From Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License ===== ===== The party's objective is to defeat Bane's lieutenants Thorne (an ancient red dragon), Kalistes (a Marilith), and Tanetal (a Glabrezu) and acquire the items they possess. The ultimate goal is to reach Bane's Land and face off against Bane's last and greatest lieutenant, Gothmenes (a Balor). All of the lieutenants are found in other dimensions, which can be reached using portals known as Pools of Darkness. Traveling through the pools can cause many types of items the characters are holding to be permanently destroyed and lost. The party may opt to leave these items in a vault to save them. Any items from the dimensions will suffer this same fate when traveling back to the realms. Some very powerful magic items and all non-magical items can survive the trip. There are also many side quests the party can do along the way, which can help the party in gaining experience and items, especially early on. There are many unmarked areas on the overworld the party can enter, which can be found if the player looks around the open fields for any such places. This is true of all the overworlds. The mandatory quests involve: *Clearing the Steading near Dragonhorn's Gap, which opens the way to the Dragon's Aerie. *Clearing the Dragon's Aerie, which opens the way to Thorne's Cave via a Pool of Darkness. *Clearing Thorne's Cave, which will give the party the Horn of Doom. *Clearing the drow caves and Kalistes' Temple under Zhentil Keep, which opens the way to Kalistes' Land via a Pool of Darkness. *Clearing Kalistes' Parlor, which will give the party the Crystal Ring. *Clearing the red tower of Marcus, which opens the way to Moander's body via a Pool of Darkness. *Clearing the heart of Moander where Tanetal resides, which will give the party the Talisman of Bane. *Clearing Arcam's Cave under Mulmaster, which opens the way to Bane's Land via a Pool of Darkness. *Finally, clearing Bane's Land and defeating Gothmenes (a Balor), who battles Elminster. There are also side quests in several places, and famous people in the realm too. For example, Elminster was always there to maintain the dimensional portal for the party should they arrive at any Pool of Darkness. The lost princess Alusair Nacacia will ask the party to help her to fight Rakshasas in Myth Drannor. Lastly, after finishing the final quest, the party had the option to either end their journey or go through one more dungeon of enemies and traps, known as "Dave's Challenge". ===== Julia and her brother, Paul, are spending a day by the beach when they discover a midden heap. They climb to the top, where Julia discovers a rag doll in a ball of feathers hidden in a nest. It turns out to be a powerful and evil witch, and it possesses Julia and spirits her away through a pyramid of fire. Paul manages to follow them and he finds himself in a strange country desperately unprepared for the return of the Ragwitch. At first, he meets the May Dancers, who after questioning him, lead him to the edge of the forest and set him free. The people of the land aid him as he searches for a way to free his sister, action following at every turn, as both Paul and Julia battle the Ragwitch; Julia from within Her, and Paul from outside. Paul collects several mystical objects from the powerful Elementals, before meeting with the Patchwork King, who forges for him a needle spear in order to kill the Ragwitch. There are no strong fighters to help Paul, no saviors for him and he must find his own way. Because Paul is no hero, his war is one of bravery and brains, not brawn. Julia tells her own story from the mind of the Ragwitch. Although she is much more courageous than Paul, her war is one of the mind, resisting the power of the Ragwitch from within the witch's body. ===== The Rainbow tells the story of three generations of the Brangwen family, a dynasty of farmers and craftsmen who live in the east Midlands of England, on the borders of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. The book spans a period of roughly 65 years from the 1840s to 1905, and shows how the love relationships of the Brangwens change against the backdrop of the increasing industrialisation of Britain. The first central character, Tom Brangwen, is a farmer whose experience of the world does not stretch beyond these two counties; while the last, Ursula, his granddaughter, studies at university and becomes a teacher in the progressively urbanised, capitalist and industrial world. The book starts with a description of the Brangwen dynasty, then deals with how Tom Brangwen, one of several brothers, fell in love with a Polish refugee and widow, Lydia. The next part of the book deals with Lydia's daughter by her first husband, Anna, and her destructive, battle-riven relationship with her husband, Will, the son of one of Tom's brothers. The last and most extended part of the book, and also probably the most famous, then deals with Will and Anna's daughter, Ursula, and her struggle to find fulfilment for her passionate, spiritual and sensual nature against the confines of the increasingly materialist and conformist society around her. She experiences a same-sex relationship with a teacher, and a passionate but ultimately doomed love affair with Anton Skrebensky, a British soldier of Polish ancestry. At the end of the book, having failed to find her fulfilment in Skrebensky, she has a vision of a rainbow towering over the Earth, promising a new dawn for humanity: "She saw in the rainbow the earth's new architecture, the old, brittle corruption of houses and factories swept away, the world built up in a living fabric of Truth, fitting to the over-arching heaven." ===== On November 5, 1975 in Snowflake, Arizona, logger Travis Walton (D. B. Sweeney), and his co-workers—Mike Rogers (Robert Patrick), Allan Dallis (Craig Sheffer), David Whitlock (Peter Berg), Greg Hayes (Henry Thomas) and Bobby Cogdill (Bradley Gregg)—head to work in the White Mountains. Driving home from work, the loggers come across an unidentified flying object. Curious to learn more, Walton gets out of the truck and is struck by a bright beam of light from the object and is sent flying several feet backwards as if pushed by an unseen force. Fearing Walton has been killed, the others escape from the scene. Rogers decides to go back to the spot to retrieve Walton, but he is nowhere to be found. Making their way back to town to report the incident, the loggers are met with skepticism, as they relate what sounds like a tall tale to Sheriff Blake Davis (Noble Willingham) and Lieutenant Frank Watters (James Garner). They are suspected of foul play despite no apparent motive or knowledge of Walton's whereabouts. After interviewing the loggers, Lieutenant Watters realizes there is a great deal of tension between Walton and Dallis, leading him to believe this might be a murder investigation. The Lieutenant also discovers a tabloid newspaper in their truck with headlines about aliens, hinting that they used the article to concoct their story. The loggers are accused of murder and are threatened by Travis' brother Dan Walton (Scott MacDonald). The loggers are offered a lie detector test and take it. After the testing is complete, Rogers is outraged that the results are not shared and he and "his guys" refuse to come back the next day to take it again. However, after the loggers leave, the man who administered the tests informs the Sheriff and the Lieutenant that with the exception of Dallis' test (which was inconclusive), the other loggers seem to be telling the truth. Travis Walton at the 2019 International UFO Congress. Five days later, Rogers receives a call from someone claiming to be Walton. He is found at a Heber gas station, alive but naked, dehydrated and incoherent. A ufologist questions Walton but he is thrown out and Walton is taken to a hospital. Rogers visits Walton while in the emergency room and ends up telling Walton that he left him after he was struck by the light but came back to get him. Walton appears enraged by this and turns away from Rogers who blames the whole incident on Walton for getting out of the truck. During a welcome home party, Walton suffers from a mental breakdown and flashback of the abduction by the extraterrestrials. In his flashback, he awakens inside a slimy cocoon. Breaking out of its membrane, he finds himself in a zero-gravity environment inside a cylindrical enclosure whose walls contain other similar cocoons and he is horrified to inadvertently discover that one contains the decomposing remains of a human body. As he makes his way to a neighboring area featuring what appear to be several humanoid space suits, he is apprehended by two extraterrestrial creatures. He was unwillingly hauled down corridors full of terrestrial detritus such as shoes and keys before arriving in a bizarre examination room. The aliens strip him of his clothes and cover him with an elastic material that pins him painfully to a raised platform under an array of equipment and lights in the middle of the room. Despite Walton's terrified screams, the aliens pitilessly subject him to a traumatic, excruciating experiment in which a gelatinous substance is shoved into his mouth, his jaw is clamped open, a device is inserted into his neck and he is forced to endure an ocular probe while fully conscious during the experience. Afterwards, Walton loses consciousness until finding himself back on Earth disoriented, abused, and severely traumatized. While interviewing Walton, Lieutenant Watters expresses his doubts about the abduction, dismissing it as merely a hoax. He notes Walton's newfound celebrity because of the tabloids' attempts to profit from his tale. The film culminates with a dénouement between Walton and Rogers. The closing titles inform that in 1993, the loggers were resubmitted to additional polygraph examinations, which they passed, corroborating their innocence. ===== The novel begins with the main character, Jacob Demwa, working at the center for uplift on Earth, while he recovers from a tragedy at the Vanilla Space Needle where he saved the space elevator from destruction but lost his love in the process. An alien friend of Demwa's, Fagin (a Kanten), contacts Demwa and offers him a job. Initially reluctant to return to his previous life as a scientific investigator, Demwa agrees to attend a secret meeting. He learns that there are "ghosts" appearing in the Sun's chromosphere. The ghosts are without precedent in the galactic library. Demwa agrees to come and investigate the origin and purpose of the sun-ghosts, and travels to Mercury where the sundiver project is based. With him on Mercury are: Helene deSilva, the attractive station commander with whom Jacob develops a relationship over the course of the book; Fagin; Pila Bubbacub, the library representative; his assistant Culla (a Pring); Dr. Dwayne Kepler (the head of the Sundiver expedition); Dr. Mildred Martine (a psychiatrist); and the exuberant journalist Peter LaRoque. Demwa goes to the sun, and observes the sun-ghosts. There are apparently three forms: the "toroids" which appear to be similar to cattle and live off of the magnetic fields in the chromosphere, a relatively fluid, apparently intelligent variety, and a threatening, anthropomorphic figure that avoids the side of the sunship where the instruments are located. When a neo-chimpanzee scientist, Dr. Jeffrey, is killed on a solo mission to the sun, it seems to confirm the sun-ghosts' hostile intent. An investigation seems to implicate the reporter, LaRoque. LaRoque is then tested to determine if he is capable of murder. The test results indicate LaRoque has violent tendencies and he is incarcerated. A third trip to the sun is undertaken, in hopes that Pila Bubbacub will be able to contact the sun-ghosts. He fails to do so, but claims to have succeeded, saying that the sun-ghosts are offended and have used psi to control LaRoque's actions. He uses a powder that blocks the ships sensors to pretend he has dispelled the sun-ghosts because he is embarrassed by the Library's lack of data on the ghosts. Back on Mercury, Jacob discovers his trick, and reveals it, resulting in disgrace to Bubbacub and embarrassment for the Pila. The characters go on yet another mission into the sun, this time with a laser to communicate with the sun-ghosts. They make brief contact with one of the ghosts, but an anthropomorphic ghost appears and warns them against further exploration of the sun. While they are leaving, they discover that one of Culla's dietary supplements is a dye used in tunable lasers. Combining this with an earlier conversation about Culla's eyesight, Demwa concludes that Culla can project laser light from his eyes: he has been faking the anthropomorphic ghosts. When Culla realizes he has been discovered he retreats to the instrument side of the ship and begins disabling the equipment that propels the sunship so that it will fall into the photosphere, taking all evidence of his deception with it. The sun-ghosts use toroids to arrest the ship's fall, but eventually they give out, and the ship plummets. While Demwa and one of the crew attempt to disable Culla, Helene discovers that only the galactic technology has been sabotaged, and uses the refrigerator laser as a thruster to move the ship out of the sun. Culla is killed, and the ship eventually escapes the sun, though all but Fagin temporarily "die" of hypothermia and frostbite from the refrigerator laser. The ship's records are recovered, showing that Culla used his laser sight to discredit Bubbacub, as part of a campaign to free his species from its client status, and then to sabotage the ship when he was discovered to prevent the Pila from finding out. Although set in the same universe as the rest of the other Uplift books, it is set a considerable amount of time before the other books, and shares none of the same characters, apart from Jacob Demwa, who is mentioned as the mentor of Tom Orley and Gillian Baskin, and Helene Alvarez (née deSilva), who is mentioned in Startide Rising as Credeiki's former captain aboard the James Cook and who appears in The Uplift War to sign a treaty with the Thennanin. ===== A miscarriage of justice lands Willis Newton in prison, and he learns quickly that as a convict his only way up the social ladder is through having money. With two others, Slim and Glasscock, he carries out a bank robbery in broad daylight. Slim is caught when the three of them try to escape on horseback while the sheriff chases them in a car. Willis and Glasscock later find a bank director who buys the looted war bonds and sells them information on plenty of other banks. Henceforth, Willis and Glasscock rob banks at night and get away by car. Glasscock turns out to be an expert with nitroglycerin. Willis talks his brothers into supporting him. He tells them that bankers are the worst crooks of all and therefore robbing them of their money would only mean that little thieves are stealing from big thieves. He also says all banks are insured anyway and the insurance companies ought to be thankful because they would not be able to sell any insurance if there were no bank robberies. The Newton gang is very prolific and some bankers prove to be the crooks Willis takes them for because they exaggerate their losses. Then the insurance companies force banks to invest in enhanced safes, which can withstand nitroglycerin. Consequently, the Newton Gang goes to Toronto and ambushes a cash transport in broad daylight. Despite an elaborate plan, many things go awry and the gang members are scarcely able to escape. Willis decides to become "legal", but the oil well he buys is a huge setback that costs him nearly all his money. In his despair he goes so far as to tell his wife that God did not want him to be "legit". After that he is easily lured into another criminal endeavor. He becomes very enthusiastic about a night-time train robbery. Unfortunately Glasscock is not as good with a gun as he was with nitroglycerin. He confuses Dock Newton with a guard, panics and shoots him. Willis needs to bring his wounded brother to a doctor, and this undertaking eventually blows their cover. All the Newton brothers are finally arrested and sentenced. ===== King Mattruss (John Goodman) in a hot tub in "The Love Cabin". Pyst Island is full of litter, most of the buildings are ruined, and graffiti reveals secret doors and solutions to puzzles that challenged players in Myst. Pyst utilizes three-dimensional graphics, animated drawings, and pre-recorded video and audio. Gameplay is a simplified version of the playing style used for Myst. The game consists of a series of pre-rendered, interactive visuals of Pyst Island locations. With Bergman's "seal of disapproval", the concept is that the familiar Myst locations have been vandalized by millions of virtual players who have been trapped on the island, having "giv[en] up on trying to finish the damn thing", and as a result have trashed the space, while a shady entrepreneur has built a "Dorian Grey money-making scheme". However, unlike in Myst there are no real puzzles to solve. The player simply explores a setting, and then moves to adjoining locations at will. The game does not feature the Myst-style point-and-click interface. Instead, the players are shown an image on a postcard with four arrow keys, on the edges, that players click to change the image on the postcard. The player moves through the scenes clicking the lateral arrow keys; clicking the upper and lower arrow keys two postcards are shown for every scene, all featuring a special Pyst currency in a stamp, stylised as "5F". ===== The games are set in the distant future; a time when the planet Earth is mostly ocean, leaving some islands left for civilization to prosper on. Based on in-game dialogue, the series takes place at least in the year 80XX. By this time frame, the original humans have been replaced by artificial lifeforms almost identical to them which can produce offspring with almost no effort. The player controls Mega Man Volnutt, a teenage digger and archaeologist of sorts who searches underground ruins mainly for Quantum Refractors, which are the civilization's primary source of energy. He was found as a baby on Nino Island at the bottom of the closed-off Nino Ruins and was raised by Professor Barrel Caskett along with his granddaughter Roll Caskett. Giving them trouble are the Bonnes, a group of pirates consisting of leader Teisel Bonne, his sister (though the booklet says daughter) Tron Bonne (who is also allegedly infatuated with Mega Man), their baby brother Bon Bonne who somehow can drive a large mecha suit (known primarily for his repeated line, "Babu!", which has become a catch phrase among the series' fans), and the 41 Servbots (one of which is only in The Misadventures of Tron Bonne). More trouble is given to Mega Man by the Reaverbots, the techno-organic semi- intelligent residents of the underground ruins who serve to protect its contents. ===== In 2003 in Carcer City, a journalist reports about James Earl Cash, who has been recently executed by lethal injection. However, Cash was only sedated, and awakens to an unknown voice referring to himself as "The Director" giving him instructions through an earpiece. The Director promises Cash his freedom, but only if he murders "Hunters" – gang members sent to hunt him – in special areas around Carcer City filmed by CCTV. Cash is first instructed to kill the Hoods, a gang of dangerous criminals and corrupt police officers patrolling an abandoned area of the city. Upon doing so, he is abducted by the Cerberus, who take him to another part of Carcer City. Cash is subsequently forced to kill other gang members across various abandoned locations, including a Nazi skinhead gang called the Skinz, a sadistic paramilitary called the Wardogs (who have kidnapped Cash's family to use as bait), a group of psychopatic killers in monkey costumes called the Monkeys, and an outlaw gang called the Innocentz (which consit of the Skullyz, a group of Hispanic occultists with skull makeup, and the Babyfaces, demented perverts that wear baby masks). During all of this, the Director monitors Cash's actions, but later has his family killed, causing Cash to vow revenge. After eliminating the final gang - a group of schizophrenic psychopaths that wear smiley masks and call themselves the "Smileys" - Cash is instructed to follow the "White Rabbit", a man dressed in a rabbit costume. However, this turns out to be a trap, as the Director planned to have Cash killed at the climax of his film all along. Surviving, Cash kills the White Rabbit and escapes, prompting the Director to deploy the remaining Wardogs, led by Ramirez, to find and kill him. Ramirez catches Cash and decides to play a cat and mouse game with him, which he survives, killing Ramirez and his men. He is then rescued by the journalist reporting on him, who explains that the Director is Lionel Starkweather, a former film producer from Los Santos who now produces for a snuff film ring. The journalist has been compiling evidence against Starkweather and now has enough to expose him, but needs to retrieve it from her apartment. Meanwhile, Starkweather blackmails corrupt police chief Gary Schaffer into apprehending Cash and the journalist, but the former is able to protect the journalist until she retrieves the evidence against Starkweather. from the police. After telling the journalist to flee the city with the evidence, Cash sets out to find and kill Starkweather. Cash fights police and SWAT teams chasing him through the subway and streets until he is cornered in a train yard. He is almost summarily executed before the police are killed by the Cerberus, who recapture Cash and bring him to Starkweather's mansion compound. As the Cerberus prepare to execute Cash themselves, Piggsy, who is normally kept chained up in Starkweather's attic, breaks free and distracts them. Surviving once again, Cash makes his way through the compound, killing all remaining Cerberus members before facing Piggsy in the upper levels of the mansion. Unable to fight him directly, Cash tricks him into standing on a grate that collapses under his weight, and cuts off his arms with his own chainsaw, sending Piggsy falling to his death. Afterwards, Cash finally confronts Starkweather in his office, who tries to bargain for his life, but is swiftly disemboweled with Piggsy's chainsaw. Later, the media and police arrive at the mansion, with the journalist exposing Starkweather's snuff ring and police complicity, leading to Schaffer being criminally prosecuted for corruption. Cash, however, is nowhere to be found. ===== In Slayers, it was mentioned that the main characters of that series live on a world that is one of the four created by the mother of all creation, called the Lord of Nightmares. This world was known as the Red World. Lost Universe, however, takes place in a different world, known as the Black World. Whereas the demi gods of the various worlds such as Ruby-Eye Shabranigdo and Dark Star Dugradigdo had physical presence in that world, they appear in the Black World as "Lost Ships", intelligent space ships of unknown origin that have powerful or somewhat divine powers with more advanced technology than any other device in the universe. Their rarity and superiority has sparked suggestions that they have been made by an advanced ancient alien civilization or by coming from the beginning of the universe itself. Being a central part to the plot the "Lost Ships" are intelligent beings with different loyalties and even their own agenda. Kane Blueriver, a "trouble contractor," inherits a "Lost Ship" from his grandmother and from there, he and his sidekick Milly, together with Canal, the ship's computer, journey to find a source of the evil that threatens the universe. ===== In the mid-to-late 1960s, three young men leave their small Southern hometown to join the United States Army and fight in the Vietnam War. Upon their return home, they take up the cause of battling the racial injustices prevalent in the town. When the town's Ku Klux Klan members offer a murderously violent reaction to their efforts, the trio uses the lessons they learned in the army, fighting the Vietcong, to conduct an all-out war against the Klan. ===== The film opens with an image of a wooden toy horse. Gradually we observe that this is an assembly line in a prison, staffed by prisoners. They sing (La liberté, c'est pour les heureux = "Freedom is for the happy") as they work. Close-ups of two prisoners (Louis and Émile, the film's main protagonists) indicate they've taken a work tool. The prisoner next to Louis occasionally looks on, looking somewhat bored. After dinner everyone goes back to their cell. After feigning sleep during a guard's nightly rounds, Louis and Émile sing the title song as they resume a project of sawing off the prison window. Émile cuts himself, and Louis kindly mends the wound with a handkerchief. The window breaks free and they attempt to escape. Louis is able to get over the retaining wall, but Émile is not successful. Louis escapes, accidentally knocks someone off a bicycle, and rides off on the bicycle. Meanwhile, we hear a chorus suggesting he's about to be captured (Ce sera bientôt fini = "It'll soon be over"). Louis heads into a village emblazoned with the words "Finishing Line" - the cyclist he knocked over was in a bicycle race, and Louis has won first prize. Louis enters a store to purchase some handkerchiefs. While the proprietor is looking in a backroom, he hears Louis's muffled cries for help. After being unbound, Louis explains that someone robbed the store and made off with the money. He points the direction and a group of people run after the thief, leaving Louis alone, revealing that it was he who stole the money, feigning the story. A montage sequence follows in which we see Louis transform himself from a poor record merchant, to the well- attired and well-mannered head of an industrial factory that produces record players. Interior shots of the assembly line bear a strong resemblance to the assembly line seen at the beginning of the film. Meanwhile, behind the factory we see an open field. Émile (apparently now out of prison) has been sleeping, and wakes up to a beautiful day. A flower sings "Ami, l'ombre de la prison a cédé la place au soleil" = "Friend, the shadow of prison has given way to the sun." A policeman comes by and tells Émile he must get to work. But he is put in a cell for resisting arrest. Through the prison window, he sees more flowers surrounding an apartment window and thinks he hears them singing ("Viens, toi que j'aimerai" = "Come, you who I will love"). Then a lovely woman, Jeanne, appears at the window and appears to be the source of the singing. Sad at his predicament, he tries to hang himself from the prison window. But the gate is too weak, comes loose and falls on Émile's head, enabling him to escape. He stands by the apartment entrance, looking up at the flower-covered window, but is slightly disappointed to realize that the flowers are not singing, and that it's only a recording. Then he realizes that Jeanne has emerged from the apartment with her Uncle, who appears to be overly-protective and pulls her away from Émile, and kicks him. A commotion and chase ensue in which Émile runs as we realize that Jeanne already has a boyfriend, Paul. Émile makes his way into the factory and lands in the recruitment department. A recorded song ("Vous qui désirez un emploi" = You, who desires employment") instructs him on how to be measured, weighed, and fingerprinted. In the next scene we see Émile back on an assembly line, this time assembling phonographs. Upon seeing Jeanne also working in the factory, Émile becomes absent minded, causing great consternation and humor on the assembly line (This scene at the assembly line was probably the inspiration for the opening scene of Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times -- see below.) A guard tries to stop Émile from talking to Jeanne and they chase after him. He is stopped by guards near the foot of a grand staircase at the doorway of an office. Louis emerges with aides, and Émile gets his attention. At first Louis does not appear to remember his prison friend, but takes him into his office, thinking this is an extortion plot. After a scuffle, Émile cuts himself. As Louis tends to the wound with his handkerchief, he recalls that he did similarly when the two tried to break out of prison at the film's outset. His attitude changes to one of friendship, as he embraces Émile and sings a brief reprise of the title song. The scene is a dinner party at Louis's house. Neither his guests nor his wife Maud, nor her gigolo lover think much of Louis. Meanwhile, Louis and Émile don't care, and enjoy sending up the haughtiness of his life style, climaxing in another reprise of the title song, as the two friends dance in front of a painting of Louis which he has damaged with a bottle of wine. With her suitcases packed, Maud leaves the house. Émile also leaves, and briefly encounters an ex-prisoner on the street. (This is the same person who was sitting next to Louis at the film's outset.) Louis is thrilled to look out the door at the departing Maud, but does not see the ex- prisoner, who makes a nod of understanding to himself. Back at the factory, Émile tries to make overtures to Jeanne, but is thwarted by guards, eventually finding himself in Louis's office. Louis has been explaining that his new factory will opening the next day, increasing productivity. Upon seeing his friend interrupt, Louis is slightly annoyed until Émile explains that he wants to court Jeanne, another worker. From his office card files, Louis is able to produce a picture profile of Jeanne, but this is automatically followed by a profile of her Uncle. Louis invites both Jeanne and her Uncle into his office to explain Émile's interest, and offers some money along with it. Uncle is impressed, but Jeanne is bewildered and unhappy. Louis arrives at home, wondering where his servants are. He discovers them tied up, and enters a room filled with ex-convicts, now gangsters, led by the person who sat next to him in the opening scene and who encountered Émile the other night. They sing briefly, before the lead gangster reveals their purpose. They want to extort money from Louis by threatening to reveal that he's an escaped convict. Louis refuses to accept. Lovers' quarrel in the Magic Park. The scene opens in Luna Park, with Émile happily talking with Uncle, while Jeanne looks very unhappy. Paul sitting at a distance, looks on disapprovingly. During the scene, Jeanne is able to get away and be alone with Paul. Émile, unseen, finally finds her and realizes that she already has a boyfriend. Émile longingly looks up at Jeanne's apartment window, as she happily waves to Paul. He realizes that he can't have her. While he's alone on the street, a policeman tries to question Émile, who runs into the factory for safety, but is pursued by guards. Meanwhile, the gangsters have asked to visit Louis's factory. He leads them into a secret room within his office, and then seals the door behind him. As the gangsters realize they're trapped, Louis empties his safe of all his money, putting it into a small suitcase on his desk. Émile finds him, and Louis explains that he's about to be denounced by the gangsters. He then hides Émile while he briefly speaks to the guards who have been searching for his friend. At the same time, another ex-convict enters Louis's office and takes the suitcase. When Louis returns with Émile, he realizes the suitcase is missing and tries to look for the person with it. Pursued by guards, Émile accidentally opens the secret room through which all the gangsters emerge. Both Émile and the gangsters chase after Louis, who chases after the ex-con who took the suitcase. This ex-con is able to penetrate to the roof the factory, but is caught, leaving the suitcase on the roof. Apprehended, the gangsters show the police Louis's picture as a convict, but they are taken away. It is the inauguration of the new factory with crowds of dignitaries and workers assembled. Louis gives a speech extolling its virtues of productivity. A deaf old man cuts the ribbon, and a chorus sings a slow march, "Gloire au bonheur" = "Hail to happiness," as the automatic assembly line produces portable phonographs. Another speaker begins a speech, while Louis sees the policeman. The policeman has realized that Louis is an escaped ex-convict, and patiently waits for the festivities to end to apprehend him. Louis makes a concluding speech in which he gives the factory to the workers, and says that fate will take him to a different place. As another speaker continues, a wind begins to pick up, gently blowing the decorations. It also gradually begins to blow the money that was in Louis's suitcase, still sitting on the roof of the factory. Gradually, bills appear on the factory grounds, testing everyone's propriety, as they look frustrated at not wanting to appear uncivilized by bending down to pick up the money. But Louis has no inhibitions: He immediately recognizes what and where the money is and begins going after it. This in turn launches everyone into a chase after the money. The scene turns to a merry chaos as the dignitaries in top hats wildly chase after money. The final scene of the film shows the now-idyllic factory. Instead of working, only a few workers now play cards, as the automated factory does all the work. The camera pans along to another area by a brook, festively decorated with ribbons. Most of the workers are here, dancing and enjoying themselves to a reprise of the song "Ami, l'ombre de la prison" which blends into "Viens, toi que j'aimerai" as we see Jeanne and Paul, happily dancing with each other. A cut takes us to Louis and Émile, now tramps, entertaining people on a roadside by singing the third verse of the title song. The people throw coins at the two tramps. A rich car passes, making Louis momentarily dream of what he once had. After a swift kick in the rear by Émile, the two head off down the road to the final strains of the title song. ===== Orlova plays an American circus artist who, after giving birth to a black baby (played by James Lloydovich Patterson), immediately becomes a victim of racism and is forced to stay in the circus, but finds refuge, love and happiness in