Rated A

Rated A

Author: Darshana Sreedhar Mini

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2024-08-06

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 0520397460

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A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. In the 1990s, India's mediascape saw the efflorescence of edgy soft-porn films in the Malayalam-speaking state of Kerala. In Rated A, Darshana Sreedhar Mini examines the local and transnational influences that shaped Malayalam soft-porn cinema—such as vernacular pulp fiction, illustrated erotic tales, and American exploitation cinema—and maps the genre's circulation among blue-collar workers of the Indian diaspora in the Middle East, where pirated versions circulate alongside low-budget Bangladeshi films and Pakistani mujra dance films as South Asian pornography. Through a mix of archival and ethnographic research, Mini also explores the soft-porn industry's utilization of gendered labor and trust-based arrangements, as well as how actresses and production personnel who are marked by their involvement with a taboo form negotiate their social lives. By locating the tense negotiations between sexuality, import policy, and censorship in contemporary India, this study offers a model for understanding film genres outside of screen space, emphasizing that they constitute not just industrial formations but entire fields of social relations and gendered imaginaries.


Rated

Rated

Author: Melissa Grey

Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

Published: 2019-09-03

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 1338283588

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The ratings are real. One number, 0 to 100, determines your place in society. Earn a high rating, and the world is yours for the taking. But fall to zero, and you may as well cease to exist. Societies thrive on order, and the Rating System is the ultimate symbol of organized social mobility. The higher it soars, the more valued you are. The lower it plummets, the harder you must work to improve yourself. For the students at the prestigious Maplethorpe Academy, every single thing they do is reflected in their ratings, updated daily and available for all to see.But when an act of vandalism sullies the front doors of the school, it sets off a chain reaction that will shake the lives of six special students -- and the world beyond.


Rated A: Soft-Porn Cinema and Mediations of Desire in India

Rated A: Soft-Porn Cinema and Mediations of Desire in India

Author: Darshana Sreedhar Mini

Publisher: Zubaan

Published: 2024-09-13

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 9390514983

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In the 1990s, India’s mediascape saw the efflorescence of edgy soft-porn films in the Malayalam-speaking state of Kerala. In Rated A, Darshana Sreedhar Mini examines the local and transnational influences that shaped Malayalam soft-porn cinema—such as vernacular pulp fiction, illustrated erotic tales, and American exploitation cinema—and maps the genre’s circulation among blue-collar workers of the Indian diaspora in the Middle East, where pirated versions circulate alongside low-budget Bangladeshi films and Pakistani mujra dance films as South Asian pornography. Through a mix of archival and ethnographic research, Mini also explores the soft-porn industry’s utilization of gendered labor and trust-based arrangements, as well as how actresses and production personnel who are marked by their involvement with a taboo form negotiate their social lives. By locating the tense negotiations between sexuality, import policy, and censorship in contemporary India, this study offers a model for understanding film genres outside of screen space, emphasizing that they constitute not just industrial formations but entire fields of social relations and gendered imaginaries.


New Jersey's Top Ghost Tours Reviewed and Rated: A Short Story of Tax Fraud, True Love, and Posthumous Unionizing

New Jersey's Top Ghost Tours Reviewed and Rated: A Short Story of Tax Fraud, True Love, and Posthumous Unionizing

Author: Sarah Avery

Publisher: Point Quay Press

Published: 2019-12-31

Total Pages: 41

ISBN-13: 0997414057

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Any day now, Bizarro Jersey Magazine will send a reviewer incognito to the ghost tour Jim Griggs runs in a scenic little Delaware River Valley town. The Halloween season is coming, and Jim has bills to pay. When his girlfriend gives him a haunted cabinet for his birthday, a spectral union agitator who died in the 1930s wreaks havoc in Jim's town -- terrorizing tourists, stirring monsters best left to lie, and unionizing all the ghosts.


