Revenge

The U.S. women's soccer team got the payback it was looking for Thursday by beating Japan, 2-1, in the Olympic gold-medal game before a crowd of 80,203 at Wembley Stadium. The attendance was an Olympic record as well as the largest crowd ever to see a women's game in Britain. The U.S. last played before a crowd that big in the 1999 World Cup final at the Rose Bowl. For the Americans, the loss avenged a painful decision in last summer's World Cup final, when the Japanese twice rallied from deficits to win the title on penalty kicks.

FLORESTA, Brazil - The little priest leans in, as though to make a confession. The subject is forbidden, but tonight he will talk. " A violencia ," he says. The violence of his account seems impossible. This small town, called Floresta, blooms in Brazil's sertao , a wild and arid land. On its surface, Floresta is all pinks and yellows and purples, its facades covered with thick layers of paint. The houses stand in rows around a tree-lined square, and in the center sits a church.

HARIPUR, Pakistan - Suleman Khan demanded justice from the tribal elders. His wife had slept with another man, he said, and he wanted their permission to seek revenge. The elders deliberated for an hour, and then announced their verdict: Punish the man and his family any way you see fit. Within minutes, Khan and his three brothers had broken into the man's house. Only his 45-year-old mother, Shehnaz Bibi, and her teenage son were home. Armed with rifles and canes, they dragged Bibi out of the house and brought her to the village square.

Before his death last August, Raoul Ruiz's "The Mysteries of Lisbon" earned just praise as a late masterpiece of epic, sumptuous formalism from the prolific Chilean filmmaker. His English-language thriller, "Blind Revenge," completed a few years ago, won't necessarily harm the eccentric director's reputation and, in fact, its pockets of weirdness and the familiar Ruiz theme of the inconvenience of the past might draw the curious. Others will likely shrug. Slapped with a new, more exploitative title after originally released in the U.K. as "A Closed Book," writer Gilbert Adair's "The Servant"-meets-"Sleuth" scenario has newly blind, grumpily witted British critic Sir Paul (Tom Conti, sporting black shades)

SAN JOSE - A jury has found a San Francisco man not guilty of felony assault and felony elder abuse, despite his admission that he attacked the priest accused of molesting him nearly four decades ago. The 10-man, two-woman panel also said Thursday that William Lynch was not guilty of misdemeanor elder abuse in the 2010 attack on Father Jerold Lindner. The 67-year-old Catholic priest has been linked to more than a dozen alleged victims - including his own nieces, nephew and sister - but never has been brought to trial because the statute of limitations in every case had run out. The jury was split on a final charge against Lynch: misdemeanor assault.

After Swedish author Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander novels became beloved detective stories but before Kenneth Branagh starred in English-language TV versions of the books, two series of television episodes featuring the character were made in Sweden. One of these 90-minute installments, translated in English as "The Revenge," has been released theatrically in America, although its enjoyment level remains strictly that of something you'd cozy up to at home on the couch: hardly cinematic but economically steered by director Charlotte Brandstrom.

ABC's"Revenge"has generated critical and fan support thanks to a healthy mix of soap opera camp and cold, calculated treachery. But there's another ingredient that bowls us over: the serious partying these people do. Party coverage is a staple here at the Ministry, and we're impressed with the social calendar this Hamptons-set potboiler maintains. Need some proof?  Since its January return, the show has zeroed in on Emily VanCamp's lead character Emily Thorne and her taking down of the powerful Grayson family -- led by icy matriarch Victoria (Madeleine Stowe)

As a singer and songwriter for the 1970s disco group the Village People, Victor Willis scored multiple hits that helped define that era for the baby boom generation. Now, Willis (the one dressed as a motorcycle cop, not the cowboy, the construction worker, the Native American or the biker) stands to collect a larger share of the money those hits generate. This month he won a legal battle to reclaim his share of the copyrights to the songs he co-wrote, including such classics as "Y.M.C.A.

The mountain lion hunt that put California Fish and Game Commission President Daniel W. Richards in the center of a political firestorm has him in trouble again. The enforcement chief for the state's Fair Political Practices Commission informed Richards on Thursday that he had violated the gift limits of the Political Reform Act when he went on the Idaho hunt but failed to pay the fee that the Flying B Ranch usually imposes. Richards eventually reimbursed the ranch $6,800 on March 5, but he did it after the expiration of the 30-day time period that state officials are given to pay back the value of an illegal gift, and after a complaint had already been filed with the FPPC.