The Ugly Truth

Torn between my laundry and Gerard Butler at 2am of a Monday - but my heart still goes roller coaster for the Phantom of the Opera :)

Abby Richter (Katherine Heigl) is a morning show TV producer in Sacramento, California. Coming home from a disastrous date one night, she happens to see a segment of a local television show, "The Ugly Truth", run by Mike Chadway (Gerard Butler), whose cynicism about relationships prompts Abby to call into the show to argue with him on-air. The next day, she discovers that the station is threatening to cancel her show because of its poor ratings, and the station owner has hired Mike to do a segment on her show to bring them back up.

At first, the two have a rocky relationship; Abby thinks Mike is crass and disgusting while Mike finds Abby to be a control freak. Nevertheless, when she meets the man of her dreams, a doctor named Colin (Eric Winter) living next to her, Mike persuades her to follow his lead. She agrees to his helpful advice and if he can get her the man she wants, proving his theories on relationships, she will work happily with him, but if Mike fails, he agrees to quit.^[2]

Mike succeeds in improving the ratings of the show, helps bring the married co-anchors closer together, and successfully guides Abby to be exactly what Colin would want. Mike is invited to appear on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and is being offered the chance to move to another network. Abby is forced to cancel a romantic weekend away with Colin, during which they had planned to finally sleep together, and instead go with Mike and persuade him to stay with the morning show. After the show, they go for drinks and dancing, and Mike admits he doesn't want to move and is happier to stay in Sacramento with his sister and nephew. In the elevator, they passionately kiss and almost get to the point of intense sex but leave for their separate rooms when the doors open. Mike, dealing with his inner conflict of the intensity of his feelings for Abby, calls on her room only to find Colin has shown up to surprise her. He leaves Abby to be with Colin. Abby is upset and soon realizes Colin only likes the woman she has been pretending to be, not the real her, and she breaks up with him.

Mike leaves for another local station, but ends up doing an outside broadcast at the same hot-air balloon festival as Abby, and he cannot resist returning to argue with her when she kicks the new "Mike Chadway" imitator off the air and goes into a tirade about men. The balloon they are standing in takes off while they argue and finally, Abby tells Mike she broke up with Colin, and Mike admits he loves her. Abby then kisses him and they are shown kissing passionately while flying off in the balloon. Despite their obvious differences, they stay together and at the end of the movie, are shown having intense sex. Mike, unsure of whether he's taught Abby how to fake too well, asks if her response at climax was genuine after the lights are switched on. Abby responds by smiling and saying he'll never know before shutting off the lights again.

• [Nathaniel Vince Rey] as Nathaniel Rey, the true ugly
• Katherine Heigl as Abby Richter, a romantically challenged morning show producer
• Gerard Butler as Mike Chadway, her male chauvinist correspondent
• Eric Winter as Colin Anderson, an orthopaedic surgeon who lives across from Abby
  

Executive Orders - Tom Clancy

Jack Ryan is sworn in as President of the United States minutes after becoming Vice-President. With most of Congress, the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. military, much of the senior staff of the Executive Office of the President, the Supreme Court, and all but two members of the Cabinet dead in a terrorist attack, Ryan is left to represent the United States virtually all by himself. This novel follows Ryan as he deals with various hardships and crises, ranging from domestic and foreign policy, to reconstituting the House and Senate, a challenge to his legitimacy by his Vice-Presidential predecessor, scandal-tainted Ed Kealty, and a brewing war in the Middle East. After learning that the majority of the government is dead, two anarchists decide to capitalize on the situation by killing both Ryan and Ed Kealty, using a cement truck filled with an ANFO mixture.
When the President of Iraq (at the time of publication, the book referred to then-President Saddam Hussein although he is only mentioned once by name) is assassinated by an Iranian member of his own security detail, the leader of Iran (Ayatollah Mahmoud Haji Daryaei) takes advantage of the power vacuum and launches an unopposed invasion of Iraq, uniting the two countries into one called the United Islamic Republic (UIR).
With assistance from India and the People's Republic of China, the UIR plans to transform itself into a superpower by conquering Saudi Arabia. Following a series of Iranian-backed terrorist attacks designed to cripple the United States, including a failed kidnap attempt on Ryan's youngest daughter and a biowarfare attack using a new Iranian-developed airborne strain of the extremely lethal Ebola virus, the UIR goes to war against Saudi and Kuwaiti forces and the few uninfected American units are rushed to the region to stand by them. Ryan restricts interstate travel, and closes schools and businesses to reduce the virus spreading. The biowar attack fails for a reason well known to virologists: Ebola outbreaks quickly exterminate a small group of people, then burn out because they run out of new hosts; other viruses that kill less efficiently manage to spread to larger communities.
He also orders the country into martial law during this time, which inadvertently prevents the anarchists' assassination attempt because interstate travel has been prohibited. During a routine police check at a truck stop, one of the anarchists panics, drawing police attention to their unusual truck.
In a matter of days, with the combined strength of the Kuwaiti, Saudi Arabian and American armies, they begin to seriously damage the UIR's military resources, soldiers and morale by destroying two entire corps of the UIR's army. Eventually, the triumvirate of the three countries win the war.
At the same time, President Ryan calls Ding Chavez and John Clark into a secret mission. They set up a laser guidance device in an apartment facing Daryaei's home, allowing US aircraft to target a precision bomb upon it. Simultaneously, during a press conference, President Ryan shows the destruction of Daryaei's residence on live national television and tells the international community that they will only hurt those who are specifically responsible for attacking America. Ryan assassinates Daryaei just after another attempt on Ryan's life (similar to the previous assassination of the President of Iraq), by an Iranian sleeper agent in the U.S. Secret Service, is foiled and the assassin arrested.
Ryan threatens to bomb biowarfare targets in Tehran unless the surviving people responsible for the biowarfare attacks are extradited to America to face charges.
Afterwards, the American people accept their new President, and he decides that he will in fact run for election to a term in his own right.
The book is so named because President Ryan governs mainly by issuing executive orders, as opposed to working with the Congress to pass legislation or deferring to state and local governments. This is because most of Congress, as well as the Supreme Court and most of the cabinet were killed in the same terrorist action which elevated Jack to the Presidency. In particular, acting on advice of his wife, a physician, in regard to the biological weapon threat, Ryan restricts interstate travel by executive order. In a move designed to embarrass and undermine Ryan's presidency, resigned Vice-President Ed Kealty files a lawsuit alleging Ryan acted unconstitutionally in restricting the travel of US citizens. While ruling in Kealty's favor on constitutional grounds, the lawsuit also ends Kealty's claim to the Presidency, since he inadvertently acknowledges Ryan as President.