the USSR. Her black son is embraced by friendly Soviet people. The movie climaxes with a lullaby being sung to the baby by representatives of various Soviet ethnicities taking turns. The film was digitally colorized in 2011 in Russia. ===== Bounty hunters Iria and Bob accept a job to apprehend Zeiram on Earth, setting up an alternate dimension called a Zone to help combat and capture him. Iria and Bob's use of stolen electricity results in electric company employees Kamiya and Teppei investigating their base just as Zeiram enters Earth's atmosphere. Kamiya accidentally flips a switch that transports Teppei into the Zone. While Teppei unsuccessfully tries to get an explanation from Iria, she transports the two of them to the Zone. Upon arrival, she traps him and leaves to destroy the pod Zeiram arrived in. Teppei finds Zeiram and gets chased by another monster that the creature summoned, eventually stumbling across Kamiya. Iria's first attempt to capture Zeiram fails and she finds he has a shield that makes him immune to bullet fire. Iria decides to use her special combat suit, despite Bob's protests to not fight him in close-range combat. After Iria finally manages to capture Zeiram, Teppei comes across her. He asks her to free Kamiya, which she reluctantly agrees to. Zeiram causes a distraction while trapped, using one of his monsters to lure Iria back to Earth. The ensuing fight damages the teleportation unit. Teppei saves Kamiya from a sneak attack by the monster Zeiram summoned, but Kamiya accidentally shoots the lock to Zeiram's prison, freeing the creature. Iria tries teleporting back to the Zone but is set back by a power failure. Teppei and Kamiya hotwire a car, using it to incapacitate Zeiram. The human-like face on Zeiram's "hat" attacks them, biting Kamiya. Teppei and Kamiya escape soon after. Bob speculates that Zeiram is a forbidden biological weapon whose "hat" is used to eat other beings and use what he has consumed to produce his monster subordinates. Zeiram's attempt to make an subordinate copy of Kamiya ends in failure and he kills it in anger. After a brief break to address Kamiya's wounds, Teppei receives a communicator from Iria. She explains the problems with the transporter and that the Zone itself will not last for much longer. They agree upon Teppei and Kamiya waiting it out as long as they can until Iria can get back to the Zone. Iria and Bob decide to bring a powerful weapon called the Metis Cannon to fight Zeiram, despite the personal risk it causes them to use it without prior approval. Kamiya hijacks construction equipment to save Teppei from Zeiram before Iria returns to shoot Zeiram with a bazooka. Zeiram soon recovers, shedding his skin to take on a giant skeletal form. Iria defends Teppei and Kamiya as they retrieve the Metis cannon from the spot Bob transported it to. Iria traps the "hat" with eight minutes to spare before the Zone breaks down. Kamiya and Iria are teleported to the base, meeting Bob. Bob asks Teppei to pick up the captured Zeiram, who hovers in his restraints and destroys the transport unit needed to bring Iria back. He escapes from the trap and regenerates his body. Kamiya uses his technician skills to help repair the transport unit while Zeiram ramps up his attack. Kamiya succeeds and Iria returns in time to save the two men and Bob from Zeiram. After a brief respite, Iria complements the two on their resilience and offers them two of her braids as a "thank you" gesture. Bob takes a photo of the trio together as a memento. In Zeiram 2, the creature's core, which was presumed dead, is recovered by a shadowy organization which installs it as the organic core of a robotic supersoldier. Iria, Bob, Teppei, and Kamiya continue their battle against Zeiram in a Zone created by the monster. The plot plays out similarly to the original Zeiram, with the four getting into cat-and-mouse confrontations with the creature and the monsters that he summons and dealing with complications caused by Iria and Bob's faulty tech. The sequel adds the additional challenge of Fujikuro, a manipulative rival and saboteur who seeks the same ancient teleportation relic called the Kamarite that Iria and Bob returned to Earth to get. Fujikuro also appeared in Iria: Zeiram the Animation. ===== ===== Lorenzo "Shakes" Carcaterra, Tommy Marcano, Michael Sullivan, and John Reilly are childhood friends in Hell's Kitchen in the mid-1960s. The local priest, Father Robert "Bobby" Carillo, serves as a father figure to the boys and keeps an eye on them. However, they start running small errands for a local gangster, King Benny. In the summer of 1967, they accidentally injure a man while robbing a hot dog vendor. The boys are sentenced to the Wilkinson Home for Boys in Upstate New York; Tommy, Michael, and John are sentenced to 12–18 months, while Shakes is given 6–12 months. There, the boys are systematically abused and raped by guards Sean Nokes, Henry Addison, Ralph Ferguson, and Adam Styler. The abuse changes the boys and their friendship forever. During the boys' stay at the facility, they participate in Wilkinson's annual football game between the guards and inmates. Michael convinces Rizzo, a black inmate, that they should play as hard as they can to show the guards they can fight back. Rizzo agrees, and helps to win the game. As a result of this, all four boys are beaten and thrown into solitary confinement for several weeks, and Rizzo is beaten to death by the guards. They cover up Rizzo's murder by telling his family that he died of pneumonia. By the spring of 1968, shortly before Shakes' release from Wilkinson, he insists that they should publicly report the abuse. The others refuse, with Michael asserting that anyone they told would either not believe their story or not care. The boys then decide never to speak of the abuse — even after they are all released. Thirteen years later in 1981, John and Tommy -- now career criminals -- unexpectedly encounter Nokes, who now is a private security guard, by chance in a Hell's Kitchen pub and kill him in front of four witnesses. Michael, who has become an assistant district attorney, arranges to be assigned to the case; he secretly intends to botch the prosecution. He and Shakes, a newspaper reporter, forge a plan to free John and Tommy and get revenge on their surviving abusers. With the help of others (including King Benny and their childhood friend Carol, a social worker), they carry out their plan using information compiled by Michael on the backgrounds of the former Wilkinson guards. They also hire Danny Snyder, an alcoholic, washed-up lawyer, to defend John and Tommy. Michael's plan will only work if he can damage Nokes' reputation and place John and Tommy at another location at the time of the shooting. Ferguson, when called in court as a witness for Nokes' character, is forced to admit that he, Nokes, and other guards abused boys. To clinch the case, however, they need a key witness who can give John and Tommy an alibi. Shakes has a long talk with Father Bobby, who resists at first but – after hearing of the abuse – reluctantly agrees to perjure himself. At trial, Father Bobby testifies that John and Tommy were with him at a New York Knicks game at the time of the shooting and has three ticket stubs to prove that they were at the game with him. As a result, John and Tommy are acquitted. The remaining guards are also punished for their crimes: Addison, now a politician who still molests children, is killed by Little Caesar, a local drug kingpin and Rizzo's older brother after King Benny informs him that Addison killed his brother and covered it up; Styler, now a corrupt policeman, is arrested for taking bribes and murdering a drug dealer; and Ferguson, a social worker, loses his job and family as a result of his admission in court and is plagued by guilt for the rest of his life. Michael, Shakes, John, Tommy, and Carol meet at a bar to celebrate. Shakes remains a newspaper reporter, living in Hell's Kitchen. Michael quits the DA's office, moves to the English countryside, becomes a carpenter and never marries. John drinks himself to death and Tommy is murdered; both die before age 30. Carol stays in the city as a social worker and has a son, whom she names after the four boys. ===== Seven years after the Outer Heaven uprising, a new Metal Gear prototype (codenamed Gander) has been stolen by a separatist guerrilla group in the region of Gindra in Central Africa. The Gindra Liberation Front (or GLF), led by the mercenary Augustine Eguabon, plans on using the prototype as a means of achieving victory in an ongoing civil war. Solid Snake, the FOXHOUND operative responsible for the destruction of the original Metal Gear seven years before, is brought back from his retirement in Alaska. His mission is to infiltrate the group's headquarters Galuade, the fortress that was formerly Outer Heaven. During the course of his mission, Snake teams up with Sgt. Christine Jenner, a surviving member of the Delta Force that was sent before him to retrieve Gander. The GLF are assisted by four surviving members of Black Chamber, a defunct special forces unit whose members are given animal-themed codenames similar to FOXHOUND. They are led by Black Arts Viper, a boobytrap specialist who wields a prosthetic left arm. Joining him are Slasher Hawk, an Australian Aborigine armed with two giant boomerangs who is accompanied in battle by a hawk; Marionette Owl, a former serial killer endowed with owl-like nocturnal vision and attacks with his two bunraku puppets; and Pyro Bison, a pyromaniac armed with a specially prepared flamethrower and fuel pack. As Snake goes deeper into Galuade and confronts each member of Black Chamber, he uncovers a conspiracy involving the GLF and US Government. ===== ===== A group of five renowned detectives, each accompanied by a relative or associate, is invited to "dinner and a murder" by the mysterious Lionel Twain. Having lured his guests to his mansion managed by a blind butler named Jamessir Bensonmum, who is later joined by a deaf-mute, illiterate cook named Yetta, Twain joins his guests at dinner. The house is then sealed off. Twain announces that he is the greatest detective in the world. To prove his claim, he challenges the guests to solve a murder which will take place at midnight; a reward of $1 million will be presented to the winner. Before midnight the butler is found dead and Twain disappears, only to re-appear immediately after midnight dead from a stab wound. The cook is also discovered to have been an animated mannequin, now packed in a storage crate. The party spends the rest of the night investigating and bickering. They are manipulated by a mysterious behind-the- scenes force, confused by red herrings, and baffled by the "mechanical marvel" that is Twain's house. They ultimately find their own lives threatened. Each sleuth presents his or her theory on the case, pointing out the others' past connections to Twain and their possible motives for murdering him. When they retire to their guest rooms for the night, the guests are each confronted by things that threaten to kill them: a snake, a venomous scorpion, a descending ceiling, poison gas, and a bomb. They all survive, and in the morning they gather in the office, where they find the butler waiting, very much alive and not blind. Each detective presents a different piece of evidence with which they each independently solved the mystery, and in each case, they accuse the butler of being one of Twain's former associates. At first the butler plays the part of each of the persons, male or female, with whom he is identified, but then he pulls off a mask to reveal Lionel Twain himself, alive. Twain disparages the detectives—and metafictionally, the authors who created them—for the way their adventures have been handled. He points out misdeeds as introducing crucial characters at the last minute for the traditional "twist in the tale" (something the assembled detectives had been doing a few minutes earlier) and withholding clues and information to make it impossible for the reader to solve the mystery. Each of the detectives departs the house empty handed, none of them having won the $1 million. When asked whether there had been a murder, Wang replies, "Yes: killed good weekend." (Television Version) As Wang and his son leave, they are met by the incoming Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, and Wang graciously provides directions to the Twain house. When his son asks if he should have warned them, Wang replies, "Let idiots find out for themselves." Alone, Twain pulls off yet another mask to reveal Yetta, who smokes a cigarette and laughs maniacally while rings of cigarette smoke fill the screen. ===== The background of Sergeant Thomas Jefferson "T.J." Hooker is that he, up until recently, was a plainclothes LCPD Detective Sergeant whose partner was killed in the line of duty while he and Hooker were trying to stop a bank robbery. An angry Hooker becomes motivated to rid the streets of criminals like those who murdered his partner. Thus, he decides the only way to do so is return to his former position as a uniformed patrolman. In "The Protectors," the series' pilot/TV movie, Hooker, back in uniform, trains a group of police academy recruits, including those played by Richard Lawson, Brian Patrick Clarke, Kelly Harmon, and Adrian Zmed. Hal Williams plays a senior officer, and Richard Herd makes a brief appearance as Captain Dennis Sheridan, Hooker's tough but understanding superior. During most of the series, Hooker is partnered with brash, sometimes hot-headed young rookie Vince Romano (played by Zmed). Hooker acts as his mentor both professionally and socially. The age difference generally being the key hook of the partnership, the pair quickly became fast friends and a good team. Outside of his work, Hooker is divorced as a result of his work putting a strain on his marriage, but he is friendly with his ex-wife Fran, a nurse. A ladies' man, Hooker is still trying to adjust to being single again. Lee Bryant was the original actress to portray Fran; the part is later played by Leigh Christian. Hooker's tough, no-nonsense demeanor has him often clashing with station Captain Sheridan (Richard Herd), but he always got the job done and was highly respected as a result. Working behind the desk at the police precinct, Vicki Taylor (April Clough) is a female officer who continually dodges pick-up attempts by Vince Romano. Introduced at the start of the second season was attractive Officer Stacy Sheridan (Heather Locklear), the daughter of Captain Sheridan, who attended the police academy. Initially brought in to replace Vicki, by the end of the season she had progressed to patrolling with Jim Corrigan (James Darren), another veteran cop much in the mold of Hooker. From the third season onward, Hooker and Romano (Unit 4-Adam-30), and Stacy and Corrigan (4-Adam-16), usually worked closely together to tackle cases. The addition of Corrigan and Sheridan's partnership added an extra dimension to the show, sometimes with whole plots revolving around one or both of them. For the final season, the series moved from ABC to a late-night slot on CBS. Along with the move, Adrian Zmed chose to leave the series to pursue other projects, leaving Hooker to patrol alone or to generally work as more of a trio with Stacy and Jim, often on undercover work. With its blend of humor mixed with "on the streets" grittiness, the show proved popular. The first season ranked 28th in the Nielsen ratings, but subsequent seasons failed to repeat the same level of success. The third season saw a slight revamp (including the theme music being rearranged into a more pop-driven version), with Corrigan set into place as Stacy's partner, Captain Sheridan being dropped into the background (appearing as 'Special Guest Star' in just a few third and fourth-season episodes), and stories drifting toward a more straightforward cops-and-robbers fare. ===== On Omri’s ninth birthday, his best friend Patrick gives him the disappointing gift of a small plastic Indian figurine. Omri also receives a white metal medicine cupboard from his brother. The only key in the house that fits the cupboard's lock is the key to Omri's great-grandmother's jewelry box. Omri puts the plastic figurine in the cupboard and locks it with the key, only to discover the following morning that the figurine has come to life as a three- inch tall Iroquois Indian man. Though the tiny man, whose name is Little Bear (Little Bull in some editions), initially believes that Omri is a god, he quickly realizes that Omri is only an ordinary, albeit giant, boy, and proceeds to boss him around. Little Bear explores the house and garden, while Omri provides for Little Bear's needs. Little Bear's rejection of the gift of a tipi (as Iroquois live in longhouses) leads Omri to research more about the Iroquois people, causing him to rethink some of his stereotypical views of American Indians and to realize that Little Bear is a real person with a history and culture. Omri is particularly affected when a plastic figure of an elderly Native American chief dies of shock upon being brought to life. Little Bear, however, claims the old chief's headdress, as he is the only one around to take the title, and becomes more demanding than ever. Patrick offers Omri a gift of a plastic cowboy so that Omri can play properly with his toy Indian. Omri rejects the gift, which leads to letting Patrick in on the secret. Overwhelmed with excitement, Patrick urges Omri to bring loads of plastic people to life, while Omri protests that the people would be real, not toys to be played with. Nevertheless, Patrick uses the cupboard without Omri's knowledge, bringing to life the plastic cowboy, who turns out to be a man named Boone from an entirely different place and time as Little Bear. Over Omri's objections, Patrick introduces Boone to Little Bear. The two tiny men mistrust one another from the start, with Boone deriding Little Bear as "savage" and "dirty." The antagonism comes to a head when Omri and Patrick introduce the duo to television; when Boone cheers the slaughter of Native Americans in an old Western, Little Bear shoots him in the chest with an arrow. Little Bear is immediately guilty, but does not know enough medicine to save Boone, while the boys are far too large to help. Omri brings to life the figure of a World War I medic, who turns out to be a man named Tommy from the trenches of France. Tommy, believing that this is a strange dream, saves Boone's life before being transported back through the cupboard. Little Bear continues to treat Boone's injuries, and the two gradually come to trust one another. This incident finally impresses upon Patrick that the tiny people are not toys. Though both boys have become attached to Boone and Little Bear, they agree to return everyone to their own time. As chief, Little Bear demands a bride. Little Bear chooses from an array of plastic Native American figurines and Omri brings to life an Iroquois woman called Bright Stars (Twin Stars in some editions). The two boys and the tiny people have a final celebration, during which Boone becomes Little Bear's blood brother, before the miniature people are sent home through the cupboard. Each boy keeps the now-plastic image of their friend as a memento, and Omri gives the cupboard's key back to his mother so that he will not be tempted to bring them back. ===== A year after the events of the previous book, Omri wins first prize in a story-writing competition for his tale "The Plastic Indian," which is actually a recounting of his real adventures with the cupboard; everyone else assumes that Omri's story is fictional. Wanting to share his good news, Omri brings Little Bear and Bright Stars through the magic cupboard. Little Bear returns badly injured by the French soldiers he has been fighting in his own time. Omri attempts to bring back Tommy, the WWI field medic from the first book, but receives only Tommy's neatly folded uniform and medical bag, causing him to realize that Tommy has died in his own time. Omri goes to Patrick for help. At first Patrick seems to have banished the memory of the tiny people from his mind, but then reluctantly shows Omri that he still carries the plastic figure of Boone in his pocket. Patrick's cousin Tamsin recently received a set of plastic medical figurines as a birthday gift, and the boys plan to borrow it and bring the whole group to life in the cupboard; however, Tamsin catches them taking the miniatures. Omri is able to slip one figure, a nurse, into his pocket. Omri and Patrick put the nurse in the cupboard and bring her to life. The nurse, called Matron, believing she has dozed off while on duty, saves Little Bear's life. Matron also announces that Bright Stars is pregnant, and the boys decide that it would be safer to keep Bright Stars with them until after the baby is born, rather than return her to her war-torn village. Patrick brings the cowboy Boone back to life through the cupboard in order to help Bright Stars care for Little Bear. Little Bear tells Boone about the troubles his people are suffering during their war with the French, and Boone wishes that he could somehow supply his friend with the "modern" six-shooters that are common in Boone's late-19th-century timeline. Patrick gets the idea to take plastic soldiers (with 20th century weaponry) back through the cupboard to Little Bear's time. Little Bear likes the idea of modern weapons, but refuses to bring English soldiers back to his village. Omri is reluctant, believing this amounts to meddling with history, but is won over by his desire to save Little Bear's people. The boys buy several more plastic Iroquois figures from the local shops and bring them all to life with the cupboard to serve as Little Bear's army. They also buy plastic miniatures of modern guns to give to the Iroquois, as well as a miniature Royal Marine figurine (who turns out to be a British corporal named Fickits) to instruct the Iroquois in their use. After Little Bear and his troops are sent back, a casual comment by Boone prompts Omri and Patrick to wonder if it is the key which is magical, rather than the cupboard. Omri climbs into a large empty chest while holding Little Bear's plastic tipi and has Patrick turn the key. Omri finds himself looking through the eyes of one of the tipi's painted decorations, where he witnesses a group of Algonquins attacking Little Bear's village. The tipi is set on fire, but Patrick brings him back in the nick of time, only to find half Omri's hair singed off and his face blistered. Both Patrick and Omri are shaken, both by Omri's injuries and by the brutal reminder than Little Bear's time is real and dangerous. That night, Patrick brings back the Iroquois army, only to find that they were completely unprepared for the use of modern weapons; their unfamiliarity with the power of the weapons results in them surrounding their enemies and shooting without realising how far the shots would travel, with some of them being shot by their own side by accident. Matron is able to save several lives but many are dead or dying. Little Bear feels ashamed of leading his troops into death, but Bright Stars is able to comfort him by showing off their newborn son, whom he names Tall Bear. Later that night, while Patrick and Omri have the house to themselves, a trio of skinheads breaks in the house to burgle the family. Patrick and Omri bring back their Marine friend Fickits, along with a complement of troops, and set them loose on the skinheads, who are peppered by tiny machine-gun fire, causing them to flee. Omri's parents return and scold the boys for taking care of the burglers themselves rather than calling the police (Omri is also scolded for "playing with fire" and burning his face.) Before returning Little Bear and Bright Stars to their own time, Omri finally tells Little Bear about the prize-winning story, which was the reason Omri wanted to see Little Bear all along. Little Bear reflects that his son will be proud to know that his father will live on in Omri's story long after his death. ===== Omri's school headmaster confronts Omri about his prize-winning story, believing that it might be true, as he had previously been shocked by these same "tiny people" on a day when Omri brought Little Bear to see his school. The headmaster threatens to get to the bottom of the mystery, causing Omri to fear that adults will learn the secret and use it to manipulate history. Patrick agrees with Omri that it has become too dangerous to continue using the magic, but before they stop forever, Patrick deeply wants to travel back to Boone's time, just as Omri traveled to Little Bear's time in the previous book. Omri has grown ever more reluctant about using the key's magic powers to meddle with history, but he finally agrees to "hide" Patrick's true whereabouts in the large chest he has in his room. However, Patrick mistakenly keeps Boone's plastic figure in his pocket as Omri sends him into the past, causing Boone's real-life body to be knocked unconscious while Boone is now "brought forward" in his miniature form. Trapped in Patrick's pocket, Boone nearly smothers before Omri, with Matron's help, revives him. Patrick arrives in the Wild West miniaturized and trapped inside Boone's pocket, while the now full-sized Boone is sprawled unconscious and alone on the open prairie. Patrick manages to "ride" Boone's giant horse to a nearby town, where the horse stops out of habit at a local saloon. Tiny Patrick flags the attention of a dancing girl named Ruby Lou, who is curious but unafraid of the tiny boy, and who also happens to be a close friend of Boone's. With Patrick's help, she and the saloon piano player carry Boone back to town and deliver him to the local doctor, who simply believes Boone is drunk. However, they are all in danger when a sudden storm spawns a tornado that tears apart the doctor's office. After the battle in the last book, many tiny injured Iroquois remain in Omri's room under Matron's care. Matron is exhausted and at the end of her skills and strength. Boone is also badly injured. Omri decides to make a second attempt to steal Tamsin's plastic medical set, but is caught by Tamsin's sister Emma. Omri is forced to tell her about the key's magic power and the desperate situation in his bedroom. Emma agrees to borrow the medical set for him and to keep silent about the magic, on the condition that she be allowed to bring to life a plastic person of her own. By chance, the figurine she selects is that of Ruby Lou. Thanks to the toys Emma provides, Matron is able to get a surgical team that saves the Iroquois and Boone. Omri uses the trunk to bring Patrick back to the present and at the same time return the Iroquois to the past, but returning Patrick inadvertently drags the tornado back to Omri's room, destroying part of the house and neighborhood. In the chaos, the cupboard is damaged and the key lost. Omri's headmaster, who has been lurking outside the house hoping to catch evidence of Omri's secret, is struck on the head by debris, meaning that no one believes any of his ramblings about "tiny people." Boone and Ruby Lou realize they are stranded as tiny people in the far future, unable to return home without the key. They attempt to make a life with one another, eventually confessing their love. They are resigned to their fate, but long to return home and be properly married. Omri's father repairs the cupboard and returns it to his son, while Omri, by sheer luck, finds the key in a hedge. He uses the magic to summon all of the group's tiny friends for Boone and Ruby Lou's wedding before sending everyone home for what he promises will be the final time. Afterwards Omri asks his parents for a safe-deposit box, into which he puts the key, the cupboard, the figurines of Little Bear and his family, and a copy of his story, leaving them for his children to find. ===== With their house in ruins after the freak tornado in the previous book, Omri and family move temporarily to rural Dorset, where they have inherited a house from the family of Jessica Charlotte Driscoll, Omri's "wicked" great-great aunt, who became the family black sheep by being a charlatan fortune-teller, a scandalous dance-hall girl, and a thief. While the cottage's roof is being rethatched, the workmen discover a metal box and give it to Omri, telling him that the previous owners of old cottages frequently hid their deedboxes in thatched roofs. Along with the deedbox is a journal called "The Account," written by Jessica Charlotte herself as she was dying of a fatal illness. Jessica possesses a power called the Gift, which she uses to read the future by pouring lead into water and interpreting the shapes it makes. After her sister, scandalized by Jessica's lifestyle, forbids her from ever seeing her precious niece Lottie (Omri's maternal grandmother who was killed in the Blitz during World War II), Jessica takes revenge by stealing her sister's valuable earrings. To do so she makes a duplicate of the jewel- case key out of lead, but accidentally imbues it with magical power through her own Gift. This allows the Key to open any lock. Lottie is accused of stealing the earrings and runs out into the street where her father follows her, resulting in him being killed by a passing carriage. At this point in the Account, Jessica grows too weak to continue. Omri's great-uncle Fredrick takes over. Fredrick was a toymaker who created miniatures from metal and who detested the cheap, ugly plastic toys that had come to replace old-fashioned metal toys. He also possessed some of Jessica's magical abilities. Jessica had him create the cupboard, which he imbues with his hatred of plastic toys. This caused the cupboard to only bring plastic toys to life, which is why no other materials ever worked when Omri tried them in the cupboard. Omri meets one of the thatchers who worked on the roof when Jessica was dying, a man named Tom, and learns from him that Jessica let him in on the secret. She also gave him a little person to care for, a servant girl named Jenny from the 1800s who sought to escape her home life after she lost her position. After having lived as a little person for thirty years, she had died a few months before. Omri suspects that the stolen earrings are in the deedbox he found with the Account and realises that the magic key could open it. He returns to his old town, telling his parents that he wants to visit Patrick, but really to retrieve the key from the safe-deposit box. Omri opens the deedbox and finds five wrapped bundles, four of whom are people brought to life by the magic key. The people turn out to be Elsie, a widowed shop owner; Bert, a thief from Elsie's time; and Ted, a retired policeman. The final person, Sergeant Charlie Ellis, was a naval officer killed at the Battle of Trafalgar; his bundle contains only his uniform. These new people reveal that Jessica knew of the power of the key and the cupboard but only found out when she accidentally brought them to life for the first time. She brought them back and forth many times, just as Omri did with Little Bear. Just before she died, she told them all that they were being sent back for the final time and wished them goodbye. Jenny, however, lived such a wretched life in the past that she begged to be allowed to remain. Jessica entrusted Jenny's care to Tom. Omri learns that Bert is the thief who stole his great-grandmother's jewellery box after her husband had died, leaving her destitute. Bert had no idea that he was robbing a woman of her only valuables and promises Omri that he will return the jewellery box in the past in hopes of changing the future for the better. Omri then sends them one final time through the cupboard. Omri believes that the final bundle must contain the missing earrings, but in fact, it contains another tiny person, fast asleep. Before he can investigate further, he is called to Tom's home. Tom has fallen from the roof and is on the verge of death, but asked for Omri to tell him the final secret: before she died, Jessica had him search for a plastic figure of herself. He bought dozens of figurines before finally finding the right one. Jessica kept the figure of herself but told him to take care of the other plastic figures, saying, "This is me, but everyone is someone." Omri and his father head home, bringing Patrick along. Omri explains that he's figured out the identify of the final person he brought to life: Jessica Charlotte herself, just after creating the key. Omri wants to convince her to not to take the earrings, but Patrick tells him that doing so could change his own family history and possibly result in Omri never being born. Remembering that he convinced Bert to return the jewellery case, Omri worries that it will cause him to cease to exist. Omri and Patrick convince the newly woken tiny Jessica that this is all a dream before returning her to her own past. Omri asks his mother how she originally came by the key. She tells him that key came from her great-grandmother's jewellery box, which was stolen and returned empty. Omri realizes that Bert only said he would return the jewel- case without specifying that the jewels would still be in it. This is the same story his mother told him about the key when she first gave it to him, and Omri realizes this means history has not been changed. A week later Omri attends Tom's funeral, where he meets Tom's daughter, who is wearing the long- lost earrings. Omri realizes that Jessica gave the earrings to Tom, who gave them to his daughter without knowing they were stolen. Having solved the mystery, he decides not to tell Tom's daughter the story of the earrings. Omri returns home to find that his father, while rebuilding Omri's bedroom, found the key, the cupboard, and the plastic figure of Little Bear and locked the toy in the cupboard, where he was shocked when Little Bear came to life. He has since been too frightened to open the cupboard while Little Bear called for Omri from inside. Realizing that his father must be let in on the secret, the story ends with Omri opening the cupboard to introduce Little Bear to his father. ===== Omri and his father learn that Little Bear needs their help as American colonists are starting to head into his people's land. The two realise that they must travel back in time and lend their aid but need to figure out how to do