBSD, DragonFly BSD, MINIX, and Android, and in some Linux distributions.

Debian and derived Linux distributions such as Ubuntu ship a version of ash, known as dash (Debian Almquist shell), as the default /bin/sh, although Bash is the default login shell for interactive use. The reason for using dash is faster shell script execution, especially during startup of the operating system, compared to previous versions of Debian and Ubuntu that used Bash for this purpose.

Ash is also fairly popular in embedded Linux systems; its code was incorporated into the BusyBox catch-all executable often employed in this area.

Ash (deity)

Ash was the ancient Egyptian god of oases, as well as the vineyards of the western Nile Delta and thus was viewed as a benign deity. Flinders Petrie in his 1923 expedition to the Saqqara (also spelt Sakkara) found several references to Ash in Old Kingdom wine jar seals: "I am refreshed by this Ash" was a common inscription.

In particular, he was identified by the Ancient Egyptians as the god of the Libu and Tinhu tribes, known as the "people of the oasis". Consequently Ash was known as the "lord of Libya", the western border areas occupied by the Libu and Tinhu tribes, corresponds roughly with the area of modern Libya. It is also possible that he was worshiped in Ombos, as their original chief deity.

In Egyptian mythology, as god of the oases, Ash was associated with Set, who was originally god of the desert, and was seen as protector of the Sahara. The first known reference to Ash dates to the Protodynastic Period, but by the late 2nd Dynasty, his importance had grown, and he was seen as protector of the royal estates, since the related god Set, in Lower Egypt, was regarded as the patron deity of royalty itself. Ash's importance was such that he was mentioned even until the 26th Dynasty.

Ash (Alien)

Ash is a fictional character in the movie Alien, who was portrayed by actor Ian Holm, who, although known in the U.K. as a stage actor, was at the time unknown to American audiences. Ash serves as the secondary antagonist of the first film. The character is the science officer of the Nostromo, who breaks quarantine by allowing Kane, a member of the crew, back on board after he has been infected by an alien life form. It is later discovered that Ash is not human at all, as he appears, but is in fact a Hyperdyne Systems 120-A/2android, who is acting upon secret orders to bring back the alien lifeform and to consider the crew "expendable".

Character development

At the beginning of the film, Ash is depicted as quiet and logical, greatly adherent to company regulations. However, he breaks quarantine protocol (disobeying Ripley, the ship's ranking officer, in the process) and allows the infected Kane aboard the ship, seemingly out of compassion, and is later seen marveling at the creature attached to him. At one point, Ash assaults Ripley, attempting to kill her by forcing a rolled-up pornographic magazine down her throat. But it is Ash himself who is killed, as two other crew members arrive and rescue Ripley. He is struck over the head twice with a canister, the first time causing him to malfunction and the second decapitating him. When even that fails to kill him, he's electrocuted with a cattle prod.