Rated Agency

Rated Agency

Author: Michel Feher

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2021-09-14

Total Pages: 118

ISBN-13: 1942130198

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The hegemony of finance compels a new orientation for everyone and everything: companies care more about the moods of their shareholders than about longstanding commercial success; governments subordinate citizen welfare to appeasing creditors; and individuals are concerned less with immediate income from labor than appreciation of their capital goods, skills, connections, and reputations. That firms, states, and people depend more on their ratings than on the product of their activities also changes how capitalism is resisted. For activists, the focus of grievances shifts from the extraction of profit to the conditions under which financial institutions allocate credit. While the exploitation of employees by their employers has hardly been curbed, the power of investors to select investees — to decide who and what is deemed creditworthy — has become a new site of social struggle. In clear and compelling prose, Michel Feher explains the extraordinary shift in conduct and orientation generated by financialization. Above all, he articulates the new political resistances and aspirations that investees draw from their rated agency.


Ashlords

Ashlords

Author: Scott Reintgen

Publisher: Ember

Published: 2021-02-16

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 0593119207

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"A page-turning inferno of a book." -- Stephanie Garber Red Rising meets The Scorpio Races in this epic fantasy following three phoenix horse riders--skilled at alchemy--who must compete at The Races--the modern spectacle that has replaced warfare within their empire. Every year since the Ashlords were gifted phoenix horses by their gods, they've raced them. First into battle, then on great hunts, and finally for the pure sport of seeing who rode the fastest. Centuries of blood and fire carved their competition into a more modern spectacle: The Races. Over the course of a multi-day event, elite riders from clashing cultures vie to be crowned champion. But the modern version of the sport requires more than good riding. Competitors must be skilled at creating and controlling phoenix horses made of ash and alchemy, which are summoned back to life each sunrise with uniquely crafted powers to cover impossible distances and challenges before bursting into flames at sunset. But good alchemy only matters if a rider knows how to defend their phoenix horse at night. Murder is outlawed, but breaking bones and poisoning ashes? That's all legal and encouraged. In this year's Races, eleven riders will compete, but three of them have more to lose than the rest--a champion's daughter, a scholarship entrant, and a revolutionary's son. Who will attain their own dream of glory? Or will they all flame out in defeat?


Carter Finally Gets It

Carter Finally Gets It

Author: Brent Crawford

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Published: 2010-03-21

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 1423140893

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Meet Will Carter, but feel free to call him Carter. (Yes, he knows it's a lazy nickname, but he didn't have much say in the matter.) Here are five things you should know about him: 1. He has a stuttering problem, particularly around boobs and belly buttons. 2. He battles Attention Deficit Disorder every minute of every day unless he gets distracted. 3. He's a virgin, mostly because he's no good at talking to girls (see number 1). 4. He's about to start high school. 5. He's totally not ready. Join Carter for his freshman year, where he'll search for sex, love, and acceptance anywhere he can find it. In the process, he'll almost kill a trombone player, face off with his greatest nemesis, suffer a lot of blood loss, narrowly escape death, run from the cops (not once, but twice), get caught up in a messy love triangle, meet his match in the form of a curvy drill teamer, and surprise the hell out of everyone, including himself.