it. They have the key but they need something big enough to hold them. Omri's chest that he and Patrick used before was destroyed in the tornado they accidentally brought back and it isn't big enough to hold them. Omri's dad decides to use the car as the time machine and comes up with an elaborate plan to pretend to go on a camping trip as a cover for their time travel, but they realise that the key won't work in the car and start to despair. Omri tells his father everything about what he learned and shows him the Account. After reading that, Omri's dad figures out that Jessica Charlotte could possibly create them a magical copy of the car key so they can travel back in time. The two also figure out that Omri has inherited some of her psychic power and that's most likely why he can tell when one of his friends from the past needs his help. It gives Omri the power to sense various things, like being able to figure out what's going on with Jessica in her time even though she was so weak at this point when she wrote the Account that only a few words can be made out: she's learned that her brother-in law has died and is going to try to drown herself. The two feel that they must bring her forward no matter what. Omri later brings her, initially planning on waiting, but his psychic gift senses her in trouble and causes him to bring her forward. She's drowned herself and isn't breathing so Omri summons Matron, who manages to revive her. He tries to comfort her about what happened and when she hears that he's Lottie's grandson she agrees to make a magical copy of the car key. He brings his father and they give her the key and send her back. That night they summon Little Bear to get something of his to use to travel back, and he gives them his wampum belt. He also agrees to have Bright Stars make toys for them to travel into when they journey to the past. The next day Omri's father summons Jessica Charlotte without him and she returns the original car key and gives them the copy, but unfortunately the scale difference means that the key is too small to see, and hence is useless to them. They decide to go camping anyway and bring Gillon along, but Omri has an ivory elephant from India and Gillon is leaning against a knapsack from that time also and they suddenly find themselves in India about 90 years before. Omri figures out that Jessica Charlote's attempt to create the magical copy of the car key where she bent her entire will on it probably caused the original car key to become magical. He figures his father will realise what happened and bring them back by shutting off the car. During the trip Omri and Gillon are marionettes – Gillon, embarrassingly enough, is a female figure—and a couple of children spot them moving on their own and try to show them off. Feeling bad for the children Omri goes along with it but when the children's mother shows up both Omri and Gillon are dropped and Gillon hits his head. Thankfully before they can get hurt further they're pulled back to their time where Omri finds they never left the house as the father got pulled back to Little Bear's time due to the wampum belt being in his pocket and were pulled back when Omri's mother found them and shut off the car fearing they were dead. Omri's father ended up in a faceless doll but Little Bear promised that next time the dolls would have faces. The two decide to pretend to go camping but head to the top of a nearby hill and time travel from there. They summon Patrick to send them there and back but Patrick is unhappy he won't be going until he realises that he has the cupboard and can call any of their friends back. He sends them back and they meet up with Little Bear. The two eventually advise Little Bear to take his tribe to Canada but are attacked by two settlers. They set fire to the longhouse and start killing Indians. Old Clan Woman, the oldest and wisest member of the tribe manages to scare them off with Omri and his father's help, but she is killed by the two retreating men. Little Bear and his tribe escape and start the trek to Canada but Omri and his father are forgotten in the rush. They escape outside but are trapped in the stockade and the two men return and go to kill them. Before they can succeed Little Bear returns, having remembered them after hearing of their heroic actions earlier, and kills the two men and rescues them. He also retrieves a false face mask from the longhouse. He apologises to them for leaving them behind and is ashamed as Omri is his blood brother. He tells Omri he is no longer a boy: Omri is now a warrior. He leaves the two a moccasin to use as a shelter until Patrick brings them back in the morning, and leaves after saying a final goodbye. The next morning they are returned to their time by a frantic Patrick who explains that he brought Boone and Ruby Lou but lost them. They eventually find them in a septic tank and rescue and clean them up. Patrick also reveals that he planned to bring Little Bear to the present while they were away but Sergeant Fickits convinced him not to. A couple of weeks later Omri's mother brings him the wampum belt and he realises that she knows the truth. She reveals that she, like Omri, has inherited some of Jessica Charlotte's psychic powers and, seeming to read his mind, explains that she's known the truth since the beginning but has kept it to herself. Omri's brothers have no idea and never will. They both agree that it is time to end the adventures for good. Omri closes his figures and the magical car key in the cashbox and decides to give the magic key back to his mother so he will no longer have the temptation to use it to bring the others back again. He first sends the wampum belt back and senses through his psychic powers that Little Bear and his tribe have successfully and safely reached Canada and reveals this to his father along with the fact that his mother knows the truth. However an apparently psychic dream indicates that perhaps he will still have further adventures. ===== Mowgli lives in the "Man-Village" with the girl who lured him in, Shanti, his adopted brother Ranjan, and Ranjan's parents. However, Mowgli wants to return to the chaotic adventures of the jungle, and after nearly leading the other children in the village into the jungle, is punished by his adopted father for putting them in danger. Meanwhile, in the jungle, Shere Khan has returned to Baloo and Bagheera's part of the jungle, seeking revenge on Mowgli for humiliating him. Baloo enters the Man-Village and persuades Mowgli to come back into the jungle; however, unbeknownst to them, Shere Khan has followed Baloo into the village, only to be chased off by the villagers. In the ensuing battle, Shanti and Ranjan sneak into the jungle to rescue Mowgli, believing that Baloo is a rabid animal who has kidnapped him. Bagheera learns of Mowgli's escape from the village when the humans search the jungle for him, and immediately accuses Baloo. Mowgli instructs Baloo to scare off Shanti should she appear, and bemoans about his minutiae life in the Man-Village. Baloo and Mowgli journey to King Louie's old temple (King Louie is mentioned to have moved out), for a party. However, when the animals of the jungle mock Shanti and other aspects of Mowgli's life in the Man-Village, Mowgli angrily leaves. He finds Shanti and Ranjan, but Baloo scares Shanti. When the truth comes out that Mowgli ordered Baloo to scare her, Shanti and Ranjan run away, abandoning Mowgli. Baloo realizes that Mowgli misses his old life, but when Mowgli tries to make amends with his human friends, they are cornered by Shere Khan. The tiger chases Mowgli and Shanti to an abandoned temple built above a lake of lava. Baloo instructs Bagheera to protect Ranjan while he goes to save Mowgli and Shanti. After confusing Shere Khan by banging several different gongs, Shanti's presence is revealed to Shere Khan. Baloo tackles Shere Khan to the ground, allowing Mowgli and Shanti enough time to escape, but the tiger chases them to a statue across a pit of lava. Shere Khan is trapped within the statue's mouth, and it plummets onto a large stone that resides in the lava below. With his nemesis finally defeated, Mowgli returns to the Man-Village with Shanti and Ranjan. Ranjan's father apologizes to Mowgli for failing to understand that the jungle was part of who he was. The children return to visit Baloo and Bagheera in the jungle on a daily basis. ===== The film is set in Scotland in 1954. Shiftless young drifter Joe Taylor works on a barge which operates from Glasgow, on the River Clyde, along the Forth and Clyde and Union Canals to Edinburgh. He shares the cramped on-board living quarters with its operators, Les and Ella Gault, and their young son Jim. One day Joe and Les pull the body of a young woman, naked except for a petticoat, from the water. Via flashbacks, we learn Joe knew her, and scenes involving his relationship with office worker Cathie Dimly are juxtaposed with those set in the present time. After finding Cathie's body, Joe and Les go to a local pub to play darts. Joe leaves Les behind and returns to the barge, where Ella succumbs to his advances. Not wanting to disturb the sleeping Jim, the two engage in sex on the towpath. It proves to be the first of many such encounters they enjoy whenever they can find a few moments away from Les. In the past, Joe meets Cathie on a beach and the two soon are living together. He aspires to be a writer and spends his days banging on a battered typewriter while she works to support them. Joe begins to suffer from chronic writer's block and Cathie, unhappy with his lack of productivity, accuses him of taking advantage of her. In violent reply to her words, Joe humiliates Cathie, beats and rapes her. He packs his meager belongings and moves out. After tossing his typewriter in a canal, he meets Les, who offers him a job on the barge. Les eventually becomes aware of Ella and Joe's affair and moves out of the barge, which belongs to her, and Ella and Joe drift into a more serious relationship. When she receives word her brother-in-law has died, she and Joe visit her sister Gwen and invite her to spend a couple of weeks with them. One evening, on the pretext Gwen would like to see a movie, she and Joe leave the barge and go to a pub. After a few drinks, the two have sex in an alleyway. Eventually, Ella's desire to settle in the suburbs and her no-nonsense supervision of the barge's daily commercial activities put a dampener on the once-unbridled passion in her relationship with Joe, and he packs and leaves. In the past, Joe and Cathie reunite on the waterfront and have sex beneath a parked truck. She reveals she is two months pregnant with his child, and when Joe nonchalantly begins to walk away, she runs after him, trips, and falls into the water while dressed only in her petticoat. Joe makes no move to rescue her and, when she fails to surface, he panics and runs away. Past and present converge. Daniel Gordon, a plumber whom Cathie was casually seeing, is arrested and tried for her murder, and Joe spends a few days in the courtroom listening to testimony. Guilt-stricken, he writes an anonymous note absolving Daniel of the crime and leaves it where a courthouse guard can find it. It has no effect on the proceedings, and Daniel is found guilty and sentenced to hang. Unwilling to risk his life, Joe opts not to confess how Cathie really died and sets off for parts unknown. ===== The film is set in the year 1938. At an illegal card game, a young street urchin witnesses the massacre of a group of mobsters at the hands of Flattop and Itchy, two of the hoods on the payroll of Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice. Big Boy's crime syndicate is aggressively taking over small businesses in the city. Detective Dick Tracy catches the urchin (who calls himself "Kid") in an act of petty theft. After rescuing him from a ruthless host, Tracy temporarily adopts him with the help of his girlfriend, Tess Trueheart. Meanwhile, Big Boy coerces club owner Lips Manlis into signing over the deed to Club Ritz. He then kills Lips with a cement overcoat (referred to onscreen as "The Bath") and steals his girlfriend, the seductive and sultry singer Breathless Mahoney. After Lips is reported missing, Tracy interrogates his three hired guns Flattop, Itchy, and Mumbles, then goes to the club to arrest Big Boy for Lips' murder. Breathless is the only witness. Instead of providing testimony, she unsuccessfully attempts to seduce Tracy. Big Boy cannot be indicted, and he is released from jail. Big Boy's next move is to try to bring other criminals, including Spud Spaldoni, Pruneface, Influence, Texie Garcia, Ribs Mocca, and Numbers together under his leadership. Spaldoni refuses and is killed with a carbomb, leaving Dick Tracy, who discovered the meeting and was attempting to spy on it, wondering what is going on. The next day, Big Boy and his henchmen kidnap Tracy and attempt to bribe him; Tracy rebuffs them, prompting the criminals to attempt to kill him. However, Tracy is saved by Kid, who is then bestowed by the police with an honorary detective certificate, which will remain temporary until he decides on a legitimate name for himself. Breathless shows up at Tracy's apartment, once again in an attempt to seduce him. Tracy shows he is only human by allowing her to kiss him. Tess witnesses this scene and eventually leaves town. Tracy leads a seemingly unsuccessful raid on Club Ritz, but it is actually a diversion so that Officer "Bug" Bailey can enter the building to operate a secretly installed listening device so the police can listen in on Big Boy's criminal activities. The resultant raids all but wipe out Big Boy's criminal empire. However, Big Boy discovers Bug, and captures him for a trap planned by Influence and Pruneface to kill Tracy in the warehouse. In the resulting gun battle, a stranger with no face called "The Blank" steps out of the shadows to save Tracy after he is cornered, and kills Pruneface. Influence escapes as Tracy rescues Bug from the fate that befell Lips Manlis, and Big Boy is enraged to hear that The Blank foiled the hit. Tracy again attempts to extract the testimony from Breathless that he needs to put Big Boy away. She agrees to testify only if Tracy agrees to give in to her advances. Tess eventually has a change of heart, but before she can tell Tracy, she is kidnapped by The Blank, with the help of Big Boy's club piano player, 88 Keys. Tracy is drugged and rendered unconscious by The Blank, then framed for murdering the corrupt District Attorney John Fletcher, whereupon he is detained by the police. The Kid, meanwhile, adopts the name "Dick Tracy, Jr." Big Boy's business thrives until The Blank frames him for Tess' kidnapping. Released by his colleagues on New Year's Eve, Tracy interrogates Mumbles, and arrives at a gun battle outside the Club Ritz where Big Boy's men are killed or captured by Tracy and the police. Abandoning his crew, Big Boy flees to a drawbridge and ties Tess to its gears before he is confronted by Tracy. Their fight is halted when The Blank appears and holds both men at gunpoint, offering to share the city with Tracy after Big Boy is dead. When Junior arrives, Big Boy takes advantage of the distraction and opens fire before Tracy sends him falling to his death in the bridge's gears, while Junior rescues Tess. Mortally wounded, The Blank is unmasked to reveal Breathless Mahoney, who kisses Tracy before dying. All charges against Tracy are dropped. Later, Tracy proposes to Tess, but is interrupted by the report of a robbery in progress. He leaves her with the ring before he and Dick Tracy, Jr. depart to respond to the robbery, whereupon Junior remarks, "You know, Tracy, I kinda like that dame." ===== In 1887, during the British Raj in India, Mowgli is the 5-year-old son of the widowed Nathoo, whose wife died in childbirth. Nathoo works as a tour guide. On one of his tours, he leads Colonel Geoffrey Brydon and his men, as well as Brydon's 5-year-old daughter Katherine nicknamed Kitty. Local hunter Buldeo and two soldiers kill several animals for sport, which enrages Shere Khan, a tiger who serves as the jungle's keeper, and he begins to pursue the tour group. That night, Kitty gives Mowgli her late mother's bracelet as a gift. Mowgli tells Nathoo of a dream where he faced Shere Khan and showed no fear, becoming a tiger himself. Shere Khan attacks the encampment. He succeeds in killing the two soldiers, but when he tries to kill Buldeo, Nathoo defends him and is subsequently mauled to death by Shere Khan. In the confusion, Mowgli is lost in the jungle with his pet wolf cub, Grey Brother, and Brydon and his men presume him killed. Mowgli is taken by Bagheera, a gentle black panther, to the wolf pack. Mowgli also befriends a bear cub named Baloo. Twenty years later, Mowgli, now an adult, discovers Monkey City, a legendary ancient city filled with treasure belonging to King Louie the orangutan, who has his treasure guarded by Kaa the python. Forced to fight for his life, Mowgli succeeds in wounding the snake with a golden dagger that he retrieves from the treasure horde. Winning King Louie's respect, Mowgli keeps the dagger as a trophy. Elsewhere, Kitty and Colonel Brydon are still stationed in India. She and Mowgli meet again, but neither recognize the other. Kitty is also in a relationship with one of Brydon's soldiers, Captain William Boone. Infatuated with her, Mowgli travels to Kitty's village and enters her home, alerting the guards. Kitty sees that Mowgli is wearing her mother's bracelet and realizes who he is. Boone and his men manage to capture Mowgli and find the dagger from Monkey City in his possession. Kitty and Dr. Julius Plumford, a good friend of Brydon's, decide that they must reintroduce Mowgli to civilization. In doing so, Mowgli and Kitty fall in love, much to Boone's displeasure. Eventually, Boone convinces Mowgli to tell him of Monkey City and the treasure hoard that it holds, but Mowgli refrains from revealing its location to Boone upon realizing his lack of respect for the jungle. Boone later proposes to Kitty, although she is hesitant to concede. Around this time, after Boone and his men publicly humiliate him, Mowgli returns to the jungle as he does not feel at home in the village. After Boone's cruel treatment of Mowgli, Kitty realizes she cannot marry Boone, so she decides to go back to England to get away from him. Meanwhile, Boone and his associate Lieutenant Wilkins team up with Buldeo and Tabaqui, Boone's guide. The men recruit a third henchman, Sergeant Harley, and gather some bandits to capture Mowgli in order to find out where the treasure is. Wilkins and Boone shoot Baloo when he comes to Mowgli's defense, much to Mowgli's distress. Buldeo and the bandits then ambush Kitty and Brydon, who is shot and wounded in the process. Even though Mowgli, along with Bagheera, Grey Brother, and the rest of the wolves, attack and kill most of the bandits, Buldeo manages to capture Kitty and Brydon and hands them over to Boone and his men, who plan to use them as blackmail: If Mowgli leads them to the treasure, Kitty and her father shall live. That night, the group learn Shere Khan is hunting them due to their shooting of Baloo. Because of this, Mowgli decides to escape. The next morning, Harley catches Mowgli escaping with the aid of Bagheera and chases him, only to fall into quicksand and drown, despite Wilkins' attempts to save him. Mowgli then has an elephant take the injured Brydon back to the village, after promising him to rescue Kitty. As the group make progress, Tabaqui decides that Mowgli is no longer needed and tries to murder him, only to be killed himself after toppling off a cliff. Later, Wilkins becomes separated from the group and is mauled to death by Shere Khan. Eventually, the remaining party enters Monkey City, where Buldeo inadvertently entombs himself in a trap while trying to shoot Mowgli. Only Mowgli, Kitty and Boone reach the treasure room, where Mowgli and Boone engage in a fierce fight until Mowgli injures Boone with another dagger. Mowgli then escapes with Kitty, while Boone begins greedily pocketing treasure, only for King Louie to summon Kaa, who proceeds to attack and kill Boone. As they escape from Monkey City, Mowgli and Kitty are confronted by Shere Khan, who roars at them. However, Mowgli roars back, leading Shere Khan to become impressed at his bravery, acknowledge him as a creature of the jungle, and allow Mowgli and Kitty to leave peacefully. Mowgli and Kitty meet both the Colonel and Baloo, both of whom have recovered from their injuries under Plumford's care. Mowgli becomes the new lord of the jungle after fulfilling his childhood dream of facing Shere Khan with no fear and he begins a relationship with Kitty. ===== The President of the United States is visiting America's most secret military installation, Area 7. Assigned to his protective detail is Shane Schofield and his team of Marines including Gunnery Sergeant Gena 'Mother' Newman, Staff Sergeant Elizabeth 'Fox' Gant and Buck 'Book II' Riley Jr. They are plunged into a race for survival when an Air Force general, Charles "Caesar" Russell, unleashes a plan he has been working on for over 15 years. Despite being 'executed' on the day of the president's inauguration, Caesar is revived, and with a squadron of 50 elite Air Force soldiers (the 7th Squadron), have taken control of Area 7 and initiated a lockdown. A transmitter, attached to the president's heart before he was elected, has been activated; a satellite sends and receives messages to and from this transmitter, which is powered by the kinetic energy of the president's heart beating. If the satellite does not receive the messages from the transmitter, 14 Type-240 Blast Plasma-based nuclear warheads in the airports of the major cities of the United States will explode, destroying these cities, and making way for a new, racist, Confederate America. As long as the President's heart beats, the messages will be sent to the satellite, and the nuclear warheads will not detonate. To prevent the president from trying to escape Area 7, Caesar also overrode the launch codes on the Nuclear Football so that to prevent the detonation of the warheads, the president must place his hand on the fingerprint sensor on the Football (that is being kept in Caesar's possession) every 90 minutes. While moving through the underground complex Gant and her group, including the president, come to a cell block and find a scientist locked inside one of the cells. After being released and questioned, it is discovered that the prisoners being held at Area 7 are "volunteers" that the scientists use to carry out experiments. It soon comes to light that there are ways of opening exits out of Area 7, and that two have already been opened by another scientist, Dr Gunther Botha. In addition to opening two exits, Botha has also shut down main power to the complex, so that it is now running on auxiliary power. Meanwhile, Schofield and his group, after fleeing from the ground level hangar, make their way into the sublevels where they find a bedroom of a 6-year-old boy named Kevin who lives in a cube. Schofield's group then meets up with Riley's group, and the president reveals that the reason for his visit to Area 7 is to check on the progress of a vaccine being developed for the Sinovirus, a genetically engineered virus that differentiates between the amount of pigmentation in a person's skin, allowing it to target only people of a specific race (however people of Asian descent are immune). The president explains that to develop a vaccine for the Sinovirus (and protect America from biological weapons containing the Sinovirus) the scientists had to create a genetically engineered human, a boy named Kevin, whose blood could be used to produce antibodies, and the prisoners being held at Area 7 are used as guinea pigs to test the vaccine. Botha is killed during a chase on Lake Powell the President and Scarecrow escape to Area 8. When they reach it they realize Echo unit from the 7th squadron are being paid 120 million American dollars by the Chinese government to bring Kevin to them. Schofield and the President follow onto the 747 which has a mounted X-38 in an attempt to rescue Kevin. Schofield hijacks the X-38, escaping with the president and Kevin. Later, Schofield and Gant finally face off with Caesar back in Area 7. ===== Monica finds out that someone has stolen her credit card and has been using it. When she receives the credit card statement she realises that the thief is doing all the things in life that she wishes she could do, for example, take tap dancing lessons. She, Rachel and Phoebe decide to find the thief at the tap dance class and end up becoming her friends. In order to prevent suspicion, real Monica introduces herself as "Monana". The four become good friends and Monica lives her life as recklessly as she wished she did. However, Fake Monica eventually gets caught and the real Monica visits her in jail and tells her that it was her credit card that was stolen. Monica admits that she did not turn her in and thanks her for inspiring her. She also decides to use this experience as a lesson to not just wish she did things, but actually do them. Ross's capuchin monkey, Marcel, reaches sexual maturity and will not stop trying to mate with objects and his leg. Ross decides that he can no longer take care of Marcel and so he looks for a zoo for him. After some frustrating attempts including an offer where Marcel would be pitted against other animals in combat, Marcel is eventually accepted into the San Diego Zoo and Ross, Chandler, Joey, Rachel and Phoebe say goodbye to him at the airport. Joey's agent, Estelle, suggests that he create a stage name because "Joey Tribbiani" is too ethnic. Chandler tricks him into using the name "Joseph Stalin", only for him to be rejected at the audition upon finding out and being appalled about the dictator's actions. Later, at the audition, Joey uses the name "Holden McGroin", presumably having been tricked again. ===== The story, set in the fictional Rhode Island town of Eastwick in the late 1960s, follows the witches Alexandra Spofford, Jane Smart, and Sukie Rougemont, who acquired their powers after leaving or being left by their husbands (although Alexandra is a widow). Their coven is upset by the arrival of Darryl Van Horne, who buys a neglected mansion outside of town. The mysterious Darryl seduces each of the women, encouraging their creative powers and creating a scandal in the town. The power of the three witches grows, so much so that they unknowingly bewitch the townsfolk they come in contact with. This becomes clear when Sukie's lover and boss, Clyde Gabriel, kills his busybody wife Felicia before hanging himself. The three women share Darryl in relative peace until he unexpectedly marries their young, innocent friend, Jenny, the Gabriels' daughter. The witches resolve to take revenge by giving her cancer through their magic. Although Alexandra feels remorse for their hex, the spell kills Jenny and Darryl flees town with her younger brother, Chris, apparently his lover. In his wake, he leaves their relationships strained and their sense of self in doubt. Eventually, each summons her ideal man and leaves town. ===== When a drug smuggler known as "Red" becomes a fugitive after agreeing to turn state's evidence to the United States government, the government asks Punisher to locate and return him alive. Red escapes from Punisher in New York City, fleeing to Riverdale, where he adopts a new alias and uses his legitimate business interests to take shelter at the home of wealthy industrialist Hiram Lodge, who is unaware of Red's criminal history. Red draws the attention of Hiram's teenage daughter Veronica because his appearance is very similar to her frequent suitor, Archie Andrews. To get back at Archie for accidentally ruining their date to the school dance that night, Veronica asks Red to take her instead. Meanwhile, Punisher and his partner Microchip track Red to Riverdale and are cynical about the town's innocent demeanor. They see Archie with his friend Jughead Jones in an ice cream shop and believe him to be Red. While they are observing him, some thugs from New York arrive and make the same mistake. The thugs know about Red's deal with the government and intend to kill him before he can testify. They abduct Archie and Jughead, prompting a car chase as Punisher attempts to rescue "Red". After a car wreck, Punisher quickly realizes his error and lets Archie go. Punisher and Microchip continue to secretly monitor Archie, hoping the remaining thugs will make the same mistake and come into the open. As Red and Veronica arrive at the school dance, Red is recognized by a stage worker and low-level drug dealer, who, hoping to improve his standing among the cartel, calls them and tells them where to find Red. Punisher and Microchip, who have been monitoring the cartel, also head for the dance. Meanwhile, Archie is told Veronica went to the dance with someone who looks like him, and realizing that she is with a criminal, he too goes to the dance. Punisher sneaks into the school and realizes Riverdale truly is as innocent as it appears. Determined to prevent it from being corrupted by Red or other forces, he disguises himself as a chaperone and, while looking for Red, identifies the thugs, who have dressed like caterers. As Archie arrives, the thugs mistake him for Red again and move in to kill him. Punisher uses non-lethal methods to disarm and incapacitate them and clears the misunderstanding with Archie, but Red escapes with Veronica as a hostage. Red forces Veronica to call her father for ransom, but she takes the opportunity to use code words to let Archie know that she's being held in a specific warehouse. Archie and his friends accompany Punisher to rescue her. At the warehouse, Punisher reveals to Red that the informant who called the cartel to the dance has agreed to testify and Red is no longer needed alive. During the subsequent scuffle, Red accidentally triggers the automatic doors that open the warehouse roof and gets his foot tangled in a rope attached to a large parade balloon. As the balloon floats away with Red attached, Punisher considers killing him, but does not. Before leaving Riverdale for Gotham City the next morning, Punisher and Microchip say goodbye to Archie and his friends. ===== Set in the present day, a young marketing graduate named Scat comes up with an idea for a new product for Coca-Cola called 'Fukk'. This causes him to go to Coca-Cola to sell his idea for $3 million, but he finds that Sneaky Pete has already claimed the trademark in a backstabbing move. This then leads him to leave his apartment with Sneaky Pete and move in with Cindy. Cindy eventually throws him out and he goes to live with 6 and Tina while managing the summer marketing campaign for Coca-Cola. He eventually succeeds with the campaign. After that Scat tries to undermine Sneaky Pete's effort to run a new secret project for Coca-Cola, the first feature length advertising movie. ===== Pharaoh Akhenaten On the way from Thebes with his father, the scribe Amunhoben points out the ruins of Akhetaten, the city that the "heretic pharaoh" Akhenaten built for his One and Only God. Seeking a balanced perspective on the events of that time, which split Egypt politically and religiously, Meriamun gets a letter of introduction from his father to many members of Akhenaten's court, among them the High Priest of Amun, his chief of security Haremhab, and his queen Nefertiti. Each tale adds a new dimension to the enigma that is Akhenaten and the thoughts of those that were close to him allow Meriamun - and the reader - to judge for themselves whether Akhenaten was a power politician or a true believer. ===== Phil Hastings and his family have just moved back to his hometown for some much needed peace and quiet from the Hollywood scene. As Phil's twins, Sean and Patrick, soon discover, there is more to their new home than was expected. Gloria, their mother, senses something, but simply dismisses her concern as stress from their recent move. Gabbie, their older half-sister, meets the man of her dreams, but also is tempted by other men. Deep in the woods, The Bad Thing and his Master are ready to break free of the centuries-old compact made to keep the Faerie world and the Human world at peace. Only through believing the insane and impossible can they save both worlds from colliding again. ===== The player character has won a one-way ticket to Gateway, membership as a prospector in the Gateway Corporation and 10 days of provided life support along with a small amount of money. The player begins as a Prospector and follows procedures in order to know Gateway better and afterwards begin exploring Heechee coordinates. The findings are important enough to get him secure 'Green Badge' status; prospectors of that status are sent to explore only known destinations, with considerably higher probabilities of Heechee finds. Exploration in one such planet brings a Heechee 'computer' which makes him rich; however, after being analyzed by the Gateway Corporation, it reveals that a hostile alien race, dubbed the Assassins threatens all advanced civilizations in the universe, and the Heechee managed to evade them. Leonard Worden, the deputy chief of the exploration program, informs the player that even after all those years, reactivation of the Heechee technology by humans would only make them detectable to the Assassins. However the same computer provides coordinates to an interplanetary shield device. The game plot then sends the player to four planets in order to activate a shield device that would 'cloak' the technology signal from the Assassins. The game's climax occurs on a world of the Assassins, dubbed "Watchtower" where the player is sent to activate the mechanism. There he will meet a Heechee artificial intelligence entity and also an electronic Assassin entity which will trap the player in a VR environment. Following the Heechee AI's guidance, the player is tasked to escape them by creating paradoxes and afterwards upload the Heechee AI. The game ends with the player's return as a hero and the fear that the threat of the Assassins still exists. ===== The book is split into three parts, the first of which is set 14 years after the events in Sabriel; the last two parts are set five years after part one. Sabriel and Touchstone have married since Sabriel and assumed a measure of control over the Old Kingdom. Their children Ellimere and Sameth were going to school in Ancelstierre (similarly to Sabriel) before being expected to take up their duties in the Old Kingdom. ===== The Abhorsen's House is besieged by Dead Hands led by Chlorr of the Mask under the control of Hedge the Necromancer, who in turn serves Orannis the Destroyer. With the help of their familiars Mogget and the Disreputable Dog, protagonists Lirael and Sameth escape the House and depart for the Red Lake, where the Destroyer is being unearthed, to rescue Sameth's friend Nicholas Sayre from the Destroyer's control, and prevent the Destroyer from consuming the world. Meanwhile, Prince Sameth's parents, the Abhorsen Sabriel and King Touchstone, are in Ancelstierre to stop the slaughter of refugees forced into the Old Kingdom; but themselves become victims of an assassination attempt and barely escape. En route to the Red Lake, Lirael uses her Rembrancing powers to determine the means of re-imprisoning Orannis, and later defeats Hedge. In the end, all the leading characters re-enact the original binding of the Destroyer, with each member holding a bell to represent its namesake: King Touchstone (Ranna) and Abhorsen Sabriel (Saraneth), Sanar and Ryelle (Mosrael), Ellimere (Dyrim), the Disreputable Dog (Kibeth), Sameth (Belgaer), and Lirael (Astarael). When the re-enactment fails, Sameth frees Mogget, who identifies himself as the spirit 'Yrael', and imprisons the Destroyer. As Lirael prepares to give the necessary final blow, the Disreputable Dog sacrifices herself to complete it, in Lirael's place. In the epilogue, the Dog revives Nicholas, and herself departs along the border of Life and Death. ===== A deadly virus has swept the world, killing off everyone over the age of twelve in the span of a month or so. In the town of Glen Ellyn, Illinois, outside of Chicago, ten-year-old Lisa Nelson and her younger brother Todd Nelson are surviving, like all the children in the story, by looting abandoned houses and shops. Although there are abandoned cars in every driveway and lining every street, Lisa is the first child to think of driving one. She is also the first to think of raiding a farm, and the first to look at the dwindling supplies in stores and deduce that groceries come from warehouses. She finds a supermarket warehouse and raids it, enlisting the help of Craig Bergman, a neighbor boy two years older than her, but makes clear to him and all the other children in her neighborhood that the entire warehouse and all its contents are her exclusive property, not to be shared unless she chooses: she assures them all that she will burn the warehouse and everything in it rather than be forced to share against her will. She considers relocating to the farm, but decides against it because it is difficult to defend (other children are starting to form gangs) and because "planning and getting the world back to the way it was, with schools, and hospitals, and electricity" are much more "exciting" than "hiding away on a farm ... digging in the dirt all day". Lisa and her friends are approached by the "Chidester Gang", led by Tom Logan. Suspecting that Lisa has a source of supplies, Logan offers a food-for-protection deal, which Lisa declines. Unhesitatingly taking charge, she forms her block-long stretch of Grand Avenue into a militia, armed with guns, Molotov cocktails, and primitive weapons. When the militia proves unsuccessful at defending the "Land of Grandville" against "the fearful and cruel army of Chidester and Elm", and Lisa's house is lost, Lisa comes up with the idea of moving the "child-families"—and the entire contents of the warehouse—into the local high school, and transforming it into a fortress-city. Within the city, Lisa is the only authority, by virtue of the fact that she saw the abandoned high school and thought of moving there: this has earned her sole title to the "City of Glenbard" and everything in it. A year after completion, things proceed according to plan until Logan and his gang manage to stage a successful attack on Glenbard, during which Lisa is shot in the arm. Todd and Lisa's friend Jill rescue her, and Jill performs basic surgery to remove the bullet from her arm, dosing her with whiskey for pain relief. When Lisa recovers, they retake the city from Logan, who has meanwhile learned that conqueror and leader are two very different things. Glenbard's "citizens" have shown no sign of rebellion, or of preferring Lisa's leadership to Logan's (or vice versa), but Lisa lectures him into relinquishing control of the city to her. The book ends with a foreshadowing that the citizens of Glenbard will at some time be forced to face far larger armies, led by now extremely powerful dictators, tyrants and warlords. If any semblance of a free society is to exist in the new world, the citizens of Glenbard must make themselves capable of protecting and growing it by gaining in knowledge, power, and organization, and at the same time continuing to incorporate leadership and respect for the individual person into their society. ===== Alice Green (Meg Ryan) is a school counselor who has a serious drinking problem and is married to Michael (Andy García), an airline pilot. Though she's lighthearted and loving, Alice is often reckless and, when drunk, even neglects her children: nine-year-old Jess (Tina Majorino) from a previous marriage, and four-year-old Casey (Mae Whitman), whose father is Michael. One afternoon, Alice enters their home in a drunken incoherent state. She dismisses the reluctant caretaker, who leaves her alone with her children. Still drinking, Alice is confronted by Jess concerned for her welfare. In return, she violently slaps Jess, who runs to her room crying. Alice enters the shower. Unable to control her balance and calling for Jess, she falls to the side and smashes through the shower door onto the bathroom floor. Fearing Alice has died, Jess contacts Michael who immediately flies home to be by Alice's side. After the incident and while in the hospital, Michael and Alice confront the truth about Alice's drinking. They jointly decide she must seek professional help for her alcoholism. Upon release from the hospital, a timid Alice enters a rehabilitation clinic. Michael finds himself now the main caretaker of their home and children, a role he struggles to maintain along with his career as an airline pilot. Meanwhile, at the clinic, Alice is flourishing; her recovery is painful but stabilizing and she is well-liked and respected by both staff and fellow clinic tenants alike. During a family visit day at the clinic, Alice immediately begins to rebuild her shattered bond with the children leaving Michael alone to wander the grounds uncomfortable and out of place in Alice's new lifestyle. Alice returns home sober yet guarded. She is vocal, strong and changed. Michael is having trouble adjusting to Alice's balance. He has become used to being the stable and controlled one in their relationship and is jealous of Alice's outside friendships and lack of dependence. Coming to terms with their estrangement, a reluctant Michael (believing therapy is for the weak) and a willing Alice see a marriage counselor who quickly establishes Michael's "co-dependency" on Alice's role as an alcoholic. Unable to find a medium and with tempers flared, Michael moves out and Alice becomes the main caretaker of their home and children. She is once again seen flourishing in her new role while Michael is unable to find control and seeks out a support group for spouses of alcoholics. Initially shy, Michael becomes a more vocal member of the group and shares his sorrow over his lack of understanding for the gravity his wife's sobriety would have on him, his children, and his marriage. Alice and Michael singularly return to the hospital to celebrate the birth of their caretaker's baby. They spend time together and as they depart Alice asks Michael if he would attend her 180-day sober speech where she will acknowledge her failings and accomplishments. She also tells him that she has been thinking about asking him to come home with her. Michael tells Alice he has been offered a job in Denver. For the first time since they both agreed Alice should enter rehab, they both agree Michael should take the position. The penultimate scene is Alice as she stands on a stage and tells her sobriety story; the toll it took on her, her children, and her marriage. She is funny, confident, sad but optimistic. Her audience is moved to tears. Her speech ends and she is surrounded by well wishers. Out of the crowd appears Michael. At ease with himself and Alice, he explains what he missed along the way..."to listen, to really listen." They share an intense, longing, passionate kiss. ===== The story follows the Ames family, a prominent clan in the fictional Northeastern United States town of Woodbridge (eventually identified as being located in New York). The Ames family initially consisted of Peter, his wife Ellen, and their three children: Susan, Jerry, and Amy. However, Ellen was killed in the first episode and subsequent stories focused on Peter raising his three children. Lending a hand, however dubiously, was Peter's sister-in-law, as well as his former fiancée Pauline Rysdale (Haila Stoddard). Despite Susan's and Pauline's efforts to derail any new romances in Peter's life, he eventually remarried twice. His first remarriage was to Myra Lake (June Graham), one of Amy's teachers, but that ended in divorce. His second and more successful remarriage was to divorcee Valerie Hill (Lori March), to whom he was married until his death. Later, the villainous Belle Clemens (Marla Adams) was the main source of trouble for Woodbridge, taking over from Aunt Pauline, the show's original villain. Originally due to die of kidney disease, the writers had Belle's daughter Robin drown in an accident. Belle blamed Amy for the death. ===== Bertie returns to London from several weeks in Cannes spent in the company of his Aunt Dahlia Travers and her daughter Angela. In Bertie's absence, Jeeves has been advising Bertie's old school friend, Gussie Fink-Nottle, who is in love with a goofy, sentimental, whimsical, childish girl named Madeline Bassett. Gussie, a shy teetotaler with a passion for newts and a face like a fish, is too timid to speak to her. Bertie is annoyed that his friends consider Jeeves more intelligent than Bertie, and he takes Gussie's case in hand, ordering Jeeves not to offer any more advice. Madeline, a friend of Bertie's cousin Angela, is staying at Brinkley Court (country seat of Aunt Dahlia and Uncle Tom). Aunt Dahlia demands that Bertie come to Brinkley Court to make a speech and present the school prizes to students at the local grammar school, which he considers a fearsome task. Bertie sends Gussie to Brinkley Court in his place, so that Gussie will have the chance to woo Madeline there, but also so that Gussie will be forced to take on the unpleasant job of distributing the school prizes. When Angela breaks her engagement to Tuppy Glossop, Bertie feels obliged to go down to Brinkley Court to comfort Aunt Dahlia. In addition to her worry about Angela's broken engagement, Aunt Dahlia is anxious because she has lost 500 pounds gambling at Cannes, and now needs to ask her miserly husband Tom to replace the money in order to keep financing her magazine, _Milady's Boudoir_. Bertie advises her to arouse Uncle Tom's concern for her by pretending to have lost her appetite through worry. He offers similar advice to Tuppy, to win back Angela. He also offers the same advice to Gussie, to show his love for Madeline. All take his advice, and the resulting return of plates of untasted food upsets Aunt Dahlia's temperamental prized chef Anatole, who gives notice to quit. Not unreasonably, Aunt Dahlia blames Bertie for this disaster. When Bertie attempts to probe Madeline's feelings about Gussie, she misinterprets his questioning as a marriage proposal on his own behalf. To his relief, she tells Bertie she cannot marry him, as she has fallen in love with Gussie. Bertie relays the good news to Gussie, but even with this encouragement, Gussie remains too timid to propose, and Bertie decides to embolden him by lacing his orange juice with liquor. Gussie ends up imbibing more liquor than Bertie had intended. Under its influence, Gussie successfully proposes to Madeline. He then delivers a hilarious, abusive, drunken speech to the grammar school while presenting the school prizes. Madeline, disgusted, breaks the engagement and resolves to marry Bertie instead. The prospect of spending his life with the drippy Madeline terrifies Bertie, but his personal code of chivalrous behavior will not allow him to insult her by withdrawing his "proposal" and turning her down. Meanwhile, Gussie, still drunk, retaliates against Madeline by proposing to Angela, who accepts him in order to score off Tuppy. Tuppy's jealousy is aroused and he chases Gussie all around the mansion, vowing to beat him within an inch of his life. In the face of this chaos, Bertie admits his inability to cope, and appeals to Jeeves for advice. Jeeves arranges for Bertie to be absent for a few hours, and during that time swiftly and ingeniously solves all the problems, assuring that Angela and Tuppy are reconciled, that Gussie and Madeline become engaged again, that Anatole withdraws his resignation, and that Uncle Tom writes Aunt Dahlia a cheque for 500 pounds. Bertie learns his lesson and resolves to let Jeeves have his way in the future. ===== The film is constructed from three distinct stories linked by a car accident that brings the characters briefly together. ===== In the 1960s, young Celia Marsdon is a rich American heiress who, upon her marriage to English aristocrat Richard Marsdon, goes to live at an ancestral manor in Sussex, England. Shortly afterward, strange things begin to occur -- Richard begins acting out of character, and Celia starts to have strange fits and visions. Celia's mother, Lily Taylor, has befriended a Hindu guru, Dr. Akananda, and it is he who discovers what's wrong with the young couple. The troubles of the present time can only be solved by revisiting a tragedy from the past. The book then moves back in time to the reign of Edward VI, as lovely young Celia de Bohun and her guardian aunt take up residence with the noble Catholic family of Anthony Browne as "poor relations." Celia is a fascinating and believable character, full of contradictions and human failings. She is headstrong and impulsive; innocent but coquettish; and can easily attract male attention. She creates a scandal when she becomes infatuated with the family chaplain, Stephen Marsdon, who in turn desires Celia but does not want to break his vow of chastity. They are forced to part, but never forget each other. Time passes; King Edward dies and his persecution of Catholics ends, only to be followed by his successor Queen Mary I's persecution of Protestants; the Browne family fortunes prosper under the Marian reign; and sympathetic characters harden into detestable ones. When Celia and Stephen finally meet again, nothing can stop the passion between them. It ends tragically. The Tudor story and the narrative returns to the 1960s to find resolution in the present and lay to rest the tormented souls of Stephen and Celia so that Richard and his wife can live together happily without visions of their past lives coming between them. ===== In 1996, as part of a new military training program, orphaned infants are selected at birth and raised as highly disciplined soldiers dedicated to a wholly military routine. They are trained to be ruthless obedient killers without any moral code of conduct, and any deemed physically or mentally unworthy are executed. Survivors of the training program are turned into impassive, dedicated fighting machines with no exposure to or understanding of the outside world. In 2036, at the age of 40, Sgt. Todd 3465 is a battle-hardened veteran and the best soldier of the original 1996 infants. Colonel Mekum, the leader of the original project, introduces a new group of genetically engineered soldiers, designed with superior physical attributes and a complete lack of emotion except unparalleled aggression. Captain Church, the commander of Todd's unit, insists on testing the abilities of the new soldiers against those of his proven older ones. The new soldiers outperform the old soldiers in every way. In a combat exercise held at the top of climbing chains, a new soldier, Caine 607, easily defeats two of the original soldiers before Todd gouges out Caine's eye. Caine knocks Todd from the top of the chains; though he is presumed dead, the body of another dead soldier actually cushioned his fall and he is simply stunned and knocked unconscious. Mekum classifies it as a training exercise gone wrong and orders their bodies disposed of like garbage. Declared obsolete by Mekum, the remaining older soldiers are removed from combat duty and demoted to menial unarmed support roles. Dumped on Arcadia 234, a waste disposal planet, an injured Todd limps toward a colony whose residents crash-landed there years earlier; as they were believed dead, no rescue missions have been attempted. Todd is found and sheltered by Mace, and he and his wife Sandra help nurse Todd back to health. Rarely speaking himself, Todd develops a silent rapport with their mute son, Nathan, who had been traumatized by a snakebite as an infant. He looks upon the happy, loving family with yearning in his eyes; having never considered sexuality before, he also has confusion concerning an attraction to Sandra. Though they try to make him feel welcome, Todd has difficulty adapting to the community and their conflict-free lives due to his extremely rigid conditioning. When Nathan silently looks to him for defense against a coiled snake, Todd attempts to show Nathan how to protect himself. Nathan's parents intervene and disapprove of the lesson, unsure of how to deal with the silent soldier. Todd's increasing disorientation by exposure to peaceful civilian life manifests into flashbacks of his time battling other enemy soldiers - and killing civilians who were in the way. With Todd's mind deep inside one of his more violent memories, one of the colonists surprises Todd, who nearly kills him. Fearful, the colonists expel Todd from the community. Having been rejected by every society he has known - the military and the refugee civilians - Todd shows strong emotion for the first time; overcome by the loss, he quietly cries. A short time later, Mace and Sandra are almost bitten by a snake while they sleep, but Nathan uses Todd's defensive technique and saves them. Now understanding the value of Todd's lesson, Mace leaves to bring him back, regardless of the opposition of the colonists who fear him. Mekum and the new soldiers arrive on the garbage planet to garner them combat experience. Since the world is legally listed as 'uninhabited', Mekum declares the colonists as 'hostiles', to be used as the targets, much to the disapproval of Captain Church. Just after Mace finds Todd and apologizes, the soldiers spot them and open fire. Todd survives but Mace dies from the attack. Though out-manned and outgunned, Todd's years of battle experience and superior knowledge of the planet allow him to return to the colony and kill the advance squad. Nervous that an unknown enemy force may be confronting them, Colonel Mekum orders the soldiers to withdraw and return with heavy artillery. Using guerrilla tactics, Todd outmaneuvers and kills all the remaining soldiers. Caine 607 is wounded and uses painkillers and performance enhancing stimulants to attack Todd in vicious hand-to-hand combat, but he is ultimately defeated by Todd's experience and clever tactics rather than mere physical prowess. Todd confronts Mekum over the radio, declaring his new soldiers obsolete. Panicking, Mekum orders Todd's old squad to set up and activate a portable nuclear device powerful enough to destroy the planet before commanding the ship to lift off and leave the squad behind. When Captain Church objects to the abandonment of the old soldiers, Mekum shoots him in cold blood. Todd finds his old squad and they silently side with him over the army that has discarded them. They take over the ship, evacuate the remaining colonists and leave Mekum and Church's aides on the planet. In an attempt to disarm the nuclear device, Mekum accidentally sets it off, killing himself and the aides. The ship escapes the shockwave and sets course for the Trinity Moons, the colonists' original destination. When Nathan enters the control room and reaches for Todd, he picks up Nathan and points to their new destination while looking out upon the galaxy. ===== In Cleveland, On Christmas 1972, Russell Stevens Jr. is the son of a drug addicted, alcoholic man, who tells his son never to be like him. Stevens then witnesses his father getting shot and killed while robbing a liquor store. He swears that he will never end up like him. In 1991, Stevens is a police officer. He is recruited by DEA Special Agent Gerald Carver to go undercover in Los Angeles, claiming that his criminal-like character traits will be more of a benefit undercover than they would serve him as a uniformed policeman. Stevens poses as drug dealer "John Hull" in order to infiltrate and work his way up the network of the West Coast's largest drug importer, Anton Gallegos and his uncle Hector Guzmán, a South American politician. Stevens relocates to a cheap hotel in L.A. and begins dealing cocaine. One day, Stevens is arrested by the devoutly religious LAPD Narcotics Detective Taft and his corrupt partner Hernández, as he buys a kilogram in a set-up by Gallegos' low-level street supplier Eddie Dudley. At his arraignment, Stevens discovers that he bought baby laxative instead of cocaine and his case is dismissed. Stevens' self-appointed attorney David Jason, who is also a drug trafficker in Gallegos' network, rewards Stevens' silence with more cocaine and introduces Stevens to Felix Barbossa, the underboss to Gallegos. Felix kills Eddie when he finds out he's working with the LAPD and enlists Stevens as Eddie's replacement. Stevens develops a romance with Betty McCutcheon, the manager of an art dealership which is a front to launder Jason's drug money. When one of Stevens' dealers is murdered by a rival dealer, Stevens kills him and is awarded a partnership in Jason's new business: distribution of a synthetic chemical variant of cocaine. Felix is a confidential informant working with Detective Hernández. Felix immediately gives up Stevens, Jason, and Betty, and wants Jason killed during the arrest because of his business venture. Carver knows about this, but refuses to interfere forcing Stevens to violate orders and stop it himself by exposing Felix, which results in a vengeful Jason killing him, while Betty reneges the drug business because of it with Stevens' protection. Gallegos comes to meet with Jason and Stevens and informs them that they have inherited Felix's debts to him. Later that day, Stevens meets with Carver to tell him about his meeting with Gallegos. Instead Carver pulls a gun on Stevens and orders him to surrender his weapon and get in his car. Angrily, Stevens disarms Carver and forces him to admit that the State Department has decided to leave Gallegos alone because Guzmán may some day be useful as a political asset to them and Carver has decided to play along in exchange for career advancement. Stevens' disillusionment reaches its conclusion and he abandons his undercover status vowing to take down Gallegos and Guzmán alone. Stevens and Jason learn that Gallegos is going to kill them anyway, so they kill him first and steal a van storing over a $100 million of Gallegos' cash. Jason and Stevens invite Guzmán to a shipyard and offer to return 80% of Gallegos' money if he agrees to invest the remaining 20% in their synthetic cocaine operation. Detective Taft, who has been tailing Stevens, interrupts the deal but is unable to arrest Guzmán because of his diplomatic immunity. Guzmán leaves. Taft orders Stevens to surrender, but is shot and killed by Jason. Stevens reveals himself as a police officer and attempts to arrest Jason, but is forced to kill him in self-defense. Afterwards, Carver coerces Stevens into testifying in favor of him and the DEA in return for not charging Betty for money laundering. Stevens produces a videotape of the incriminating conversation with Guzmán at the shipyard during his testimony to the House Judiciary Subcommittee, ruining the State Department's intentions along with Guzmán and Carver's careers. Later he contemplates what to do with the $11 million of Gallegos' money he secretly kept. ===== "Beachworld" is set at an unspecified time in the distant future. Among the few clues to the date is the passing reference that the last of the Beach Boys had died eight thousand years previously. The catastrophic crash-landing of a Federation spacecraft on an uncharted planet made up entirely of sand leaves one crewman, Grimes, dead while Rand and Shapiro survive. Rand stares out over the sand dunes as both men associate the endless rolling dunes with a beach. Rand becomes hypnotized by the dunes and refuses to move from the very spot he's standing on or drink water. Shapiro also feels drawn to the dunes but, unlike Rand, finds this hypnosis frightening and is relieved to go inside their ship where the dunes are out of sight. When a trader spacecraft arrives in response to Shapiro's beacon, the crew initially treat Shapiro's account with skepticism. However, they become convinced when they're unable to get Rand away from the dunes. Rand resists leaving the planet, and the sand reveals itself to be sentient. It prevents Rand's rescue by damaging a sampler android sent from the ship and sending a hand of sand up to stop a tranquilizer dart. The rescue ship escapes just in time, with Shapiro and the trader's captain both narrowly avoiding a giant hand of sand. Rand, left alone, stares up at the ship as it disappears, and then begins to pile handfuls of sand into his mouth. ===== In 1983, Vislor Turlough, a stranded alien posing as a human student, is given an offer by the Black Guardian for passage off Earth if he should kill the Fifth Doctor. Meanwhile, the Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa find the TARDIS stuck in the warp ellipse of a starliner trapped in time. Materialising aboard, they find a transmat device, with separate endpoints to Earth in 1977 and 1983, is creating the interference. Turlough arrives from the 1983 transmat, feigning lack of comprehension of the situation. The Doctor instructs Nyssa and Tegan to stay aboard the TARDIS while he returns with Turlough to 1983 to fix that transmat point, hoping it will allow the TARDIS to escape. Instead, the TARDIS materialises in 1977 at Turlough's school. Suspecting that UNIT would know its whereabouts, the Doctor visits his friend, retired Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, now a maths teacher at the school, and is surprised to learn some trauma in the past has made him lose the memories of the last few years. However, as the Doctor talks about 1977, the Brigadier starts regaining some memories. In 1977, Nyssa and Tegan leave the TARDIS and find a horribly disfigured man in the transmat capsule, whom they believe is the Doctor. They seek out help from the younger Brigadier, and the "Doctor" urges all three to return with him to the starliner via the TARDIS. In 1983, the Doctor detects the TARDIS' movement, and he, Turlough, and the older Brigadier also return to the starliner via the transmat. The Doctor regroups with his companions; realising two versions of the Brigadier are aboard, he instructs them all to keep the two separated, as if they should touch, it could release a potentially catastrophic energy discharge due to the Blinovitch limitation effect. The figure posing as the Doctor is forced to reveal himself as Mawdryn, one of several scientists aboard the liner who were trying to discover the Time Lord secret of regeneration. Their experiments failed, and he and his fellow scientists have become immortal in this painful state and seek to die, but the Doctor determines the only way to do so is to give up his remaining regenerations. He attempts to leave with his companions, but find that Nyssa and Tegan suffer the same affliction as Mawdryn and de-age rapidly once in the Time Vortex, and quickly returns to the ship. The Doctor agrees to give up his regenerations and prepares to transfer this energy. Elsewhere on the ship, the two Brigadiers, having been left alone, have managed to find each other. They reach out to touch, and the flash of energy occurs just at the right moment before the Doctor gives up his regenerations as to help end Mawdryn and his colleagues lives as requested, restoring Nyssa and Tegan, and saving the Doctor. The younger Brigadier passes out from shock, and the Doctor suspects this was the trauma that caused him to lose his memories. The TARDIS crew return the Brigadiers to their proper time, and the Doctor accepts Turlough's request to join his crew, unaware of the Black Guardian's influence. ===== Barney is a bored young boy staying with his grandparents on the chalk Downs of southern England. One day, he falls over the edge of an old chalk pit close to his grandparents' house, tumbling through the roof of a den. While exploring the den, Barney encounters its owner, Stig, a caveman with shaggy, black hair and bright black eyes. The chalk pit is disused and full of people's dumped rubbish. Barney and Stig quickly become friends. They learn to communicate with each other without language, as Stig speaks no English. Stig's den is a place built out of discarded rubbish, which motivates Barney to help Stig make it look more attractive. They spend time repairing and improving Stig's den, collecting firewood, going hunting, and at one point catching some burglars who break into Barney's grandparents' house. On another occasion Barney is cornered by the bullying Snarget brothers, who become uncharacteristically docile when Stig appears. Although Barney mentions Stig to others, no-one (with the exception of the Snargets) believes that Stig is real. Barney starts to give thought to where Stig has come from. During a very hot, sultry mid-summer's night, when Barney and his sister Lou are unable to sleep, they find themselves transported back in time and out onto the Downs. To their surprise, they meet Stig, back with his own people, engaged in the construction of four gigantic standing stones. They spend a night camping out with the people of Stig's tribe, and helping to shift the final stone into position before sunrise. ===== The protagonist and their friend, Eric Sparrow, live in suburban New Jersey and dream of becoming famous skateboarders. The protagonist manages to impress professional skater Chad Muska, visiting town for a demo, who gives them a new skateboard and informs them that a good way to start a skating career is to gain a sponsorship from a local skate shop. The protagonist seeks out Stacy Peralta, who agrees until he sees something to set them apart from the other local skaters, so the protagonist travels to Manhattan, New York with Eric, who is on the run from drug dealers after setting their car on fire for stealing from the skate shop. There, the pair shoot a skating video that impresses Stacy, who loans them a van and suggests they enter the Tampa AM, an amateur division skate contest held annually at the Skate Park of Tampa in Florida. Upon arrival, Eric is arrested for insulting a police officer, and the protagonist does favors for the local police department to secure his bail. However, when they arrive for the contest, it is revealed that Eric had only completed his own application form and not the protagonist's, forcing a dejected protagonist to try and impress competitors in the pro contest in order to gain admission. After impressing Tony Hawk, the protagonist wins the Best Trick event at Tampa AM and is offered deals by major skateboard sponsors, much to Eric's dismay. The protagonist then heads to San Diego, California to meet Todd, the manager of the team, and completes several photo shoots for a magazine. Following a wild celebration party, it is revealed that Eric has been picked up by the same sponsor. The team then flies out to Hawaii to film a video, with the protagonist aiming for local spots that skaters have not filmed at before. Finding a tall hotel, the protagonist climbs to the roof and recruits Eric to film a trick video atop it. The police arrive to arrest them for trespassing, but the protagonist uses the opportunity to perform a McTwist over the helicopter and onto the awning of the adjacent Royal Hawaiian Hotel, allowing them and an awestruck Eric to evade the police. The team then travels to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. After doing errands for locals and finishing their part of the team video, the protagonist attends the video premiere at the Slam City Jam. However, Eric steals the idea and edits the protagonist's part out of the video, allowing only Eric to become a professional. After angrily confronting Eric, the protagonist enters Eric's pro contest and wins, becoming a pro as well. After designing their own pro skateboard, the protagonist and Eric embark on a team trip to Moscow, Russia, where they reconcile. However, Eric gets drunk and joyrides in a Russian military tank. The protagonist hops in and attempts to stop the tank, but being unfamiliar with the controls, fails to stop it from crashing. Eric jumps out and runs away, leaving the protagonist, trapped inside, to be arrested by the Russian military. Eric then lies and claims the protagonist stole the tank, stating that he in fact tried to stop them. Unwilling to pay the $700,000 worth of damages, Todd kicks the protagonist off the team, much to Eric's delight. The American Embassy bails out the protagonist, leaving them to do favors for locals in order to return home to New Jersey. Eric, who now owns his own skate company, reveals that he had been planning to betray the protagonist after having long abandoning the idea of "soul skating" (skating for enjoyment rather than riches); after unsuccessfully trying to exempt them from the