This Book Is Not Yet Rated

This Book Is Not Yet Rated

Author: Peter Bognanni

Publisher: National Geographic Books

Published: 2019-04-09

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 0735228078

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In this enormously funny, smart, and moving contemporary YA novel, fighting for the thing you love doesn't always turn out like in the movies. "Hilarious, big-hearted, poignant...An unadulterated triumph." --Jeff Zentner, author of The Serpent King Movies have always helped Ethan Ashby make sense of the world. So when developers swoop in and say the classic Green Street Cinema is going to be destroyed to make room for luxury condos, Ethan is ready for battle. And so a motley crew of cinema employees comes together to save the place they love: There's Sweet Lou, the elderly organist with a penchant for not-so-sweet language; Anjo, the too-cool projectionist; Griffin and Lucas who work concessions, if they work at all; and Ethan, their manager (who can barely manage his own life). Still, it's going to take a movie miracle for the Green Street to have a happy ending. And when Raina Allen, Ethan's oldest friend (and possible soul mate?), comes back to town after working in Hollywood--cue lights and music--it seems that miracle may have been delivered. But life and love aren't always like in the movies. This Book is Not Yet Rated is about growing up, letting go, and realizing love hides in plain view--in the places that shape us, the people who raise us, the first loves who leave us, and the lives that fade in and fade out all around us. "A beautifully written look at first love and first loss." --Julie Buxbaum, author of What to Say Next "Film aficionados and fans of John Green will especially like this one." --Booklist, starred review "It pulls you in, holds you...A funny and moving winner." --Adi Alsaid, author of Never Always Sometimes "I cannot get over how much I love this book." --Jared Reck, author of A Short History of the Girl Next Door "[A] sweet love story with a quest at its heart." --PW "Reel[s] you in...Absorbing...quirky and fun." --VOYA


Hex-Rated

Hex-Rated

Author: Jason Ridler

Publisher: Start Publishing LLC

Published: 2017-08-01

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1597806323

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A salacious throwback to the detective pulps of the 70s, Hex-Rated kicks off the new urban fantasy series the Brimstone Files. Fall, 1970. Los Angeles has always been a den of danger and bliss, but even darker tidings brew in the City of Angels. Cults, magic, and the supernatural are leaking into the worlds of glamour and dives of the gutter. To the spectators walking down Hollywood Blvd, it’s just more proof that La La Land is over the cuckoo’s nest. But to former child magician and Korean veteran turned newly-licensed private investigator James Brimstone, it means business is picking up. After attending his mentor’s funeral, Brimstone signs his first client: Nico, a beautiful actress with a face full of scars and an unbelievable story of sex, demons, and violence on the set of a pornographic film in the San Fernando Valley. The cops chalk it up to a bad trip from a lost soul, but Brimstone knows better. He takes the case, but the investigation goes haywire as he encounters Hell’s Angels, a lost book of Japanese erotica, and a new enemy whose powers may fill the streets of L.A. with blood. He’ll have to us his Carney wits, magic tricks, and a whole lotta charm to make it out of a world that is becoming . . . Hex-Rated.


Weld Like a Pro

Weld Like a Pro

Author: Jerry Uttrachi

Publisher: CarTech Inc

Published: 2015-06-15

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 1613252218

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Welding is an art and skill that's essential for automotive fabrication, repair, and vehicle upgrades, but it is also an important skill for countless household projects and industries. Some books show merely basic welding techniques with steel and cast iron. But this isn't your run-of-the-mill introductory welding book. In this revised edition of the previous title, Advanced Automotive Welding, Jerry Uttrachi, past president of the American Welding Society, does show you how to perform basic welding procedures with steel and cast iron. But he also reveals advanced welding techniques and the use of aluminum, titanium, magnesium, stainless steel, and other specialty materials. Projects and techniques in this book focus on automotive applications but can also be used for welding a bicycle frame, welding a steel grill, or repairing the frame for a garden bench. TIG, oxyacetylene, arc, and wire-feed welding processes are covered, but special coverage is provided for stick and MIG. Welding butt and V-joints is explained plus welding more complex joints, including J- and U-joints, is also shown. Step-by-step instruction and exceptional detail give you the necessary information to tackle and complete complex welding jobs. Popular automotive projects, such as welding an electric fuel pump into an aluminum tank, repairing chromemoly suspension arms, and welding in floorpans, are thoroughly covered. And when it comes to repairing household items, specific projects such as repairing and modifying the steel tubing on an exercise machine, repairing a decorative bench, and more are covered. Rather than take a project to a shop, you can now do the job at home. Whether you're new to welding or a veteran welder looking to work with special materials or involved in a special project, you will find indispensible information within the pages of this book. Now you can confidently weld with steel, cast iron, aluminum, anodized steel, titanium, magnesium, and other specialty metals.