Tampa AM, Eric stole the helicopter footage in jealousy before finally getting the protagonist kicked off the skate team by lying back in Moscow. Determined to fight back, the protagonist teams up with Peralta and several professionals to create a soul skating video, creating a new trick in the process. Due to the success of the video, Eric challenges the protagonist to one last skate-off, with the unedited helicopter tape at stake. The protagonist wins by avoiding Eric's attempts to cheat and walks away with the tape while Eric breaks down in anger. ===== During the Bosnian War, United States Navy flight officer Lieutenant Chris Burnett and pilot Lieutenant Jeremy Stackhouse are stationed on the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson in the Adriatic Sea. Burnett is preparing to leave the Navy, and clashes with his commanding officer, Admiral Reigart. On Christmas, Reigart assigns Burnett and Stackhouse to fly an aerial reconnaissance mission, which goes smoothly until they spot unusual activity in the demilitarized zone. Burnett persuades Stackhouse to fly their F/A-18F Super Hornet off-course for a closer look, unaware that they are photographing Serb Volunteer Guard soldiers burying massacred Bosnian Muslim civilians in mass graves. The local Bosnian Serb paramilitary commander, General Miroslav Lokar, is conducting a secret genocidal campaign against the Bosniak population, and orders the jet be shot down. Attempting to outmaneuver Lokar's surface-to-air missiles, Burnett and Stackhouse's jet is hit, forcing them to eject. Lokar and his men find the injured Stackhouse, who is executed by Sasha, one of Lokar's right-hand men. Watching nearby, Burnett flees into the wilderness, and Lokar orders his deputy, Colonel Bazda, and Sasha to hunt him down. Burnett radios for help and receives an extraction point from Reigart, who is forced to stand down after Admiral Piquet, the commander of NATO naval forces in the region, warns him that rescuing Burnett in the demilitarized zone risks derailing the peace process. Burnett reaches the extraction point only to be informed that he must continue to another location, miles outside the demilitarized zone, in order to be rescued. Spotting Bazda's patrol, Burnett falls into a mass grave, and hides under a dead body until the Serbs move on. To ensure Burnett's rescue, Reigart leaks news of the downed jet to the press, angering Piquet. Lokar realizes that the American jet's hard drive with the incriminating photographs may still be in the wreckage. Heading to the new extraction point, Burnett escapes Serb soldiers through a minefield. Pursued by Sasha, he encounters Bosniak guerrillas who offer him a ride to the town of Hač, which turns out to be a war zone. After the battle, Serb troops believe they have found Burnett's body, but Sasha realizes Burnett switched uniforms with a dead Serb guerrilla and escaped. The Serbs present the corpse wearing Burnett's uniform to the media, convincing NATO forces that Burnett has been killed, and the mission to rescue him is aborted just as he reaches the extraction point. Realizing why the Serbs shot him down, Burnett remembers a statue of an angel near where his ejection seat landed, and returns to find it. He activates the seat's rescue beacon, notifying his carrier group that he is still alive, but also alerting the Serbs to his location. Knowing he risks being relieved of command, Reigart prepares a task force to rescue Burnett, in defiance of Piquet's orders. On the way to kill Burnett and recover his body, Bazda steps on a landmine; Sasha abandons him to his fate, and the explosion alerts Burnett that someone is approaching. Sasha finds the ejection seat, but is ambushed by Burnett, who fatally stabs him with a flare. Lokar arrives with armored vehicles and infantry, but is held off by Reigart's task force. Retrieving the hard drive, Burnett is successfully rescued. The photographs of the mass grave lead to Lokar's arrest and conviction for war crimes including genocide. Reigart's actions result in him being relieved of command and retiring from service, and Burnett continues his career in the Navy. ===== In Poland in 1968, a little girl is shown the stars in the winter sky by her mother, who identifies the Christmas Eve star. In France, a little girl is shown one of the first leaves of spring by her mother, who points out the fine veins running through. In Poland in 1990, a young Polish woman named Weronika (Irène Jacob) is singing at an outdoor concert with her choir when a sudden downpour causes the singers to rush for cover. After Weronika holds the last note alone, she meets her boyfriend, Antek (Jerzy Gudejko), and they go to his apartment to have sex. The next day she asks her father to tell Antek she is leaving to be with her sick aunt in Kraków. She tells him that lately she feels she's not alone in the world. Weronika travels to Kraków by train looking out at the passing landscape through a small clear rubber ball. At her aunt's house, Weronika talks about her boyfriend, then meets a friend at a concert rehearsal. As the choir rehearses, Weronika, who is watching offstage, accompanies them in her soprano voice. Afterwards, the musical director asks her to audition. Overjoyed, Weronika rushes home with the sheet music. On the way, she passes through Main Market Square, where a protest rally is in progress. One protester runs into her, causing her to drop her music folder. After retrieving the sheet music, Weronika notices a French tourist taking photos of the protestors—a young woman who looks exactly like her. Weronika smiles as she watches her double board the tourist bus that soon pulls away. At the audition, Weronika's singing impresses the musical director and conductor, and she is later told that she won the audition. The next day, while on a trolley studying the score, Weronika notices her boyfriend Antek following on his motorbike. When they talk, she apologizes for not returning his calls, and Antek tells her he loves her. Later, while getting dressed for the concert, Weronika presses her face against a window and sees an old woman with shopping bags slowly making her way along the street. That night during the concert, while singing a solo part, Weronika collapses onstage and dies. In Paris that day, a young French woman named Véronique (Irène Jacob), after sex with her former boyfriend, is overwhelmed with sadness, as if she were grieving. The next day, at the school where she teaches music, Véronique attends a marionette performance with her class about a ballet dancer who breaks her leg and then turns into a butterfly. She then leads her class in a musical piece by an eighteenth-century composer, Van den Budenmayer—the same piece performed by Weronika when she died. That night while driving home, she sees the puppeteer at a traffic light motioning to her not to light the wrong end of her cigarette. Later she is awakened by a phone call with no one speaking, but in the background she hears a choir singing the music of Van den Budenmayer. The next day, Véronique drives to her father's house where she reveals she is in love with someone she doesn't know, and that recently she felt she was alone—that someone was gone from her life. Back in Paris, she receives a letter containing a shoelace, which she compares to her EKG graph, and a stranger shines light on her using a mirror. Véronique learns that the puppeteer is a children's book author named Alexandre Fabbri (Philippe Volter), whose marionette story was based on his book Libellule & Papillon. One of his other books is about a shoelace. In the coming days, Véronique reads several of Alexandre's books. When Véronique visits her father, he gives her a package addressed to her containing a cassette tape. When she's alone, she listens to the mysterious recording of a typewriter, footsteps, a door opening, a train station, and a fragment of music by Van den Budenmayer. There are also sounds of a car accident and explosion. The postage stamp on the envelope leads Véronique to a Gare Saint-Lazare train station cafe where she believes the cassette recording was made. There she sees Alexandre sitting by himself, as if waiting for her. He tells her he's been waiting for her for two days, that he's working on a new book, and that this was a kind of experiment to see if she would come to him. Angered at being manipulated, Véronique leaves and takes a taxi to a nearby hotel, After checking in, she sees Alexandre, who apparently ran after the taxi. He asks for her forgiveness, and she brings him up to her room, where they both fall asleep. During the night, they confess their feelings for each other and become lovers. The next morning she tells him, "All my life I've felt like I was here and somewhere else at the same time." While looking at a proof sheet of photos taken on Véronique's recent trip to Poland, Alexandre notices what he thinks is a photo of Véronique, but she assures him it is not her, that she in fact took the photo—of a young Polish woman carrying a music folder. Véronique is overwhelmed by a deep sadness. Some time later at his apartment, Véronique sees Alexandre working on a new marionette with her image. When asked about the purpose of a second identical marionette, Alexandre explains, "I handle them a lot when I perform. They get damaged easily." He shows her how to work the one marionette while the double lies lifeless on the table. Alexandre reads his new book to Véronique about two women, born the same day in different cities, who have a mysterious connection. Later that day, Véronique arrives at her father's house, stops at the front gate, and reaches out and touches an old tree. Her father, who is inside the house, seems to sense this without seeing it. ===== The film opens during Caesar's invasions of Britain, with Mark Antony (Sid James) struggling to lead his armies through miserable weather. At a nearby village, cavemen Horsa (Jim Dale) and Hengist Pod (Kenneth Connor) attempt to alert Boudica to the invasion, but are captured by the Romans. Once in Rome, Horsa is sold by the slave-trading firm Marcus et Spencius, and Hengist is destined to be thrown to the lions when no-one agree to buy him. Horsa and Hengist escape and take refuge in the Temple of Vesta. Whilst hiding there, Julius Caesar (Kenneth Williams) arrives to consult the Vestal Virgins, but an attempt is made on his life by his bodyguard, Bilius (David Davenport). In the melee, Horsa kills Bilius and escapes, leaving Hengist to take the credit for saving Caesar's life and to be made Caesar's new bodyguard. When a power struggle emerges in Egypt, Mark Antony is sent to force Cleopatra (Amanda Barrie) to abdicate in favour of Ptolemy. However, Mark Antony becomes besotted with her, and instead kills Ptolemy off-screen to win her favour. Cleopatra convinces Mark Antony to kill Caesar and become ruler of Rome himself so that they may rule a powerful Roman-Egyptian alliance together. After seducing one another, Mark Antony agrees, and plots to kill Caesar. Caesar and Hengist travel to Egypt on a galley, along with Agrippa (Francis de Wolff), whom Mark Antony has convinced to kill Caesar. However, Horsa has been re-captured and is now a slave on Caesar's galley. After killing the galley-master (Peter Gilmore), Horsa and the galley slaves kill Agrippa and his fellow assassins and swim to Egypt. Hengist, who had been sent out to fight Agrippa and was unaware of Horsa's presence on board, again takes the credit. Once at Cleopatra's palace, an Egyptian soothsayer (Jon Pertwee) warns Caesar of the plot to kill him, but Mark Anthony convinces Caesar not to flee. Instead, Caesar convinces Hengist to change places with him, since Cleopatra and Caesar have never met. On meeting, Cleopatra lures Hengist, who accidentally exposes both Cleopatra and Mark Anthony as would-be assassins. He and Caesar then ally with Horsa, and after defeating Cleopatra's bodyguard Sosages (Tom Clegg) in combat, Hengist and the party flee Egypt. Caesar is returned to Rome, only to be assassinated on the Ides of March. Horsa and Hengist return to Britain, and Mark Antony is left in Egypt to live "one long Saturday night" with Cleopatra. ===== In the small Kansas town of Fair Oaks, diner waitress Betty is a fan of the soap opera A Reason to Love. She has no idea that her husband Del, a car salesman, is cheating on her and having a sexual affair with another woman. She also doesn't know that her husband supplements his income by selling drugs. When Betty calls to ask about borrowing a Buick LeSabre for her birthday, her husband tells her to take a different car. Unknown to her, drugs are hidden in the LeSabre's trunk. Two hitmen, Charlie and Wesley, come to Betty and Del's house; Charlie threatens to scalp Del if he doesn't reveal where the drugs are, and Del reveals that he has hidden the drugs in the trunk of the LeSabre; afterwards, Wesley still scalps Del. Betty witnesses the murder and enters a fugue state, assuming the identity of a nurse in A Reason to Love. That evening, Sheriff Eldon Ballard, local reporter Roy Ostery, and several policemen examine the crime scene while Betty calmly packs a suitcase. She seems oblivious to the murder, even with the investigation going on right in her house. At the police station, a psychiatrist examines her. Betty spends the night at her friend's house, sleeping in a child's bedroom. In the middle of the night, she gets into the LeSabre and drives off. She stops at a bar in Williams, Arizona, where the bartender talks about her vacation in Rome and Betty tells her that she was once engaged to a famous surgeon (describing the lead character from A Reason to Love). Meanwhile, the two hitmen are in pursuit, having realized that Betty has the car with the drugs. As they search, Charlie's heart begins to soften towards Betty, to Wesley's consternation. In Los Angeles, Betty tries to get a job as a nurse while looking for her long-lost "ex-fiancé". She is turned down because she has no résumé or references, but when she saves a young shooting victim's life with a technique she learned from the show, the hospital offers her a job in the pharmacy but forbids her to touch any more patients. Despite her position, Betty becomes popular with patients and their families. She ends up living with Rosa, older sister to the young man she helped earlier, in gratitude for saving his life. Rosa is also a legal secretary and she offers to help Betty find her surgeon boyfriend. Rosa learns from a colleague that "David" is a soap opera character, and goes to the pharmacy window to confront Betty. Thinking her friend is jealous, Betty is impervious to the revelation. The lawyer supplies tickets to a charity function where George McCord, the actor portraying David, will be appearing. Betty meets George at the function. George is inclined to dismiss her as an overimaginative fan, but something about her compels him to talk to her. He begins to think that Betty is an actress determined to get a part in the soap opera, so he decides to play along. After three hours of her "staying in character", he takes her home. George begins falling in love with her, and he and his producer decide to bring her onto the show as a new character: Nurse Betty. When Betty arrives on set, she falls out of her fantasy world back into real life. After two failed takes, she realizes that she is on a set and that the people she thought were real are just characters. George confronts her and Betty walks out. Back at Rosa's house, Betty is telling her roommate what happened, when the two hitmen walk in and take Betty and Rosa hostage at gunpoint. The criminals tie up the two women and are subsequently interrupted by Roy and Sheriff Ballard, who have also tracked down Betty. A standoff ensues until Ballard pulls a gun from an ankle holster and shoots Wesley, who is revealed to be Charlie's son, dead. Charlie decides not to kill Betty and commits suicide in the bathroom. George offers Betty a job on the show. She appears in 63 episodes and takes a vacation in Rome. Betty later plans to pursue nursing as a career. ===== In 1898, Buffalo Soldiers from the U.S. Army's 10th Cavalry Regiment, led by Jesse Lee (Mario Van Peebles), are fighting in the Spanish–American War in Cuba. As the segregated African-American unit is barely holding its own against constant attacks from enemy troops, Jesse runs back to the command post of the corrupt and racist Colonel Graham (Billy Zane) to request that the 10th Cavalry be allowed to pull back. Colonel Graham orders Jesse to shoot a deserter in exchange for allowing the 10th to retreat. Unable to kill a man in cold blood, Jesse demonstrates excellent marksmanship by shooting the man's cigar from his mouth. Colonel Graham then kills the deserter, and offers Jesse's command of the 10th to Little J (Stephen Baldwin), another White prisoner (the alternative would be to face the firing squad). Graham then orders the 10th to fall back in order to begin another mission, one in which they will be required to wear civilian clothing, as opposed to their Cavalry uniforms. They are ordered to rob a Spanish gold shipment, which is a setup to give the Colonel an excuse to execute the entire 10th Cavalry as deserters. As he meets them with his own cavalry force, his aide Weezie (Charles Lane) causes a distraction, allowing the 10th to shoot the Colonel and his cavalry down. With Colonel Graham and his troops supposedly dead, the remnants of the 10th—including Jesse, Obobo (Tiny Lister), Angel (Tone-Lōc) and Little J, along with Weezie sneak out of Cuba and Jesse leads them to New Orleans. Soon after arriving their arrival, Little J meets a gambler named Father Time (Big Daddy Kane) and they begin playing poker, at which point Time is caught cheating. Little J helps the gambler escape and they go back to the hotel room where the others are hiding, telling them "We were never here" in fear that the vengeful gamblers might come for them. Doing just as J feared, the gamblers come in search of him and Father Time, only to be shot in the back by Colonel Graham and his troops, who survived the skirmish in Cuba. Angel is killed in the firefight while Little J, Father Time and the others barely escape. They meet up with Jesse who had left earlier to finish some business in a town out West. The newly formed "posse" heads West with Colonel Graham on their heels every step of the way. They eventually stop in a town where Jesse has ammunition custom-made out of gold in order to kill the demons of his past, using one to kill the man who made the ammunition—as he was one of the men who lynched Jesse's father King David (Robert Hooks) years earlier (Father Time later explains that the voodoo ladies in New Orleans believe that gold is the only way to kill a demon). They make their way to Freemanville, a town founded by King David and composed entirely of African-Americans. Jesse is reunited with several old acquaintances, including his good friend Carver (Blair Underwood), who is now the sheriff of Freemanville. Carver's deputy goes to Cutterstown, not wanting to tip anyone off that Carver is working with Cutterstown's sheriff, Bates (Richard Jordan). He informs Bates that Jesse has returned to Freemanville. The "posse" enjoys the hospitality of Freemanville until Bates tells Carver that the town will burn unless Jesse is turned over to him and his deputies (Sheriff Bates and one of his deputies were men that had lynched King David, and were afraid that Jesse had come back for revenge). Bates and a few of his deputies attack Freemanville that same night looking for Jesse. One of the deputies beats Weezie in order to get answers. Watching in disgust, Little J fights back in defense of Weezie. Outnumbered, Little J is kicked and beaten to death by Bates and his men, and Obobo and Jesse's former mentor Papa Joe (Melvin Van Peebles) are taken to Cutterstown as prisoners. Jesse and Father Time soon rescue them by posing as Ku Klux Klan members and storming into the Cutterstown jail. Jesse kills one of the deputies, who was another one of King David's murderers. When he returns he convinces the townspeople to fight Sheriff Bates by telling them he wants the land for himself to sell to the railroad when it comes through. The citizens of Freemanville fight Bates the next day when he rides in. As they begin to gain the upper hand, Colonel Graham arrives with his cavalry and a Gatling gun which he uses to cut the people down. Jesse charges the gun with a stick of dynamite destroying the gun and killing some of Graham's troops. Meanwhile, Carver plans to flee with the deeds to all of the property in Freemanville—all of which are in his name—but is stopped by Papa Joe's daughter Lana (Salli Richardson). Father Time shows up just in time to stop Carver from harming Lana. Time kills one of Carver's deputies, but is killed by Carver. Before Carver can flee, he is stopped by Bates who reveals that they had a deal to split the proceeds from the land 50-50. Jesse arrives just in time to hear about the deal, and watches as Carver is betrayed and murdered by Bates. Jesse kills Bates in a showdown, finally putting his past demons to rest. Colonel Graham captures Lana and orders Jesse into the saloon, where they have a climactic fight resulting in Graham's death and the destruction of the saloon (which Graham had set ablaze). Jesse, Obobo, Weezie and Lana watch as the townspeople fight the fire. The story ends almost a century later with an old man (Woody Strode) being interviewed by reporters (Reginald Hudlin, Warrington Hudlin) about the black cowboys of the Old West. The man, who was a young boy when he met Jesse in Freemanville, gives the reporters a small book that Jesse had given him. In the end, a caption goes on to tell that there had been over 8,000 black cowboys in the Old West whose stories had never been told due to omission by Hollywood and others alike. ===== Monty Kessler, an honors student in the Government program at Harvard University, rooms with art student Courtney Blumenthal, radio DJ and trust fund child Everett Calloway, and neurotic pre-med student Jeff Hawkes. Monty is the pet project of Professor Pitkannan, a Nobel Laureate and government cynic. While working on his thesis, Monty loses his work when his computer crashes. As he leaves to make copies of his sole printed version, he breaks his ankle and drops his thesis down a steam vent and into the boiler room of Widener Library, where he sees a disheveled man reading it, then burning the thesis page by page. The homeless man demands compensation for not burning it. Monty calls the university police, who arrest the man, but the thesis is missing. In his court appearance, the man's name is revealed to be Simon B. Wilder. After convincing the judge to dismiss the charges against him, he is then held in contempt. Monty pays Simon's fine to get his thesis back. Although Simon blames Monty for getting him kicked out of the library, the two of them work out a deal: Simon will give one page for each service Monty provides. Simon takes up residence in Everett's broken-down van in the backyard of Monty's house. Confronted by his roommates, Monty assures them he will get Simon out quickly. Simon mentors Monty, and the two become close friends. Monty discusses his absentee father, and Simon responds by showing him his collection of "memories", a bag of stones, each of which reminds him of a specific memory. With time, some of the roommates appreciate Simon's presence. Courtney appreciates the new, gentler Monty, and Everett agrees to exchange wine for Simon's fixing the van. Jeff, however, resents paying for extra food and fears the possible reactions of his visiting parents. On a particularly cold night, Jeff rejects Monty's request for Simon to sleep in the cellar, threatening to move out with his share of the rent. When Monty lies to Simon, Simon sees through his deception and leaves. After the others leave for Christmas break, Simon sends a homeless friend to deliver the rest of the thesis and a philosophical message. The friend tells Monty that Simon does not want to see him but gives Monty his location; Monty finds Simon in the street, wheezing and coughing. Monty takes Simon home and tells him he can stay there as long as he likes. Simon tells Monty he has asbestosis from his days in the United States Merchant Marine. Touched by Monty's courtesy, Simon agrees to accept government benefits to pay his way. Simon is shocked when Monty throws out his old thesis and writes a new one. As the roommates return, Monty introduces Simon as their new housemate, but Jeff threatens to leave again; eventually, the two reconcile. While writing his own obituary, Simon reveals to Monty that he left his own family. Though angry, Monty forgives him and brings Simon to the biggest party of the year on campus. As the two watch Courtney dance, Simon recognizes that Monty loves her; following Simon's advice, Monty pursues Courtney, and the two kiss. Late that night, Monty and Courtney find Simon collapsed in the hallway. Monty agrees to take Simon to see his long-lost son, Frank, even though it will mean missing his thesis deadline. The entire household sets off on a road trip. Monty convinces Frank to meet with Simon, and Frank berates Simon for leaving. When Frank's daughter approaches, Frank tells her that Simon is nobody and leaves. Simon breaks down and grabs a stone for a "memory". Simon expresses his desire to die alone, but Monty convinces him to return home with them; they take turns reading poetry to him before he dies. The four friends bury Simon, reading Simon's final obituary. Monty meets with Professor Pitkannan. While Pitkannan disagrees with Monty's thesis and approach to government, he appreciates his beliefs and effort. He regrets that because Monty turned his paper in late, he could not graduate summa cum laude. At the graduation ceremony, Monty grabs a stone for his own "memory". ===== Luella Delano (Cathy Moriarty), a witness against the Mafia is being secretly held until the trial when a violent attempt against her kills several of her guards, as well as her husband. She disappears and Chris Lecce (Dreyfuss) and Bill Reimers (Estevez) are called upon due to their excellent surveillance record, to stake out a lakeside home where she is believed to be. Unlike their earlier stakeout, this time they are accompanied by Gina Garrett (O'Donnell) from the DA's office and her pet rottweiler 'Archie', covered as husband, wife, and son. Chris realizes that his girlfriend Maria is leaving him, due to his responsibility as a policeman, and not as someone she fell in love with. The main reason is Maria dated Chris for seven years and she wants to get married. But Chris doesn't, claiming his family has the worst track record in marriage, including his own divorce. However, he, Bill, and Gina must continue with their investigation for Brian and Pam O'Hara to make sure they are safe. Bill sneaks over one night during a dinner party to their house to put several tape recorders around their house. Things take a turn for the worse when Bill is knocked unconscious after being mistaken for a hit man to kill the O'Haras, whom they were ordered to protect. After coming to their senses, they realize that Bill is a cop, trying to protect them from the real hit man. Chris, Bill, and Gina decide to leave the matter for the FBI, until they get shot by an assassin named Tony, hired by his boss, and a corrupt District Attorney, whom he kills for his interference. Tony takes Gina hostage, despite Chris and Bill having their guns drawn. While walking Gina at gunpoint past the pool in pursuit of Luella, Tony is attacked by Archie for threatening Gina and they both fall into the pool. Tony shoots at Luella but hits Gina in the shoulder instead, then gets shot and killed by Chris and Bill. Both of them are congratulated as heroes by the FBI, Luella and Gina. Chris returns to his apartment to call Maria, but she is already there, and he proposes marriage, which she accepts. Bill, meanwhile, watches both of them making love through binoculars from a patrol car. ===== In 1967, during the Kisangani Mutinies, a virus called Motaba, which causes a deadly fever, is discovered in the African jungle. To keep the virus a secret, U.S. Army officers Donald McClintock and Billy Ford destroy the camp where soldiers were infected. Twenty-eight years later, Colonel Sam Daniels, a USAMRIID virologist, is sent to investigate an outbreak in Zaire. He and his crew—Lieutenant Colonel Casey Schuler and new recruit Major Salt—gather information and return to the United States. Ford, now a brigadier general and Daniels' superior officer, dismisses the latter's fears that the virus will spread. Betsy, a white-headed capuchin monkey that is host to the virus, is smuggled into the country. James "Jimbo" Scott, a worker at an animal testing laboratory, is infected when he steals Betsy to sell on the black market. Jimbo fails to sell Betsy to Rudy Alvarez (who also becomes infected), a pet- store owner in the coastal-California village of Cedar Creek. After releasing the monkey in the woods outside of the nearby community of Palisades, he develops symptoms on a flight to Boston and infects his girlfriend, Alice. Their illness is investigated by Dr. Roberta Keough, a CDC scientist and Daniels' ex-wife. Jimbo, Alice, and Rudy die, but Keough determines that no one else in Boston was infected. A hospital technician in Cedar Creek is infected when he accidentally breaks the vial of Rudy's blood. The virus quickly mutates into a strain capable of spreading like influenza, becoming airborne and causing a number of people to be infected in a movie theater. Daniels flies to Cedar Creek against Ford's orders, joining Keough's team with Schuler and Salt. As they begin a search for the monkey, the Army quarantines the town and imposes martial law. Schuler is infected when his suit tears and Keough accidentally sticks herself with a contaminated needle while treating him. When Ford provides an experimental serum which cures the original strain, Daniels realizes that he was aware of the virus before the outbreak. Daniels learns about Operation Clean Sweep, a plan for the military to contain the virus by bombing Cedar Creek, incinerating the town and its residents, ostensibly to prevent Motaba's expansion to pandemic proportions. However, McClintock, now a major general, plans to use the operation to conceal the mutated virus' existence so the original strain can be preserved for use as a biological weapon. To prevent Daniels from finding a cure, McClintock orders him arrested for carrying the virus. Daniels escapes before he and Salt fly a helicopter to the ship at sea which carried Betsy. Daniels obtains a picture of Betsy and releases it to the media; a Palisades resident, Mrs. Jeffries, realizes that her daughter Kate has been playing with Betsy in their yard and calls the CDC. Daniels and Salt arrive at the Jeffries' house where Salt tranquilizes Betsy after Kate coaxes her out of hiding in the woods nearby. When he learns from Daniels about Betsy's capture, Ford delays the bombing. On their return flight, Daniels and Salt are chased by McClintock in another helicopter. Salt fires two rockets into the trees to deceive him into thinking that they crashed. Once back in Cedar Creek, Salt mixes Betsy's antibodies with Ford's serum to create an antiserum; although Schuler has died, they save Keough. McClintock returns to base and resumes Operation Clean Sweep, refusing to listen to Ford. Daniels and Salt fly their helicopter directly into the path of the bomber's approach to its target. With Ford's help, Daniels persuades the bomber's flight crew to detonate the bomb over water and spare the town. Before McClintock can order another bombing, Ford relieves him of command and orders his arrest. Daniels and Keough reconcile as Cedar Creek's residents are cured. ===== Estelle (Mimsy Farmer) and Stefan (Klaus Grünberg) at the Ibiza island. Stefan is a German student from Lübeck, who has finished his mathematics studies and decides to have an adventure to discard his personal commitments. After hitch-hiking to Paris, he makes friends with Charlie while playing cards in a Latin Quarter, at the hotel La Louisiane round room 36, at the crossing of rue de Seine and rue de Buci, and they decide to commit a burglary to get some money. At a swinging Left Bank party, Stefan meets a free-spirited-beautiful but elusive American girl called Estelle and follows her to Ibiza. The two become lovers, with an atmosphere of easy sex, nude sunbathing and lots of drugs. He discovers Estelle is involved with a former Nazi called Dr. Wolf. Borrowing a villa from a hippie, Stefan saves Estelle from Dr. Wolf only to find she does not really want to be saved, and she introduces him to heroin (referred to by the old street name, "horse"), which she has stolen from Dr. Wolf. Stefan is initially against Estelle using heroin, but having used it previously, she persuades him to try it. Soon Stefan and Estelle are both heavily addicted to heroin. They try to break the addiction using LSD and initially manage to stay clean. However, after a while they are both using heroin again. Unable to break free of the addiction, it quickly spirals out of control leading to Stefan's death. ===== Plot switch stories take the characters from a series and place them in another time, place, or situation. A subset of this type called "familiar plot switch" takes the characters from a series and places them in a setting more familiar to the author. This type of context shift is one of the main sources of "high school fic" in which all the characters are written going to high school. ===== Three years after the events of the first film, veterinarian Dr. John Dolittle's (Eddie Murphy) ability to talk to animals has made him famous, and he travels the world performing his skills. Returning home from France, he gives his daughter Maya (Kyla Pratt) a chameleon named Pepito (voice of Jacob Vargas), and punishes his other daughter Charisse (Raven-Symoné) for doing poorly in school, confiscating her phone for a week. Charisse's boyfriend Eric (Lil Zane) joins the family for Charisse's 16th birthday party, where a possum (voice of Isaac Hayes) and a raccoon, Joey (voice of Michael Rapaport), tell John that their boss, the Godbeaver (Godfather of the rodent mafia), wants to see him. John meets the Godbeaver (voice of Richard C. Sarafian) and agrees to save the forest from being cut down by mating an endangered female Pacific western bear with a male. At a circus, John persuades Archie (voice of Steve Zahn), the sole surviving Pacific western male, to accompany him to the forest and become a real bear. John takes his family on a month-long vacation to the forest, where he makes a deal with the sole surviving Pacific western female bear named Ava (voice of Lisa Kudrow), who is involved with a male Kodiak bear named Sonny (voice of Mike Epps). She agrees not to make any decisions for a month after John promises to turn Archie into a bear she will love. Struggling to train Archie, who is used to the pampered lifestyle, John hires the local forest creatures to chaperone Charisse and Eric, and neglects his wife Lisa (Kristen Wilson). After assuring Archie that he will find a way to win Ava's heart, John attempts to win Lisa back by dancing in their cabin, with every animal in the forest watching, but Lucky the dog (voice of Norm Macdonald) accidentally ruins it. Archie attempts to get Ava's attention by imitating John singing, but falls from a tree branch. Humiliated, he refuses to leave his new-found cave, but becomes frustrated with John's insults and knocks him into a muddy hole, finally listening to his "inner bear". Later, Archie spends the day with Ava, whose relationship with Sonny is declining. Lucky tries to woo a female wolf, successfully urinating around her territory, but is interrupted by one of her packmates before she agrees to go out with him. Meanwhile, Sonny forces Ava to leave Archie. Logging magnate Mr. Potter (Jeffrey Jones) attempts to make a deal with John, until Archie tells John he has prepared his "big finish" to win Ava and goes after a bee hive at the edge of a tall hill, ignoring John’s warnings and the attacking bees. He manages to get the hive, finally winning Ava's heart and the respect of the other forest animals. Ava then dumps Sonny, finally having had enough of his rudeness to Archie. In a game of hide and seek with Ava, Archie is shot by a tranquilizer dart from Mr. Potter's apprentice, and John learns that Archie had somewhat destroyed the back of a restaurant. After getting information from a weasel (voice of Andy Dick), John visits Archie in jail, telling him that he may be too dangerous to go free and will be sold to a Mexican circus, ending John’s chance of saving the forest. John realizes that Charisse has developed her father's gift of talking to animals, reigniting his determination to save the forest. He rallies the animals of the forest not to give up without a fight and free Archie. The animals, led by Charisse, Eric, and Maya, rebel against the loggers, and word of Archie’s predicament spreads, leading animals around the world to go on strike. Mr. Potter and his apprentice are attacked by the animals and Mr. Potter is cornered by Ava and Joey, forcing him to negotiate with John and the animals. When the animals refuse Mr. Potter's new deal, the strike continues to grow, with several animal pros, including race horses and Shamu, getting in on the act. Finally, a deal is made and the Dolittles and animals accept, freeing Archie and saving the entire forest outside San Francisco. John and Charisse become closer, talking with and helping animals together, while Archie and Ava mate and have two cubs (voices of Frankie Muniz and Mandy Moore). ===== It is 1345, and in the English town of Ansby (in northeastern Lincolnshire), Sir Roger, Baron de Tourneville, is recruiting a military force to assist king Edward III in the Hundred Years' War against France. Suddenly, an enormous silver spacecraft lands outside the town. It is a scouting craft for the Wersgorix Empire, a brutal dominion light years from our solar system. The Wersgorix attempt to take over Earth by testing the feasibility of its colonization. However, the aliens, having forgotten hand-to-hand combat since it was made obsolete by their advanced technology, are caught off-guard by the angered Englishmen, who mistake the craft for a French trick. The villagers and soldiers in Ansby storm the craft and kill all but one Wersgor, Branithar. Sir Roger formulates a plan that with the captured ship, he can take the entire village to France to win the war, and then liberate the Holy Land. The townspeople, with all of their belongings, board the ship at the baron's instruction, and prepare to take off. The people of Ansby are mystified at the advanced technology aboard the ship, which they come to call the Crusader. Being unable to pilot the Crusader Sir Roger directs the surly Branithar to pilot them to France. Instead, the alien wrecks the baron's plan by throwing the Crusader into autopilot on course to Tharixan, another Wersgor colony. The Crusader arrives at Tharixan in days, and Sir Roger learns of this new world: it is sparsely-populated, with only three fortresses, Ganturath, Stularax, and Darova (the chief base). The humans capture Ganturath but destroy the Crusader in the process. Word spreads of the invaders and a meeting is arranged between Sir Roger and his soldiers and the chief of Tharixan, Huruga. The humans and Wersgor hold talks that do very little to give either side any advantage, but a truce is agreed to. Sir Roger, in order to intimidate the aliens, makes up tall tales about his estate, "which only took up three planets" and his other accomplishments, including a very successful conquest of Constantinople. Sir Roger demands that the entire Wersgorix state submit to the king of England. During the talks, Baron de Tourneville ignores the truce, and orders the capture of the fortress of Stularax. Unfortunately, the entire base is obliterated by an atomic bomb. In retaliation, Huruga attacks Ganturath again, but loses. He is forced to give up. Now comes Sir Roger's most outrageous plan; having captured Tharixan, he sets out to overthrow the Wersgorix Empire itself. He enlists the help of three other races oppressed by the Wersgor: the Jairs, the Ashenkoghli, and the Prʔ*tans. Meanwhile, one of his main soldiers and friend, Sir Owain Montbelle, hatches a plan to return to Earth, something that Sir Roger has lost interest in. With Lady Catherine, Sir Roger's wife, Montbelle corners the baron and demands that he help the people of Ansby get back to Earth. De Tourneville gives in, but attacks Sir Owain in person. At the climax, Lady Catherine betrays Montbelle and kills him herself. Unfortunately, she also destroys the notes that could have helped get the villagers of Ansby back home. Sir Roger goes on to topple the Wersgor Empire and build one for himself. He manages with the help of not only the species under the Wersgor, but from members of the Wersgor race who rebelled against their government. The religious figures in the story go on to establish a new branch of the Roman Catholic Church. ===== While walking home from school, "Shu", the main protagonist and a boy who loves Kendo, intercedes to protect a girl, Lala-Ru, who is attacked by abductors piloting dragon-like mechas and is accidentally transported to the attackers' world as a result — a wasteland devoid of water and dominated by a red giant star. Lala-Ru possesses a pendant containing a vast reservoir of water, and she has the ability to control it. Shu is trapped in this new, harsh reality, and he is beaten and interrogated repeatedly inside the warship commanded by the ruthless, manic dictator, Hamdo. While locked in a cell he meets an abducted girl who introduces herself as Sara Ringwalt of America. Sara's reason for her capture was being mistaken for Lala-Ru by Hamdo's minions. Sara is forced into the quarters of exceptional soldiers to be impregnated and is traumatized by her repeated rape. After an assault by an unknown enemy landship, Shu is forced to join an army of child soldiers; children trained for the looting of villages, in which they kidnap female villagers for breeding, and conscript orphaned male children into the ever dwindling ranks of Hamdo's army. Much of the series deals with serious moral issues relating to war and famine, the consequences of war, slavery, rape, and the exploitation of children. ===== As the game begins, a girl runs to her father's room in a castle. A group of creatures attack her; she defeats them and enters the room, where she finds a man standing over her dead father's body. The man disappears in a ball of light. Max (Megumi Kubota) is a boy from the town of Palm Brinks. He attends a circus and overhears a conversation between the ringmaster Flotsam (Chafurin) and the town mayor Need (Mitsuru Ogata); Flotsam pressures Need to find a stone and threatens to cause panic by telling the town's people—who never leave its confines—about occurrences in the outside world if the stone is not found soon. Flotsam sees Max and realizes Max's red pendant is the stone he is seeking. Max flees and leaves town to find out what is going on. He also hopes to find his missing mother. Outside the town, Max meets his boss Cedric (Hiroshi Naka) and Need on the town's train, Blackstone One. Cedric explains that fifteen years ago Emperor Griffon destroyed the world but spared Palm Brinks because he believed a special stone was hidden there. Flotsam attacks Blackstone One and is defeated by the girl from the castle, who is Princess Monica Raybrandt (Hiroko Taguchi) from 100 years in the future. The train stops near Sindain; Monica speculates that the Great Elder Jurak may reveal Griffon's identity if they restore his origin point. Griffon has sent his men to Max's time to alter the origin points of Monica's time, rewriting history and eliminating any opposition. Griffon has erased Jurak from existence by altering his origin point. Monica and Max set about restoring Jurak's origin point; Monica says Max's stone pendent is a red atlamillia that allows passage into the future; Monica's blue atlamillia allows passage to the past. They rebuild Sindain and go to the future to see Jurak (Tadashi Miyazawa), who says Griffon is from the distant past and advises them to speak to the great sage Crest. At Balance Valley the party restore Crest's erased origin point. They encounter Argo (Tomomichi Nishimura), who tells them the young Crest has died and only his apprentice Lin (Fumiko Orikasa) remains. Max and Monica rewrite Crest's history to avoid his death. They go to Moon Crystal Lighthouse and travel into the past; Lin and Crest (Susumu Chiba) are attacked by a warship Death Ark, captained by Gaspard (Takahiro Sakurai), who killed Monica's father. They cannot prevent Crest's death but Lin vows to become a legendary sage. Max and Monica go to the future and meet Madam Crest—an elderly Lin—who tells them Griffon comes from 10,000 years in the past; a jump only the scientists at the Luna Lab can make. Max and Monica restore the Lab's erased origin point and visit the future, where the Lab's head scientist Dr. Nobb (Motoko Kumai) shows them plans for a time-traveling train called Ixion, which can take them 10,000 years into the past. Word arrives that a battle with Griffon's army is taking place; the rebels' leader Elena (Hiroe Oka) contacts Nobb. Max recognizes Elena as his mother, who is from Monica's time. The rebels learned Griffon had a gold atlamillia and was seeking the other two stones. Monica's father, who Gaspard killed, owned the first stone. The rebels then located the final stone, owned by Max's father Gerald 115 years in the past. Elena traveled back in time to protect Gerald; they fell in love and had Max. Five years later, Elena had to return to the future to aid the rebels. Nobb suggests the rebels can withstand Griffon by rebuilding Paznos, a massive mobile fortress. Max and Monica travel to the village Heim Rada to restore the Gundorada Workshop's origin point. They are again attacked by Death Ark; they confront Gaspard, who is fighting for his changeling father who died when he was a child; he and his mother (Rikako Aikawa) were run out of town. Before dying, Gaspard's mother him he must find something worth protecting; Gaspard has not achieved this and he now lives for hatred. He tells Max and Monica they must defeat Griffon and asks to join them. Griffon's magic turns Gaspard into a dragon and forces him to fight them, and they reluctantly kill him. A child Gaspard is then shown meeting his mother. Max and Monica return to the future and find Paznos has been built. Griffon's army is defeated and Luna Lab tells them the Ixion is complete. They head 10,000 years into the past and meet Griffon (Fumiko Orikasa), a young moon-person who lives in Moon Flower Palace. He steals their atlamillia and changes into his real form (Taiten Kusunoki). Griffon plans to summon the Star of Oblivion, which will destroy all life on Earth and allow a new, better world to grow in its place. He transports his palace into the sky of Max's time and begins destroying the world. Max and Monica use Ixion to travel to Kazarov Stonehenge and bring Paznos to Max's time. Paznos attacks the Moon Flower Palace, which crashes to the ground. Max and Monica face Griffon at the Palace. They meet a woman named Alexandra (Mayumi Yanagisawa), who tells them she owns the Palace and that they fought an orphan child called Sirus, whom Alexandra adopted. Sirus has forgotten his childhood because of the evil inside him. Alexandra asks them to restore the palace's garden to remind Sirus of his old life. They do so and confront Griffon, who experiences a memory of Sirus lamenting that humans have nearly destroyed the world fighting for the atlamillia. These memories weaken Griffon; Max and Monica defeat him and he turns back into Sirus. A Dark Element (Hiroshi Iwasaki) rises from Sirus' body and calls the Star of Oblivion. The Element reveals it was born from Sirus's hatred of humans and plans to rule over the destroyed Earth. Max, Monica and the mortally wounded Sirus defeat the Element. Sirus stops the Star of Oblivion and dies, rejoining Alexandra in the garden. At Kazarov, Max and Monica say goodbye. Elena says goodbye to Max and Paznos returns to its own time. In the game's optional epilogue, Need asks Max to find some Zelmite ore to fuel Blackstone One. In the mine, Max is joined by Monica, who has used a Starglass from Madam Crest to travel back in time. The mechanical remains of Flotsam attacks them; they defeat it and reach the end of the mine. They find the Zelmite the Dark Genie from Dark Cloud attacks them. They defeat the Genie and return to Palm Brinks with the ore. ===== Billy Madison is the childish, mentally challenged, spoiled and alcoholic 27-year- old heir to Madison Hotels, a Fortune 500 chain of 650 hotels founded by his father, retiring tycoon Brian Madison. Billy spends his days drinking with friends and creating disturbances across his father's estate. One day, Billy ruins a dinner meeting between his father and his associates by acting obnoxiously. Brian loses confidence in his son and chooses his devious executive vice president Eric Gordon to take over Madison Hotels. When Billy begs his father to reconsider his decision, as he knows how callous and cruel Eric is, Brian reveals that he secretly bribed Billy's school teachers to give him passing grades. The two finally compromise: Billy must complete all 12 grades in two-week intervals to prove he is competent enough to manage the company. Shortly after enrolling into school, Billy becomes attracted to a teacher named Veronica Vaughn, who initially ignores him. Nevertheless, Billy successfully progresses through his first two grades. He finds himself as one of Veronica's students in the third grade and earns her respect by standing up for Ernie, his friend and classmate. Billy becomes popular among the third graders and misses them as he advances through school. Billy's progress alarms Eric. Desperate to take over Madison Hotels, he blackmails Billy's elementary school principal, Max Anderson, into lying that Billy bribed him for passing grades, with a wrestling magazine containing pictures of Max's previous career as the "Revolting Blob", a masked wrestler who accidentally killed a man in the ring. Angered, Brian calls off his deal with Billy and renames Eric as chairman to the company. Billy grows distraught and reverts to his carefree lifestyle. Veronica motivates him to return to school, while his grade school classmates convince Max to retract his bribery accusations, infuriating Eric. Brian agrees to give Billy another chance but Eric cites that Billy failed the challenge by not finishing 9th grade within two weeks. He then threatens to sue Brian if he does not pass the company onto him. Billy intervenes and challenges Eric to an academic decathlon to finally settle their feud with the winner getting to take over Madison Hotels. Both men excel in different activities, but Billy manages to take a single-point lead before the contest's final event, a Jeopardy!-style academic test. Billy gives a completely dimwitted answer for the opening question in the event, and Eric is given the chance to win the contest by answering a question regarding business ethics. Eric, being a highly unscrupulous businessman, cannot conceive of an answer and breaks down. He brandishes a revolver, but Max (in his wrestling gear) tackles Eric from backstage before he can harm Billy. Eric recovers from the attack and attempts to shoot Veronica, but he is shot in the buttock by Danny McGrath, a rifle-wielding madman whom Billy apologized to earlier for bullying him. At his graduation ceremony, Billy, deciding that he is not fit for running a hotel company, announces he will pass Madison Hotels to Carl Alphonse, Brian's polite and loyal operations manager, and attend college in order to become a teacher. Eric, walking on crutches due to his wound, watches on and fumes in frustration over Billy's decision. ===== High school senior Walter Gibson and his best friend Lance are celebrating the fact they are moving on to college, but all Walter can do is lament the fact that he has lost his touch with women. Lance heads to UCLA while Walter moves on to college in New England. The two keep in touch by writing letters, but Walter's luck has not changed. His attempt to get close to Alison Bradbury from his English class by tricking her into tutoring him only results in his angering and alienating her. Eventually he receives a phone call from Lance telling him to come to California for Christmas break because he has set him up with a beautiful girl, assuring him she is a Sure Thing. Walter finds a ride from a ride share board to make the trip. He meets Gary Cooper and Mary Ann Webster, the couple providing the ride. Things go from bad to worse when he realizes he will be sitting next to Alison as she heads to UCLA to visit her boyfriend Jason. The tension and bickering between Walter and Alison becomes too much for Cooper, and he abandons them on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere and Alison hitches a ride which turns out to be a big mistake. The driver stops at a deserted little pocket of the road and attempts to rape her, but Walter comes to her rescue just in the nick of time. As they hitch to California, they overcome issues with transportation, weather, lack of food, lack of money, and sleeping arrangements, while at the same time developing genuine feelings for one another. En route to California, Alison discovers the real reason Walter made the trip is to meet his "sure thing" and angrily walks away after they arrive. That night at a college mixer Lance has arranged for Walter to meet his "sure thing". Meanwhile, Alison is spending a boring night with Jason when she drags him to the same mixer for some fun. Alison and Walter see each other at the party, but jealousy leads to a confrontation between the two. Walter takes the "sure thing" to Lance's room, but cannot stop thinking about Alison. Back on campus after the break, Alison and Walter are obviously uncomfortable around each other. In their English class, Professor Taub reads an essay composed by Walter as a writing assignment, which is a description of his night with the "sure thing". The girl in the essay asks the protagonist if he loves her, but for the first time he realizes that those are not just words and he cannot sleep with her. Alison realizes what actually happened that night, she tells Walter that she and Jason broke up, and they kiss. ===== NOVA Laboratory robotics experts Newton Crosby and Ben Jabituya developed several prototype robots called S.A.I.N.T. (Strategic Artificially Intelligent Nuclear Transport) for the U.S. military to use in Cold War operations, though Crosby and Ben would rather seek peaceful applications of the robots. After a live demonstration for the military, one of the units, S.A.I.N.T. Number 5, is struck by lightning arcing through the lab's power grid. This scrambles its programming and makes it sentient. It then escapes the NOVA facility. The robot finds itself in Astoria, Oregon, and is found by Stephanie Speck, an animal care-giver, who mistakes him for an alien. She takes the robot into her home, where she provides him with "input" in the form of visual and verbal stimuli, allowing the robot to improve its language skills, and eventually names itself "Number 5", being the fifth prototype produced. Stephanie continues to help the curious Number 5 robot learn about the world. She eventually discovers that Number 5 was built by NOVA, and contacts them about the lost robot. Nova's CEO, Dr. Howard Marner, orders Crosby and Ben to recover him, so they can disassemble and rebuild him. While waiting for NOVA to arrive, Number 5 learns about death when he accidentally crushes a grasshopper, and concludes that if NOVA disassembles him, he will die, and escapes in Stephanie's truck. However, NOVA uses a tracking device on Number 5 to corner him and deactivate the robot for return to the facility. During transport, Number 5 is able to reactivate himself and remove the tracking device, and flees back to Stephanie. Because of these unusual actions, Crosby tries to convince Howard that something has changed with Number 5's programming and that they should take care not to damage it in their recovery efforts so that he can examine them later. Howard instead sends their security chief Captain Skroeder and three other S.A.I.N.T. prototypes to recapture Number 5 by force, ignoring Crosby's concerns. Number 5 is able to outwit the other robots, reprograms them to act like The Three Stooges, and escapes. Number 5 “captures” Crosby, takes him back to Stephanie and is able to convince Crosby of his sentience. They find that Skroeder has called in the United States Army to capture Number 5, and on his orders, restrain Crosby and Stephanie so he can open fire. To protect his friends, Number 5 leads the Army away and appears to be destroyed by a helicopter missile. Stephanie is devastated as Skroeder's men scrounge the remains of Number 5 as trophies, prompting Crosby to resign from NOVA and drive away with Stephanie in the NOVA van. Meanwhile Howard, dismayed over the loss of the prototype and his best engineer, dismisses Skroeder for insubordination. Crosby and Stephanie are surprised to discover that Number 5 had hidden himself under the van, having assembled a decoy of himself from spare parts to confuse the warmongers. Crosby decides to take Number 5 to his father's secluded Montana ranch where there will be much "input" for the robot, and Stephanie agrees to come with them. As they drive off, Number 5 asserts that his name should now be "Johnny 5" based on the song "Who's Johnny" which had been playing on the van's radio. ===== ===== In Tempest-Tost an amateur theatrical group sets about mounting a production of Shakespeare's The Tempest. Romantic young scholar and assistant director Solomon ("Solly") Bridgetower, womanizer Roger Tasset and repressed middle-aged math teacher Hector Mackilwraith vie for the rich, beautiful and indifferent leading lady Griselda Webster. As the production moves forward, each man presses his suit with characteristic blind- spots as small rivalries and ambitions are pursued by Griselda's precocious sister Fredegonde (Freddy), the vain Professor Walter Vambrace, his socially awkward daughter Pearl Vambrace, and the mischievous musician Humphrey Cobbler. ===== The book starts out with a false, anonymous engagement notice between Pearl Veronica Vambrace and Solomon (Solly) Bridgetower published in the local newspaper, the Bellman. The wedding is to be held on November 31 at the local cathedral. The notice creates a stir in the community. Professor Vambrace, the father of Pearl, is outraged, considering it an insult directed at himself and his family, due to his longtime feud with the Bridgetower family. He threatens the Bellman's editor, Gloster Ridley, to sue the Bellman for libel. Mrs. Bridgetower is also outraged, although she confines this to her personal circle. Matters are not helped by the fact that Solly, while having once invited Pearl to a ball, is still besotted with Griselda Webster, a local beauty and heiress, who is definitely not interested in him (cf. Tempest-Tost). Vambrace consults a lawyer, a relative of his wife, who suggests that he not go through with the case, and that the newspaper is as much a victim of the hoax as he is. The lawyer's partner, Snelgrove, however, says otherwise, and offers to take the case himself. The case is looked into by both Snelgrove and Ridley's lawyer. Along with several major and minor characters in the novel, they pursue a quest for the person responsible for entering the false wedding notice, who is dubbed 'X'. The climactic scene takes place at the Bellman, where the principal characters gather and the identity of X is revealed. The novel explores themes of innocence, guilt, and judgement. ===== Myrna Loy as Edwina in The Rains Came The story centers on the redemption of its lead female character. Tom Ransome is an artist who leads a rather dissolute if socially active life in the fictional town of Ranchipur, India. His routine is shattered with the arrival of his former lover, Lady Edwina Esketh, who has since married the elderly Lord Esketh. Lady Edwina first sets out to seduce, then gradually falls in love with, Major Rama Safti who represents the "new India." Ranchipur is devastated by an earthquake, which causes a flood, which causes a cholera epidemic. Lord Esketh dies and Lady Esketh renounces her hedonistic life in favor of helping the sick alongside Major Safti. She accidentally drinks from a glass that has just been used by a patient, becomes infected and dies, making it possible for Safti to become the ruler of a kingdom that he will presumably reform. In the course of the story, a missionary's daughter, Fern Simon, and Ransome also fall in love. ===== Late one night, Donald Strachey is meeting a new client in a dark alley—one Paul Hale. Hale is very nervous, and before Strachey can calm what seems like paranoia, an incoming van approaches. Hale hands the private eye a $5,000 check for a retainer just before the speeding van separates the two. The next night, however, Paul Hale turns up dead. Both the coroner and Detective Bailey rule his death a suicide due to apparent evidence of alcohol and drugs nearby his body and in his bloodstream, but neither Donald nor Paul's mother are convinced of this. Phyllis Hale believes Paul was murdered. Strachey is determined to find out the truth about Paul's death. On the way to work the next morning, Strachey accosts someone who he believes is breaking into his office, but it turns out to be Kenny Kwon, who was fired during a confrontation between Strachey and his boss Nathan Zenck during a prior case. Kenny convinces Donald to hire him as Strachey Investigations' new office manager. Strachey's lover Timmy Callahan is able to provide the firm a lead on Paul Hale—before he died, he was the spokesman for the Phoenix Foundation, which practices ex-gay conversion therapy. Strachey goes undercover into the Foundation as "Kyle". In his undercover persona, the detective introduces himself to Dr. Trevor Cornell, the Foundation's director. "Kyle" tells Cornell a story about a former soldier who was discharged for being gay—a story Strachey draws upon from his own past in his bid to be believable as an aspiring ex-gay. Cornell isn't the only one who believes that being gay is a choice determined only by how much willpower a person exerts to "change". Phyllis, in her quest to blame homosexuals for Paul's death, deflects responsibility towards an openly gay friend of his from college, Larry Phelps, whom she suggests might have killed him for his attempts to become straight. Donald attempts to talk to Larry, but he assumes Strachey is dangerous. The P.I. gives chase, but Phelps manages to elude him. Then called to the police station, he is given a copy of the autopsy report by Bailey. It turns out the drugs found in Paul Hale's system were phenelzine, even though the bottles of pills found around his body contained Xanax. Hale didn't have a prescription for either drug, but Bailey won't investigate where Paul got the drugs, as he refuses to believe it was anything other than suicide. Later, "Kyle" goes to a conversion therapy group, meeting the other participants in the ex-gay program. Among them are Grey, an attractive athletic type that is in a heterosexual marriage with a child, and Katie, who says she's working on being less tomboyish and was even engaged to Paul Hale. The longer "Kyle" spends time with Trevor and the recipients of his therapy, the more details he gets about the estrangement between them and Paul that occurred shortly before his death, but the undercover assignment takes its toll on Strachey's confidence in his openly gay identity, particularly during "Kyle"'s individual sessions with Cornell. Finally, in one session Strachey explodes into a confrontational tone, blowing his cover. Before Donald cuts ties with the ex-gays for good, Grey gives him two things—a DVD that will shed light on Paul's murder and an offer of extramarital sex. Strachey accepts the former, but declines the latter with great difficulty and mixed emotions. At the office, Donald watches the DVD, which features a recording of Paul describing in vague terms what his experiences with the Phoenix Foundation did to change him—but not in the way he expected. Strachey is able to determine that Larry Phelps was the one who recorded Paul's appearance on the DVD, and knows whatever Paul did. Strachey tracks Larry down and convinces him that he means him no harm, and is not associated with the Phoenix Foundation. Larry informs Strachey that he and Paul secretly taped many of Cornell's individual sessions with his patients, but before he is able to tell Strachey everything he knows, an unknown assailant murders Phelps. At home, Donald's conversations with Timmy become strained. Even broken away from Cornell's harmful messages, his influences as "Kyle" still weigh heavy in his heart, making him doubtful of what kind of future and possibilities an openly gay person can have in mainstream society, even implying to Timmy that he feels "trapped" in their relationship. Finally, one evening, Donald breaks down and tells Timmy about his past in the army and how he and his fellow soldier and lover of 4 months—Kyle Griffin—were discovered during a moment of intimacy. In the course of the investigation, Strachey caved to the pressure his military superiors were putting on him and told them the truth, something that devastated Kyle and their relationship. Donald confesses that the day they were both discharged, Kyle committed suicide. The next morning, Cornell is taken into custody and charged with Larry Phelps' murder—because of evidence so convenient for an arrest warrant and open and shut prosecution, that Tim and Don are convinced that Cornell is being framed. With Trevor's reluctant blessing, Strachey convinces his wife Lynn to let him help her clear her husband of the serious charges he's facing. Strachey discovers a hidden camera in Cornell's office that transmitted movie files to a nearby computer in another room, which they uncover and then find out the truth. Katie is not a lesbian and has been sexually involved with Cornell, especially during their individual sessions, and it was she that put a lethal mix of phenelzine in Paul Hale's bourbon the night of his death, murdering both him and Larry Phelps. Katie turns up at the Foundation, holding both Strachey and Lynn Cornell at gunpoint, but he manages to disarm her. Cornell is freed, at the expense of his relationship with not only the now clearly insane Katie, but also his wife, and his program as well. Having nothing else to lose, Cornell tells Strachey why he was hired by Paul. He was hoping that the P.I. could track down Paul's father, who like his son, was gay, having been discovered by Paul's mother with another man, and facing Phyllis' intense disapproval. Strachey makes Phyllis realize how much damage her homophobia has caused her entire family, and he can now declare this case closed. ===== The protagonist (Paddy Considine) is a man tasked with looking after his friend Imogen's house, and is instructed to take her dog Rothko for walks, but not to let him off the leash. After putting Imogen's keys through the mail slot in her door (so they do not get lost), the man ensures that he will not lose Rothko by tying the dog's leash around his own neck. Rothko leads him to a park, where he viciously attacks and kills a duck in front of onlookers. As they shout at the man, Rothko (Chris Morris) begins to speak to him, taunting him. The pair run away onto a bus, where the dog tells the man that he is his lawyer and is defending everything the man has ever done wrong. The man recalls a time where he was spoken to similarly by a gerbil as a child, telling him his father was cheating on his mother. The man and dog are kicked off the bus after the conductor finds out the man has no money. The dog, enticed by a little girl's used handkerchief, follows her into a church, dragging the man with him. Inside, a christening is going on, and the dog tells the man he has brought him here for forgiveness for what he is about to do. The baby being christened speaks to the man, telling him to speak up and tell everyone in attendance that the priest is a paedophile and the baby's mother is a prostitute. Urged on by Rothko, the man does so, only for the baby to say, "Only joking!" In the resulting commotion, the priest is knocked over, the baby is sent flying, and Rothko breaks free. The man catches the baby and chases Rothko out of the church, only to see the dog struck by a vehicle. The dying dog tells the man that he should now seek out legal counsel from the baby before he dies. When the man asks to speak to the baby, the baby's father punches him. In a closing monologue, the man reveals he left a note to Imogen apologizing for the keys and dog, and imagines her being satisfied with it, but he is sure she is not. He no longer goes to the park, as he hears the ducks tell passers-by that he thought a dog could talk, and they refuse to stop when he tells them to. ===== Please Teacher! is a story mainly revolving around a tight-knit group of friends in high school and how they cope with several life-changing events that are never too far off from intimate relationships. The main character is a boy named Kei Kusanagi who suffers from a very rare disease which causes a comatose state referred to as a "standstill" whenever he is under severe emotional distress. Before the beginning of the story, Kei, at 15 years of age, had fallen into a "standstill" lasting three years after witnessing the suicide of his elder sister. After recovering, he quietly moved away from home in order to avoid social difficulty due to his long absence, and began living with his uncle, a medical doctor, and aunt. Due to the strange nature of how he came to live there, Kei wanted to keep the situation a secret from his new friends for fear of being ostracized as being too old to associate with them. After Kei had established himself in his new surroundings and had entered into a close group of mutually supportive friends, a Galactic Federation starship had entered Earth's atmosphere stealthily, approached Honshū Island and landed surreptitiously in Lake Kizaki. The story begins with Kei suffering a minor 'standstill' while in the vicinity of the lake, witnessing several unexplainable phenomena happening there, and then watching as a beautiful half-human alien named Mizuho Kazami materialize beside the shore. Kazami was sent to observe planet Earth by a seemingly benevolent Galactic Federation in order to prevent humans from making developmental mistakes. Kei, upon observing the materialization, attempts to escape the pursuing Kazami. Kazami is under strict orders to prevent her true identity and mission from being discovered. During his attempt to escape, Kei falls into the lake. Kazami rescues Kei and, using information from his identification, is able to return him home in secret. The next day, Kazami has become Kei's new homeroom teacher and next-door neighbor. During assisting her in moving in, Kei suffers another standstill, and while in a weakened state explains his predicament to the compassionate Mizuho, who ends up revealing her own origins and purpose on Earth. Several accidental activations of Mizuho's teleport technology (which were inadvertently caused by Kei) eventually place Kei and Mizuho in a couple of compromising situations in front of his uncle and aunt and his school's headmaster, but Kei protects Mizuho from charges for an inappropriate relationship between student and teacher by impulsively stating that they are married, resulting in an actual civil marriage that later blossoms into genuine affection for each other. The headmaster relents, partly because he, too, had married a former student younger than himself and can understand their situation personally. Both are allowed to stay so long as they do not reveal their status to the other students, and do not engage in any public displays of affection. The remainder of the series concerns the budding intimate relationships between the close friends, one of whom (Koishi Herikawa) is romantically interested in Kei, and another (Ichigo Morino) who has suffered even greater loss of time from the same disease as he has; the problems of having to maintain the secrecy of the marriage; an interfering parent and sibling visiting from the Galaxy Federation; and Kei learning to overcome the ever-present threat of another lengthy 'standstill' stealing more of his life, particularly as he has fallen deeply in love with Mizuho and desperately wants to remain with her. Eventually Kei falls into another major "standstill" and in order to bring him out of it, Mizuho has to use her technology which is against the law. As a result, her status on Earth is revoked, she is banned from the planet and all memory of her is erased from everyone's, including Kei's, minds. With the help of her mother and sister she sneaks back and is devastated to learn that Kei, who she is deeply in love with, has no memory of her. While helping her move back in, Kei reveals that his memory has returned and the two express their love for each other and get married again. ===== The first episode introduces the protagonist, Dr. Gus Lloyd, an Antimatter physicist, engineer and video game designer who has created a live-action game in his spare time to exert his indignant feelings about his recent divorce and all the people in his life who have all made his life hell on Earth (his father, his ex-wife's mother, his ex-wife's divorce lawyer, his ex-girlfriend, his former employer, a high school football-Quarterback bully, his old camp counselor, etc.); the villains of the game are modeled after all these people. The master villain is Jackal, who is a combination of the devil and Gus' father. The Jackal wears a vanilla-white ice cream suit and drives a Chrysler convertible to match. The hero is "The Cold-Steel Kid," a warrior trying to save the dying world, dons commando wear and is naturally modeled after Gus himself, and the sometimes helplessly captive, sometimes active heroine ingenue The Kid is always trying to rescue — "The Girl" — is based on Lauren Ashborne, Gus' ex-wife (wearing the kind of dress of a "Damsel in distress"). In an accident involving an experimental laboratory project, Jackal and the villains step out of the game and into the real world to cause the apocalyptic carnage and domination they were programmed to for the game. Each week, one of the villains tries to carry out an evil plot according to the rules of the video game, and Gus, Lauren, and Gus' friend Peter Rucker try to defeat and destroy the said villain. Almost indestructible and superhumanly strong, each villain is programmed with specific weapons and weaknesses based on that villain's "theme"; e.g., "Killshot's" Achilles' Heel was being sprayed with water, The Boss would "fire" people with exploding pink slips and his weak link was red ink, The Evil Shirley's was dirt and she would be wiped out by having a house fall on her, The Camp Counselor would get burned by being hit with charcoal and would be killed off by an arrow shot right through the bulls-eye on his T-shirt, The Practical Joker could only be defeated by his master prank being foiled, The Divorce Attorney was a being that sucked up electricity and distributed it in the form of lightning bolts (her weakness was being hit with a foam-rubber arrow), The Motivational Speaker literally ate Bologna sausage and killed people with a gun that ejected audiocassettes and would reduce them to nothing but his audiotape, and he could only be destroyed by eating his own words. He could be slowed down with shots from a paintball gun. Another weekly bad guy was a corrupted car mechanic that tasered people with a calculator and would be destroyed by seeing his own reflection. And of course, The Garbage Man was damaged by cleaning products and The Orthodontist (as well as his assistant) had an aversion to sugar. All the henchmen were instantly obliterated—going up in smoke and blue light when the Jackal's evil weekly master scheme was foiled. The Jackal's own vice was being hit with a baseball—the very one autographed by Bobby Mercer that Gus got from the only baseball game he ever went to with his own father. Jackal is present in every episode, commanding the other villains and vexing the heroes, usually with a glass of champagne in hand. ===== The boys, Ralph and Scott, hitchhike home from college, arriving on Easter morning and shout their greetings across the glen to their family during a lakeside Easter Sunrise service, much to the amusement of Ralph's younger sister, Beth, and mother, Ev, and embarrassment of Scott's mother, Jessie, and father, Cliff. Later that day, they drive Scott's older brother, Alden, who's shipping off to Vietnam, to the bus depot; Alden pushes Scott when Scott says that his Marine brother is afraid to go to Vietnam. They begin fighting until their father arrives wondering what is going on. A few weeks later, Scott and Ralph again return home from college to attend Beth's high school graduation, where they learn that Alden has disappeared and is considered Missing in Action. Scott learns that Ralph has flunked out of college (thus making him eligible to be drafted). Ralph and Scott hatch a plan to steal their files from the local draft board office, but they are caught, and Ralph is arrested. Scott is now determined to avoid Ralph's fate and plans to leave town and head to Canada to avoid the draft. Scott invites Beth to travel in his van on his trip out of town and to stay away until the end of the war. They admit their attraction to each other. Later, the two decide to visit Ralph in jail to tell him that they are leaving. Scott and Beth get to the Canada–US border and are about to cross but have a change of heart and head back to Maryland. When they get home, they learn of Alden's death. Scott leads a huge march downtown in the midst of Alden's funeral, where Ralph is released from jail and the two friends are reunited. ===== Dinky Bossetti is a 15-year-old girl who was adopted as a baby. Her adoptive mother Rochelle is disappointed that the daughter she chose has no interest in "feminine" things, such as makeup and nice clothing. Her adoptive father, Les, passively allows his wife to scold Dinky and send her to various "counselors" who are little more than temporary jailers. Dinky's an unkempt goth kid who is constantly picked on at school, although it is not obvious which came first - her antisocial attitude or her being rejected by her mother and peers. Her teachers give her no support when classmates ostracize, taunt, and throw things at her. Dinky enjoys thumbing her nose at her peers and embarrasses Gerald, a cute popular boy, by reading an erotic poem about him in class. Dinky finds solace in her "Ark", a small cabin-boat beached on a lake shore. In and around the boat, Dinky has collected a menagerie of abandoned animals. Dinky is befriended by the new school guidance counselor Elizabeth Zaks, who recognizes her intelligence and spirit. Ms Zaks tries to encourage Dinky to improve her appearance and get along with others more effectively, without compromising her true self. Gerald begins to take an interest in Dinky and tries to get other students to stop harassing her, but Dinky doesn't notice, even though he occasionally spies on her. Dinky becomes convinced that she is the abandoned daughter of Roxy Carmichael, a minor film star who left town for Hollywood 15 years before. Roxy has been invited to return to town to assist in the dedication of a new municipal building, and she has accepted. Dinky becomes fixated on the many similarities she shares with Roxy and questions the town folks for memories of her. The news of her return stirs up old jealousies and insecurities: old schoolmates gossip wildly. Dinky harasses Denton Webb, Roxy's old boyfriend, for information and he lets it slip that Roxy secretly had his baby before she left town, not realizing that Dinky now believes he is her father. Denton becomes so obsessed with Roxy's return that his wife Barbara moves out. As the date for Roxy's return draws nearer, Dinky becomes more and more desperate to prove that she is Roxy's daughter, visiting the star's childhood home (which is maintained as a cheesy museum), and obsessively questioning Denton about what happened the night she left, believing that Roxy will take her away to a new life. On the day that Roxy is due to arrive, Dinky packs her suitcase and arrives at the welcoming ceremony in a beautiful dress. Rochelle has invited representatives from a foster home so she can send Dinky away, but Les finally stands up to his strident, unloving spouse, and angrily tells her "I'm going to find Dinky. I'm going to find our DAUGHTER!" A limousine draws up, but a man gets out with a note of explanation: Roxy has not come back. Before the limousine can drive away, Dinky runs after it. Realizing the reason for Dinky's obsession with Roxy, Denton catches up with her and tells her the whole story: although Roxy did have a baby girl, and did leave her with him, the baby died. Roxy is not Dinky's mother, nor is he her father. Left with nothing, Dinky is rescued by Gerald, who has developed feelings for her. At first, Dinky is suspicious of his interest, but the end of the film shows them together in a relationship where she is really appreciated for who she is, as things return to normal in the town. ===== Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne, two kind but dimwitted men, are best friends and roommates living in Providence, Rhode Island. Lloyd, a chip- toothed limousine driver, immediately falls in love when he meets Mary Swanson, a woman he is driving to the airport. She leaves a briefcase in the terminal. Lloyd retrieves the case and hopes to return it to her, unaware that it contains ransom money for her kidnapped husband, Bobby, and that she was supposed to leave it for her husband's captors, Joe "Mental" Mentalino and J. P. Shay. Her Aspen-bound plane has already departed, leading to Lloyd running through and falling out of the jetway. Fired from his job, Lloyd returns to his apartment and learns that Harry has also been fired from his dog-grooming job after delivering dogs late to a show and accidentally getting them dirty. Mental and Shay follow Lloyd home from the airport in pursuit of the briefcase. Mistaking the crooks for debt collectors, the duo flee the apartment and return later to find that Mental and Shay have ransacked the apartment and decapitated Harry's parakeet. Lloyd suggests they head to Aspen to find Mary and return the briefcase, hoping she can "plug them into the social pipeline". At first, Harry opposes the idea, but he eventually agrees and the duo leaves the next day. Mental and Shay catch up to the duo at a motel that night. Posing as a hitchhiker, Mental is picked up by Harry and Lloyd while Shay secretly follows them. During a lunch stop, the duo prank Mental with chili peppers in his burger, unaware that he has an ulcer. When Mental reacts adversely, they accidentally kill him with rat poison pills (which he planned to use on them) after mistaking it for his medication. Nearing Colorado, Lloyd takes a wrong turn while daydreaming and ends up driving all night through Nebraska, while the police waiting on the road to Colorado expect them to show up after finding out about Mental's death. Upon waking up and realizing Lloyd's mishap, Harry gives up on the journey and decides to walk home, but Lloyd later persuades him to continue after trading the van for a minibike. The two arrive in Aspen, but are unable to locate Mary. After a short scuffle over some gloves that night, the briefcase breaks open and they discover the money; they spend it on a hotel suite, clothes, and a car. They learn that Mary and her family are hosting a gala and prepare to attend. At the gala, Harry, attempting to lure Mary over to Lloyd, reluctantly agrees to go skiing with her the next day and lies to Lloyd that he got him a date. The next day, Lloyd finds out Harry lied to him after waiting all day for Mary at the hotel bar. In retaliation, Lloyd pranks Harry by serving him a coffee laced with a potent dose of laxative, causing Harry to spontaneously defecate in a broken toilet at Mary's house. Lloyd arrives at Mary's house and informs her that he has her briefcase. He takes her to the hotel, shows her the briefcase, and confesses his love after some initial struggle; she rejects him, as she is already married. Nicholas Andre, an old friend of the Swansons and the mastermind behind Bobby's kidnapping, arrives with Shay and, upon learning that Harry and Lloyd had spent all of the ransom money and replaced it with IOUs, takes Lloyd and Mary hostage, as well as Harry when he returns. An argument leads Nicholas to shoot Harry. Before Nicholas can kill them, an FBI team led by Beth Jordon (whom Harry met earlier at a gas station and Lloyd met earlier at the bar) raids the suite and arrests him and Shay. Harry is revealed to be alive thanks to a bulletproof vest that was strapped on him earlier. Mary and Bobby are reunited. The next day, Harry and Lloyd are seen walking home on foot because all their purchases were confiscated and their minibike has broken down. The two unintentionally decline the chance to be oil boys for a group of bikini girls, after which Harry tells Lloyd that they will get their "break" one day. Harry and Lloyd then play a friendly game of tag as they walk back to Rhode Island. ===== Andy McDermott (Tom Everett Scott) is a tourist seeing the sights of Paris with his friends Brad (Vince Vieluf) and Chris (Phil Buckman). When Serafine Pigot (Julie Delpy) leaps off the Eiffel Tower just before Andy is about to bungee jump, he executes a mid-air rescue. She vanishes into the night, leaving Andy intrigued – unaware that she is the daughter of David Kessler and Alex Price, the couple seen 16 years earlier in the first film. That night, Andy, Chris, and Brad attend a night club called "Club de la Lune". The club's owner, Claude (Pierre Cosso), is actually the leader of a werewolf society that uses the club as a way to lure in people (preferably tourists) to be killed. Serafine arrives, tells Andy to run away and transforms into a werewolf. The club owners transform into werewolves as well, and butcher all the guests. Chris escapes and goes back to Serafine's house. Brad is killed by a werewolf, and Andy is bitten by another werewolf when he tries to escape. The next day, Andy wakes up at Serafine's house. Serafine blends organs in the blender, and he is still in shock, but Serafine allows him to feel her breasts to calm him down. She tells him he's transforming into a werewolf. This is interrupted by the sudden appearance of the ghost of Serafine's mother Alex. Andy jumps out the window in sheer panic and begins running away. Chris tries to get his attention, but Claude grabs him and holds his hand over his mouth and takes him to the basement. Soon, Brad's ghost appears to Andy and explains Andy's werewolf condition. For Andy to become normal again, he must eat the heart of the werewolf that bit him; and, for Brad's ghost to be at rest, the werewolf that killed him must be killed, too. After developing an appetite for raw meat, Andy hooks up with an American tourist named Amy (Julie Bowen), but he transforms and kills her. Andy also kills a cop who had been tailing him, suspecting Andy was involved in the Club de la Lune massacre. Andy is arrested but escapes. He begins to see Amy's ghost as well, and she begins trying to kill him. Claude and his henchmen ask Andy to join their society but to prove his loyalty, Andy must kill Chris. Serafine rescues Andy, explaining that her stepfather prepared a drug to control werewolf transformations. However, the drug forces werewolves to immediately transform into their beast form. As a result, she killed her mother and savaged her stepfather. Claude and the other werewolves raid Serafine's stepfather's lab and kill him, taking the drug to transform immediately. Serafine and Andy learn of a Fourth of July party Claude has planned and infiltrate it. They help the partygoers escape, and Andy manages to kill the werewolf that ate Brad's heart, thus setting Brad free. The cops arrive, and a fight ensues. Andy and Serafine manage to kill many werewolves, with Serafine shifting to her beast form to fight when she runs out of ammunition. During a fight between Serafine and another werewolf, Andy shoots one of the wolves, but it turns out that he has shot Serafine. As she reverts to her human form she begs him to kill her but he is unable to and authorities who arrive on the scene assume that he is trying to kill her before escaping. Claude makes his way onto a subway train, but he slips onto the tracks. A train slams into him, causing him to transform back to a human. He tries to take another dose of the drug, but Andy stops him. As they fight, Andy discovers that Claude is the werewolf that bit him (due to a scar on his left shoulder caused when Andy stabbed the werewolf with a spear). Claude tries to inject himself with the drug but accidentally injects Andy instead. Andy transforms into a werewolf, kills Claude and eats his heart and howls, breaking the werewolf curse. Serafine is taken in an ambulance, but she begins to show signs of transforming. The EMT, thinking she is going into shock, administers adrenaline, which stops the transformation. The sedative, which was thought to be the "cure", actually triggered the change and adrenaline has the opposite effect. The final scene depicts Serafine and Andy celebrating their wedding atop the Statue of Liberty with Andy's pal Chris, who survived. The couple seem to be controlling the curse with a steady application of adrenaline-fueled activities. They bungee jump off the statue as the credits roll. In an alternate ending, after Andy eats Claude's heart, Serafine has a vision of her stepfather in the back of an ambulance, explaining how he found a cure before his death. The new closing scene shows Serafine and Andy having a child, whose eyes shift to look like the werewolves'. ===== Noble House is set in 1963. The tai-pan, Ian Dunross, struggles to rescue Struan's from the precarious financial position left by his predecessor. To this end, he seeks partnership with an American millionaire, while trying to ward off his arch-rival Quillan Gornt, who seeks to destroy Struan's once and for all. Meanwhile, Chinese communists, Taiwanese nationalists, and Soviet spies illegally vie for influence in Hong Kong while the British government seeks to prevent their actions. Anyone seeking to stop them cannot do so without enlisting the aid of Hong Kong's criminal underworld. Other obstacles include water shortages, landslides, bank runs and stock market crashes. In Noble House, Dunross finds his company the target of a hostile takeover at a time when Struan's is desperately overextended. He is also embroiled in international espionage when he finds himself in possession of secret documents desperately desired by both the KGB and MI6. The novel follows Dunross' attempts to extricate himself from all this and to save Struan's, the Noble House. ===== Ronnie Winslow, a fourteen-year-old cadet at the Royal Naval College, is accused of the theft of a five-shilling postal order. An internal enquiry, conducted without notice to his family and without the benefit of representation, finds him guilty, and his father, Arthur Winslow, is "requested to withdraw" his son from the college (the formula of the day for expulsion). Arthur Winslow believes Ronnie's claim of innocence and, with the help of his suffragette daughter Catherine and his friend and family solicitor Desmond Curry, launches a concerted effort to clear Ronnie's name. This is no small matter, as, under English law, Admiralty decisions were official acts of the government, which could not be sued without its consent—traditionally expressed by the attorney general responding to a petition of right with the formula "Let Right be done". The Winslows succeed in engaging the most highly sought after barrister in England at the time, Sir Robert Morton, known also as a shrewd opposition Member of Parliament. Catherine had expected Sir Robert to decline the case, or at best to treat it as a political football; instead, he is coolly matter- of-fact about having been persuaded of Ronnie's innocence by his responses to questioning (in fact, a form of cross-examination, to see how young Ronnie would hold up in court) in the presence of his family, and is shown mustering his political forces in the House of Commons on the Winslows' behalf with little concern for the cost to his faction. Catherine remains unconvinced of Sir Robert's sincerity, perhaps not least because of his record of opposition to the cause of women's suffrage, but also due to his dispassionate manner in the midst of the Winslow family's financial sacrifices. The government is strongly disinclined to allow the case to proceed, claiming that it is a distraction from pressing Admiralty business; but in the face of public sympathy garnered through Winslow and Catherine's efforts, and of Sir Robert's impassioned speech on the verge of defeat in the Commons, the government yields, and the case is allowed to come to court. At trial, Sir Robert (working together with Desmond Curry and his firm) is able to discredit much of the supposed evidence. The Admiralty, embarrassed and no longer confident of Ronnie's guilt, abruptly withdraws all charges against him, proclaiming him entirely innocent. Although the family has won the case at law and lifted the cloud over Ronnie, it has taken its toll on the rest. His father's physical health has deteriorated under the strain, as to some degree has the happiness of the Winslows' home. The costs of the suit and the publicity campaign have eaten up his older brother Dickie's Oxford tuition, and hence his chance at a career in the civil service, as well as Catherine's marriage settlement. Her fiancé John Watherstone has broken off the engagement in the face of opposition from his father (an Army Colonel), forcing her to consider a sincere and well-intentioned offer of marriage from Desmond, whom she does not love. Sir Robert, on his part, has declined appointment as Lord Chief Justice rather than drop the case. The play ends with a suggestion that romance may yet blossom between Sir Robert and Catherine, who acknowledges that she has misjudged him all along. The last couplet of the dialogue ("How little you know women, Sir Robert" and "How little you know men, Miss Winslow") seems to bolster this implication. Catherine and Sir Robert are meant to be together. ===== Philadelphia: A theater group is rehearsing a play. The time of the rehearsal is the present, and the time of the play being rehearsed is 1792 to 1902. The play being rehearsed is a history of the White House and the servants who serve the President. One actor plays all the Presidents, and one actress plays all the First Ladies. The main serving staff are the African-American characters of Lud Simmons and Seena. Three generations of adult and young Lud's are played by the same two actors. Lud is an escaped slave who later marries Seena. The events covered in the play include the selection of a new capital city, the Burning of Washington in 1814, the prelude to the U.S. Civil War, the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, the 1876 presidential election, and the administration of Chester Alan Arthur. In between rehearsing the various scenes, the actors offer commentary and reflect on the past injustices suffered by black people throughout the time period covered by the play. This culminates in the Actor Playing the President and the Actor Playing Lud refusing to continue rehearsing the show. After reflection, the Actor Playing the President realizes all he wanted was to feel proud of his country and that he loves this land. New York: The four main cast members address the audience and inform them that the play covers the first one hundred years of the White House. They say America is a play that is always in rehearsal, undergoing revisions and improvements. The plot then covers the same historical material as the Philadelphia version; however, the actors' commentary is entirely removed. ===== ===== Chance Harper, a freelance photographer, is afflicted with a bizarre tendency to always be in the wrong place at the right time. As Chance himself says, "If I go to a restaurant, somebody chokes. If I walk into a bank, it gets robbed." Harper's strange luck began when, as a small child, he was the sole survivor of a plane crash that killed everyone else aboard, including his mother and sister. ===== Two years after the events of the King of Iron Fist Tournament, the Mishima Zaibatsu, under the leadership of Kazuya Mishima, has become more corrupt and powerful than ever before, and is involved in many illegal operations. While his father Heihachi Mishima was rather ruthless in his endeavors, Kazuya acts completely without a conscience. He hires assassins to eliminate any of his critics and rivals, attempts to extort money from several businesses and organizations, and smuggles endangered species to conduct genetic experiments on them. The reason for his evil deeds is because he has allowed the Devil Gene within him to consume him as a result of his hatred towards Heihachi. Meanwhile, Kazuya is sentenced to being arrested by animal rights activist and operative Jun Kazama for his experiments. Heihachi on the other hand, whom Kazuya had defeated and thrown off a cliff two years ago, has climbed back up and is training himself, plotting to overthrow Kazuya. In an attempt to rid himself of Heihachi and his enemies once and for all, Kazuya announces the King of Iron Fist Tournament 2, with a large cash prize of one trillion dollars, knowing that Heihachi will appear. When Jun eventually comes face to face with Kazuya, she tries to arrest him, but instead the both of them can not help being drawn to one another, propelled by a mystic force beyond Jun's control. She later gets pregnant with Kazuya's child, resulting in her leaving everything behind to raise their child. Meanwhile, Heihachi arrives at the tournament, winning against the opposing fighters and eventually reaching Kazuya. In the final round, Heihachi confronts Kazuya and they battle once again. The Devil Gene takes over Kazuya's body, resulting in Kazuya becoming a Devil creature. However, despite this, Kazuya is not strong enough to overpower Heihachi because of the internal conflict within him, between his evil side - represented by Devil within him - and his good side - represented by an unknown entity called Angel, which was brought forth after his meeting with Jun. Heihachi takes Kazuya's unconscious body to a volcano, and throws him into it before escaping on a helicopter just as the volcano erupts behind him, having taken his revenge and regained the Mishima Zaibatsu. In the meantime, Jun gives birth to Kazuya's illegitimate son. ===== Fifteen years after the King of the Iron Fist Tournament 2, Heihachi Mishima has established the Tekken Force: a paramilitary organization dedicated to the protection of the Mishima Zaibatsu. Using the company's influence, Heihachi is responsible for many events that have ultimately led to world peace. One day, a squadron of Tekken Force soldiers search an ancient temple located in Mexico under the premise of an excavation project. Soon after arriving there, Heihachi learns that they were obliterated by a mysterious and malevolent creature known as Ogre. Heihachi, having captured a brief glimpse of Ogre before its immediate disappearance, seeks to capture Ogre in the hopes of harnessing its immense fighting power for his own personal gain. Soon after, various known martial artists end up dead, attacked, or missing from all over the world, with Ogre behind all of it. Jun Kazama has been living a quiet life in Yakushima with her young son, Jin Kazama, fathered after the events of the previous tournament by Heihachi's son, Kazuya Mishima. However, their peaceful life is disrupted when Jun begins to sense Ogre's encroaching presence and knows she is now a target. Jun instructs Jin to seek Heihachi if anything happens. Sometime after Jin's fifteenth birthday, Ogre attacks. Against Jun's wishes, Jin valiantly tries to fight Ogre off, but he knocks him unconscious. When Jin awakens, he finds that the ground surrounding his house has been burnt and his mother is missing and most likely dead. Driven by revenge, Jin is confronted by the Devil, which brands Jin's left arm and possesses him. Jin goes to his grandfather, Heihachi, explaining his situation and begging him for training to become strong enough to face Ogre. Heihachi accepts and takes Jin under his wing, as well as sending him to Mishima High School where Jin meets a classmate named Ling Xiaoyu and her pet Panda. Four years later, Jin masters the Mishima karate style. On Jin's nineteenth birthday, Heihachi announces the King of Iron Fist Tournament 3, and Jin himself prepares for his upcoming battle, having no idea that his grandfather is secretly using him, Xiaoyu, and the rest of the competitors as bait in order to lure Ogre out into the open. In the final round of the tournament, Paul Phoenix enters a large temple, defeats Ogre and walks away from the tournament, thinking he is victorious. However, Ogre morphs into his second form: True Ogre and the tournament continued after Paul's departure. Jin finally confronts True Ogre and defeats him who completely dissolves. However, Jin is suddenly gunned down by a squadron of Tekken Forces led by Heihachi, who, no longer needing use for him, personally fires a final shot into his grandson's head. Jin, however, revived by the Devil within him, reawakens and dispatches the soldiers, smashing Heihachi through the wall of the temple. Jin catches Heihachi right before he hits the ground (sparing him), and he looks up to see Jin sprout feathery wings and fly off into the night. ===== Walter Davis (Bruce Willis) allows his brother, Ted (Phil Hartman), to set him up on a blind date with his wife's cousin, Nadia (Kim Basinger). Nadia is shy and the two experience some awkwardness. However, as the evening goes on, Nadia begins to drink and behave in a wild manner. (A warning about her behavior under the influence of alcohol had been given by Ted's wife, but when Ted relayed the warning to Walter, he made it sound like a joke and strongly hinted that Walter might actually benefit from giving her alcohol.) To make matters worse, Nadia's jealous ex-boyfriend, David (John Larroquette), shows up and exacerbates the situation by stalking the couple all night, assaulting and attempting to assault Walter several times, even ramming Walter's car with his own. Walter ends up being driven insane by Nadia's mishaps and David's pursuit; she gets him fired at the dinner; his car is destroyed; after wreaking havoc at a party, Walter gets arrested for menacing David with a mugger's revolver. He even forces David to do a moonwalk before firing at the frightened man's feet. Nadia posts $10,000 in bail and agrees to marry David if he will help Walter avoid prison time. Before the wedding, Walter gives Nadia chocolates filled with brandy and attempts to sabotage the marriage. Chaos ensues. In the end, Nadia humiliates David by rejecting him to the delight of their guests as she and Walter decide to give their relationship another shot. The final scene shows Nadia and Walter on their honeymoon on a beach, with a two-liter bottle of Coca-Cola chilling instead of champagne. ===== Residents of the small, isolated, 19th- century Pennsylvania village of Covington live in fear of "Those We Don't Speak Of," nameless humanoid creatures living within the surrounding woods. The villagers have constructed a large barrier of oil lanterns and watchtowers that are constantly staffed. After the funeral of a child, the village Elders deny Lucius Hunt's request for permission to pass through the woods to get medical supplies from the city. Later, his mother Alice scolds him for wanting to visit the city, which the villagers describe as wicked. The Elders also appear to have secrets, keeping physical mementos hidden in black boxes, supposedly reminders of the evil and tragedy in the towns they left behind. After Lucius makes an unsanctioned venture into the woods, the creatures leave warnings in the form of splashes of red paint on all the villagers' doors. Ivy Elizabeth Walker, the blind daughter of Chief Elder Edward Walker, informs Lucius that she has strong feelings for him and he returns her affections. They arrange to be married, but Noah Percy, a young man with an apparent developmental disability, stabs Lucius with a knife, because he is in love with Ivy himself. Noah is locked in a room while a decision awaits regarding his fate. Edward goes against the wishes of the other Elders, agreeing to let Ivy pass through the forest and seek medicine for Lucius. Before she leaves, Edward explains that the creatures inhabiting the woods are actually members of their own community wearing costumes and have continued the legend of monsters in an effort to frighten and deter others from attempting to leave. Ivy and two young men are sent into the forest, but they abandon Ivy almost immediately, fearful of the creatures, rationalizing they will spare Ivy out of pity. While traveling through the forest, one of the creatures suddenly attacks Ivy. She tricks it into falling into a deep hole to its death. The creature is actually Noah wearing one of the costumes, which he discovered under the floorboards of the room where he had been confined after stabbing Lucius. Ivy eventually finds her way to the far edge of the woods, where she encounters a high, ivy-covered wall. After she climbs over the wall, a young park ranger named Kevin spots Ivy and is shocked to hear that she has come out of the woods. The woods are actually the Walker Wildlife Preserve, named for Ivy's family, as it is the modern era instead of the 19th century as the villagers believe. Ivy gives Kevin a list of medicines that she must acquire, also giving him a golden pocket watch as payment. During this time, it is revealed that the village was founded in the late 1970s. Edward Walker, then a professor of American history at the University of Pennsylvania, approached other people he met at a grief counseling clinic, all suffering the crime- related death of loved ones. He asked them to join in creating a place where they would sustain themselves and be protected from any aspect of the outside world. They built Covington in the middle of a wildlife preserve purchased with Edward's family fortune. The head park ranger tells Kevin that the Walker Estate pays the government to keep the entire preserve a no-fly zone, while also funding the ranger corps who ensure no outside force disrupts the preserve. Kevin discreetly retrieves the requested medicine from his ranger station and Ivy returns to the village with the supplies, left unaware of the truth of the situation. During her absence, the Elders secretly open their black boxes, each containing mementos from their lives in the outside world, including items related to their past traumas. The Elders gather around Lucius's bed when they hear that Ivy has returned and that she killed one of the monsters. Edward points out to Noah's grieving mother that his death will allow them to continue deceiving the rest of the villagers that there are creatures in the woods. Ivy comes in and tells Lucius that she has returned. ===== ===== The fictional town of Grantville, West Virginia (modeled on the real West Virginia town of Mannington) and its power plant are displaced in space-time, through a side effect of a mysterious alien civilization. A hemispherical section of land about three miles in radius measured from the town center is transported back in time and space from April 2000 to May 1631, from North America to the central Holy Roman Empire. The town is thrust into the middle of the Thirty Years' War, in the German province of Thuringia in the Thuringer Wald, near the fictional German free city of Badenburg. This Assiti Shards effect occurs during a wedding reception, accounting for the presence of several people not native to the town, including a doctor and his daughter, a paramedic. Real Thuringian municipalities located close to Grantville are posited as Weimar, Jena, Saalfeld and the more remote Erfurt, Arnstadt, and Eisenach well to the south of Halle and Leipzig. Grantville, led by Mike Stearns, president of the local chapter of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), must cope with the town's space-time dislocation, the surrounding raging war, language barriers, and numerous social and political issues, including class conflict, witchcraft, feminism, the reformation and the counter-reformation, among many other factors. One complication is a compounding of the food shortage when the town is flooded by refugees from the war. The 1631 locals experience a culture shock when exposed to the mores of contemporary American society, including modern dress, sexual egalitarianism, and boisterous American-style politics. Grantville struggles to survive while trying to maintain technology sundered from twenty-first century resources. Throughout 1631, Grantville manages to establish itself locally by forming the nascent New United States of Europe (NUS) with several local cities even as war rages around them. But once Count Tilly falls during the Battle of Breitenfeld outside of Leipzig, King Gustavus Adolphus rapidly moves the war theater to Franconia and Bavaria, just south of Grantville. This leads to the creation of the Confederated Principalities of Europe (CPoE) and some measure of security for Grantville's up-timer and down- timer populations. ===== The game opens with Ecco, a bottlenose dolphin, as he and his pod are swimming in their home bay. A podmate challenges Ecco to a game to see how high he can jump into the air. When he is in the air, a giant waterspout forms and sucks up all marine life in the bay except Ecco, leaving him alone in the bay. Upon leaving the bay, Ecco swims around meeting other marine life including other dolphins who tell them they have felt the storm and the entire ocean is in chaos. An orca Ecco encounters tells him to travel to the Arctic to meet the "Big Blue," an old blue whale revered by marine life for its age and wisdom, who might be able to help him on his journey. Arriving in the Arctic after a long travel through the ocean, Ecco finds the Big Blue who informs the dolphin the storms occur every 500 years. Though the Big Blue doesn't know what causes the storms, he suggests Ecco find the Asterite, the oldest life form on Earth. He leaves the Arctic and travels to a deep cavern where he finds the Asterite. The Asterite greets Ecco telling him though it has the power to aid him, the Asterite cannot because orbs from its body have been lost. The Asterite tells him to go to the sunken ruins of the city of Atlantis, and use the time machine left behind by the Atlanteans. Ecco travels to the sunken city of Atlantis, where he discovers an ancient library filled with Glyphs, giant crystals stored with information. From the library Ecco learns the origins of the storms, an alien race known as the Vortex lost the ability to produce food on their planet, so every 500 years when the planets align, they use their technology to harvest the waters of Earth. The Atlanteans fought a long war with the Vortex that ended when a beam struck Atlantis from space sending the city into the depths of the ocean. Learning this, he activates the time machine and travels 55 million years into Earth's past. While Ecco is in the past he learns an ancient song to communicate with a Pteranodon. Ecco locates the Asterite in the past but is immediately attacked by it. Forced into battle, he manages to dislodge a globe from it. This opens a time portal and he is sent back into the present. After receiving the globe, the Asterite grants him the power to turn his sonar into a deadly weapon against the Vortex, as well as the abilities to breathe underwater and to slowly regenerate lost health. The Asterite instructs him to use the time machine to travel back in time to the hour of the harvest. This time he manages to be sucked into the waterspout with his pod. Ecco is sent flying through outer space to a giant tube-like machine. Making his way through the construct Ecco arrives on the planet Vortex engaging the aliens in combat. He makes his way to the Vortex Queen and engages her in a fight. When the Queen is defeated she spits out Ecco's pod she ate and they make their quick escape back to Earth. ===== An English bon-vivant osteopath is enchanted with a young exotic dancer and invites her to live with him. He serves as friend and mentor, and through his wide range of contacts and his parties she and her friend meet and date members of the Conservative Party. A scandal develops when her affair with the Minister of War comes to public attention. ===== "Daryl" (whose name is an acronym for "Data-Analyzing Robot Youth Lifeform") (Barret Oliver) is an experiment in artificial intelligence, created by a government company called TASCOM. Although physically indistinguishable from an ordinary ten-year-old boy, his brain is actually a super-sophisticated microcomputer with several unique capabilities. These include exceptional reflexes, superhuman multitasking ability, and the ability to "hack" other computer systems. The D.A.R.Y.L. experiment was funded by the military, with the intention of producing a "super-soldier". One of the original scientists, Dr. Mulligan, has misgivings about the experiment and frees Daryl. Pursued by a helicopter, Dr. Mulligan drops off Daryl in a mountain forest in South Carolina, and tries to escape from the helicopter. The chase ends when Dr. Mulligan drives his car off a cliff and dies. Daryl is found by an elderly couple and taken to an orphanage in the fictional town of Barkenton, South Carolina; he does not remember who or what he is. Though a normal pre-adolescent boy in most respects, Daryl begins to exhibit extraordinary talents after he goes to live with his new foster parents Joyce (Mary Beth Hurt) and Andy Richardson (Michael McKean). He is also introduced to the neighbors of the Richardsons: Howie (Steve Ryan) and Elaine Fox (Colleen Camp) and their children Sherie (Amy Linker) and Tyler "Turtle" (Danny Corkill). Due to being raised in isolation, Daryl's social skills are rather limited, but Turtle, a sarcastic, foul-mouthed wisecracker, manages to help him develop such skills. Turtle wonders how Daryl can remember his name and how to read, but does not remember anything else about himself. Daryl tells him that he was diagnosed with amnesia, and that his real parents might pick him up one day. At Turtle's house, Daryl notices Turtle playing Pole Position, and decides to try it out, playing and reacting faster than humanly possible. Andy decides to teach Daryl how to improve his social skills by teaching him how to play baseball, to which Daryl shows uncanny abilities, including hitting multiple home runs; one of them shatters a window. When Andy shows Daryl how to use an ATM, Daryl helps Andy to rectify a problem when it won't accept his credit card. Daryl then makes a transaction with the ATM, which results in Daryl withdrawing $100 from Andy's account, but then manipulates the ATM to show $1,426,372 in the account. The baseball game starts with Andy's team, the Mohawks, facing the Warriors, coached by Andy's rival, Bull MacKenzie (Hardy Rawls). Daryl shows off his impressive ability, and the Mohawks start winning the game, but Turtle — who had noticed that Joyce is slightly annoyed that she cannot do anything for Daryl, because Daryl can look after himself perfectly — tells him that it is alright for him to not always be perfect and to mess up sometimes; Daryl ends up striking out his next turn, so Turtle ends up taking over for Daryl as the cleanup hitter. Turtle manages to hit a home run, winning the game for the team, and everyone is joyous over the Mohawks' victory. However, just as the Richardsons have truly begun to form a bond with Daryl, their new-found happiness is shattered when government agents find him and return him to the TASCOM facility in Washington, D.C. where he was created. Once there, his memory is restored and he is debriefed on the lessons he learned during his time with the Richardsons. Notable items in the debriefing include his decision to strike out at a baseball game, because sub-optimal performance in some areas can be more beneficial when building relationships with others, as well as his subjective preference for chocolate-flavored ice cream over vanilla-flavored ice cream. Because Daryl has revealed a capacity for human emotions, including fear, the D.A.R.Y.L. experiment is considered a failure by the military and the decision is made that the project be "terminated". Dr. Jeffrey Stewart (Josef Sommer), one of Daryl's designers, decides to free Daryl so he can return to the Richardson family. Unfortunately, despite the cooperation of Dr. Ellen Lamb (Kathryn Walker) — who was originally skeptical about Daryl's humanity and had alerted the military to Daryl's continued existence — they do not get away cleanly. When asked by the military to justify her complicity, Dr. Lamb offers a reformulation of the Turing test: "General, a machine becomes human ... when you can't tell the difference anymore," implying that she is no longer certain that Daryl is not human. Daryl and Dr. Stewart manage to escape the first wave of pursuers, thanks to Daryl's advanced driving skills, apparently acquired through playing the Pole Position video game. As the sun comes up, they drive into the Northern Virginia countryside and steal a pickup truck to avoid being recognized. However, when passing two police roadblocks, Dr. Stewart is mortally wounded by a police officer's shotgun. With his dying words, he assures Daryl that he is indeed a real person and Daryl continues his escape. Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird That night, Daryl sneaks into a nearby USAF airbase, hacks into a computer to trigger several faraway alarms as a distraction, and steals a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. Daryl sets a course for Barkenton, and contacts Turtle telling him and Sherie to meet up with him at Blue Lake, a lake where he and Turtle had been before. Because their missiles cannot intercept the plane, the Air Force tells Daryl that the plane will be vaporized mid-flight using a self-destruct mechanism. Daryl ejects at the last moment to fake his own death, as the plane is blown apart over Barkenton. In the meantime, Turtle and Sherie bike to the lake to meet up with Daryl. Unfortunately, the ejection had knocked Daryl unconscious, and he plummets into Blue Lake in his ejection seat with a deployed parachute. The added weight of both the seat and the parachute causes him to sink and Daryl drowns. When his body resurfaces, Daryl is rushed to the hospital, but shows no signs of life and is officially declared dead. Everyone is depressed over Daryl's death, even though Turtle says that since he is a computer, he can't die. In the hospital, Dr. Lamb finds him and reactivates his electronic brain, restoring him to life. Now that he is declared dead, Daryl is no longer on the run from TASCOM and is free to return to his foster family. As Turtle walks out of the Richardsons' house, he sees Daryl running back to the house, and they joyfully reunite with everyone. ===== The film begins in live- action and introduces the protagonist Michael Corleone, a 22-year-old virgin playing pinball in New York City. The scene then transitions into an animated and dangerous New York neighborhood. Michael's Italian father, Angelo "Angie" Corleone, is a struggling mafioso who frequently cheats on Michael's Jewish mother, Ida. The couple constantly bicker and try to kill each other. The unemployed Michael dabbles in cartoons and often wanders throughout the city to avoid family skirmishes and to artistically feed off the grubbiness of his environment. He regularly hangs out at a local bar where he gets free drinks from the female black bartender, Carole, in exchange for sketches of the somewhat annoying Shorty, Carole's violent, legless bouncer devotee. One of the regular customers at the bar, a nymphomaniac transvestite named Snowflake, gets beaten up by a tough drunk hard-hat who has only just realized that Snowflake is a man in drag and not a beautiful woman. Snowflake loves it, but the drunk causes property damage. Shorty throws the drunk out and the bar's white manager abusively confronts Carole over this. Fed up with her manager, Carole quits. Shorty offers to let Carole stay at his place, but not wanting to get involved with him, Carole tells Shorty that she's staying with Michael. The Corleones' deteriorating domestic situation convinces Michael and Carole to move out of Michael's parents' house and try to earn enough money to move to California, in order to avoid Shorty. Michael gets a chance to pitch a comic strip idea to an old executive lying on his death bed, who seems enthusiastic enough to listen to the idea. The abnormally dark tone of Michael's story is too much for the mogul and he dies during the pitch. Meanwhile, Carole tries to work as a taxi dancer. Michael, acting as her manager, tries to pass her off as "the fourth Andrews Sister" ("'cause she was black, they kept her in the background"). A quick flash of her panties gives an old man a heart attack, and Carole is fired. Meanwhile, Angie tries to use his Mafia connections to put a murder contract out on his son for "disgracing the family" by dating a black woman. The Godfather refuses to do this, because the hit is "personal, not business". However, Shorty eventually meets up with Angie and agrees to fulfill the contract. Michael and Carole turn to crime as a means of getting by, with Carole taking the role of a prostitute. Carole flirts with a sleazy businessman and brings him to a hotel room, where Michael beats him to death with a lead pipe. As the two walk out with the dead man's cash, Shorty arrives and shoots Michael in the head. Following a kaleidoscope of shocking images and horrifying events, the film reverts to the live-action story. The "real" Michael destroys a pinball machine after it tilts and walks out onto the street. He bumps into the "real" Carole and follows her into a park. The two are seen briefly arguing before they finally take each other's hands and begin dancing in the park. ===== Starsiege takes place in the 29th century, portraying the conflict between humanity and the artificially intelligent Cybrid war machines. Played out in various locations throughout the solar system, the story examines both civil unrest in the colonies and an all-or-nothing genocidal invasion by the machines. Bipedal mecha known as HERCs are the mainstay of ground-based combat, and the focus of gameplay. Humanity is nominally united in an interplanetary Empire, led from Earth by the Immortal Emperor Solomon Petresun. Petresun's policy is the defence of Earth at all costs. While Earth is prosperous and well protected, the colonies on Luna, Mars, and Venus suffer from increasingly harsh regulations and production quotas. The combat units of the Empire are represented by the Imperial Police, Terran Defense Force and the Imperial Knights. The former paramilitary group is responsible for maintaining order in the colonies. The Terran Defense Force are the standard military with bases from Mercury to Titan. The Knights, led by Grand Master Caanon Weathers, are the military's elite and are provided with the best pilots and equipment. The inequality between the colonies and Earth foments rebellion. In 2802 there are two guerilla movements on Mars, one that concentrates on destroying and capturing Imperial infrastructure and supplies and another bent on killing Imperial personnel and sympathizers. Both groups operate from underground bases and make do with modified mining HERCs and tanks. The rebels partially offset their disadvantages with superior weapons taken from the alien "Tharsis Cache"; an underground stockpile of alien technology discovered by rebels while digging new tunnels. Eventually the rebellion becomes too great for the police to contain and the Knights are deployed to Mars to crush the insurrection. The Cybrids are a race of sentient robots responsible for the first Earthsiege. They are led by the first Cybrid, Prometheus, who is revered with god-like status. The Cybrids established themselves in the outer solar system after being defeated two centuries before during the first Earthsiege. Since then they have built up their strength for another bid to destroy humanity and claim Earth for their own. Like the Martian rebels, the Cybrids discover their own cache of alien weapons and adapt it to use, but their cache is inferior to the Tharsis Cache. The game offers two story campaigns, with different endings. The Human campaign puts the player in control of a Martian rebel, initially fighting the Empire before humanity unites against the Cybrid invasion midway through the campaign. The human campaign culminates in an attack on Prometheus on Pluto. The Cybrid campaign starts with their invasion across the outer colonies and proceeds to Earth, ending in an assault on the Imperial palace to kill Petresun. ===== Following interference from both the White and Black Guardians, the Fifth Doctor materialises the TARDIS in what appears to be the hold of an Edwardian yacht, though the Doctor senses something is amiss. The human crew have no idea how they got there nor where they are, but know they are helping their captain to run a race. The Doctor and his companions, Tegan and Turlough discover that the ship, and several other historical Earth ships, are competing in a solar sail race through the Solar System. The ship's officers reveal themselves to be "Eternals", compared to the Doctor and the humans as "Ephemerals". The Eternals live in the "trackless wastes of eternity" and rely on Ephemerals for their thoughts and ideas. This race is being run by the Guardians to win Enlightenment, the wisdom to know everything. The Doctor finds that the Eternals have made his TARDIS vanish, forcing him and his companions to stay until the race's conclusion. As the race continues, several of the vessels are destroyed by explosions. The Doctor suspects that the crew aboard the Buccaneer, which is a 17th-century pirate ship, is responsible, as it was the closest vessel at the time of destruction. Turlough, while attempting to escape control of the Black Guardian, ends up aboard the Buccaneer, and meets the Eternal Captain Wrack, learning she too is working for the Black Guardian. He finds equipment aboard her ship that appears to be the source of the device destroying the other ships and hears the Black Guardian's voice nearby. Later, Wrack offers the Edwardian officers a reception aboard her ship. During the reception, Turlough demonstrates the Wrack's advantage-providing equipment to the Doctor, while Wrack hypnotizes Tegan, while she implants Tegan's tiara (Tegan and Marriner attend Captain Wrack's reception in full Edwardian costume) with a red crystal. After the reception and continuation of the race, the Doctor sees the Buccaneer nearing the Edwardian ship, and determines that the red crystal is used as a focal point of the weapon, and gets rid of the tiara before Wrack can destroy the ship. Nearing the end of the race, the solar winds dissipate and the Buccaneer pulls ahead of the Edwardian ship. Not wishing to see Wrack win, the Eternals return the TARDIS to the Doctor, allowing him to travel to the Buccaneer. However, he is captured, and Wrack's first mate suggest that the Doctor and Turlough be thrown overboard. From the Edwardian ship, Tegan and the others watch as two bodies are ejected from the Buccaneer just before it crosses the finish line. The ships and their human crews are returned to Earth and the Guardians dismiss the other Eternals. It is revealed that the Doctor won the race, with Wrack and her first mate having suffered "an unfortunate accident". The Doctor refuses the prize, but as Turlough helped the Doctor, he is entitled to a portion of the prize. The Black Guardian reminds Turlough of their bargain, and says that he can give up the diamond, or sacrifice the Doctor to gain both Enlightenment and the TARDIS. Turlough hurls the diamond at the Black Guardian, who vanishes in screams and flames. The Doctor points out that Enlightenment was not the diamond, but the choice itself. ===== The play is set in the quiet community of Baile Beag (later anglicised to Ballybeg), in County Donegal, in 1833. Many of the inhabitants have little experience of the world outside the village. In spite of this, tales about Greek goddesses are as commonplace as those about the potato crops, and, in addition to Irish, Latin and Greek are spoken in the local hedge school. Friel uses language as a tool to highlight the problems of communication — lingual, cultural, and generational. Both Irish and English characters in the play "speak" their respective languages, but in actuality it is English that is mostly spoken by the actors. This allows the audience to understand all the languages, as if a translator was provided. However, onstage, the characters cannot comprehend each other. This is due to lack of compromise from both parties, the English and Irish, to learn the others' language, a metaphor for the wider barrier that is between the two parties. The action begins with Owen (mistakenly pronounced as Roland by his English friend), younger son of the alcoholic schoolmaster Hugh and brother to lame aspiring teacher Manus, returning home after six years away in Dublin. With him are Captain Lancey, a middle-aged, pragmatic cartographer, and Lieutenant Yolland, a young, idealistic and romantic orthographer, both working on the six-inch-to-the-mile map survey of Ireland for the Ordnance Survey. Owen acts as a translator and go-between for the English and Irish. Yolland and Owen work to translate local placenames into English for purposes of the map: Druim Dubh, which means "black shoulder" in Irish, becomes Dromduff in English, and Poll na gCaorach, meaning "hole of the sheep" in Irish, becomes Poolkerry. While Owen has no qualms about anglicising the names of places that form part of his heritage, Yolland, who has fallen in love with Ireland, is unhappy with what he perceives as a destruction of Irish culture and language. A love triangle between Yolland, Manus, and a local woman, Máire, complicates matters. Yolland and Máire manage to show their feelings for each other despite the fact that Yolland speaks only English and Máire only Irish. Manus, however, had been hoping to marry Máire, and is infuriated by their blossoming relationship. When he finds out about a kiss between the two he sets out to attack Yolland, but in the end cannot bring himself to do it. Unfortunately, Yolland goes missing overnight (it is hinted that he has been attacked, or worse, by the elusive armed resistance in the form of the Donnelly twins), and Manus flees because his heart has been broken but it is made obvious that the English soldiers will see his disappearance as guilt. It is suggested that Manus will be killed as he is lame and the English will catch up with him. Máire is in denial about Yolland's disappearance and remains convinced that he will return unharmed. The English soldiers, forming a search party, rampage across Baile Beag, and Captain Lancey threatens first to shoot all livestock if Yolland is not found within twenty-four hours, then evict the villagers and destroy their homes if he is not found within forty- eight hours. Owen then realizes what he should do and leaves, seemingly to join the resistance. The play ends ambiguously, with the schoolmaster Hugh drunkenly reciting the opening of Virgil's Aeneid, which tells of the inevitability of conquest but also of its impermanence. Yet, Hugh's stumbling attempts at recitation are evidence that our memory is also perennially mutable. Friel's play tells of the struggle between England and Ireland during this turbulent time. The play focuses mainly on (mis)communication and language to tell of the desperate situation between these two countries with an unsure and questionable outcome. ===== In 1904, in the nursery of the Darling household located in London, Wendy Darling tells stories of Peter Pan to her younger brothers John and Michael before their Aunt Millicent's arrival. Judging Wendy to be an "almost" full-grown woman, Aunt Millicent advises Mr. and Mrs. Darling that Wendy should be given her own bedroom. At school, Wendy is caught by her teacher, daydreaming with a drawing she made after supposedly seeing Peter in the night. The school sends a letter about this to Wendy's father at the bank. In an attempt to stop the messenger boy from delivering the letter with the help of the family's nurse dog Nana, Wendy embarrasses her father in front of his superiors. As punishment, Mr. Darling chains Nana outside and declares that it is time for Wendy to grow up and have a room of her own. Peter visits the nursery looking for his shadow, which Nana had bitten off during his previous visit. He introduces himself to Wendy, who sews his shadow back on. Peter invites her and her brothers to Neverland where Wendy can tell stories to his gang of Lost Boys. They agree and are taught to fly using Tinker Bell's fairy dust. Nana breaks free from her chain and leads Mr. and Mrs. Darling back home from a party, but they arrive too late to stop the children flying away. Captain Hook and his crew are alerted to Peter's return and fire their cannons, knocking Wendy far away and causing Michael and John to fall towards the island. Jealous of Wendy's presence, Tinker Bell tricks the Lost Boys into shooting Wendy with arrows as she is falling from the sky. To their relief, Wendy survives as the arrow hits her acorn necklace. Peter banishes Tinker Bell and ends their friendship. Wendy awakens and agrees to be the Lost Boys' mother. They lead her to their hideout, but realize her brothers are missing. Michael and John encounter the Native American princess Tiger Lily and all three are then captured by Hook and his crew, and taken to the Black Castle. Peter and Hook engage in a duel, but it is stopped when the ticking crocodile arrives and tries to eat Hook, allowing the children to all escape. After a celebration at the Native American camp, Peter shows Wendy the fairies' home and the two share a dance. Hook spies on the two and charms Tinker Bell, still hurt over her banishment. Peter becomes upset with Wendy after she tries to get him to express his feelings. He tells her to leave, refusing to believe that he can ever love and grow up. Tinker Bell leads Hook's men to Wendy's makeshift "house" and they carry Wendy to his ship. There, he tries to entice her to become a pirate, but sends a spy to follow her to the Lost Boys' underground hideout afterwards. Wendy persuades her brothers to return home and are joined by the Lost Boys. Later, she leaves an upset Peter a cup of "medicine". Wendy exits the hideout only to be ambushed and captured by Hook's crew. Hook enters the hideout and poisons Peter's medicine. However, Tinker Bell intervenes, drinking the poison instead, and succumbs to it. Peter asserts his belief in fairies, which reaches out to residents of London, bringing Tinker Bell back to life. Peter and Tinker Bell save Wendy and the boys from walking the plank by the pirates and a battle soon breaks out. Hook uses fairy dust to fight Peter in a duel while flying and taunts him about Wendy abandoning him and forgetting all about him when she grows up. Weakened by those thoughts and unable to fight, Peter Pan is incapacitated. A kiss from Wendy revives Peter and he finally defeats Hook, who falls into the jaws of the crocodile. With the ship covered in fairy dust, Peter flies Wendy and the boys back to London. Mr. and Mrs. Darling are overjoyed at the return of their children, and adopt the Lost Boys. Slightly, who got lost on the way to London and arrives at the house too late, is adopted by Aunt Millicent. Peter promises never to forget Wendy and to return some day before heading back to Neverland with Tinker Bell. Wendy, as the adult narrator, claims she never saw Peter again, but she continues to tell his story to her own children and grandchildren so that his legacy will last forever. ===== In 1881, a female gunslinger known only as The Lady arrives in the Old West town of Redemption, encountering a Blind Shoeshine Boy and a repulsive escaped convict named Scars, whose proposition she harshly rebuffs. The town is ruled by a ruthless outlaw named John Herod, who hosts a fast-draw single elimination tournament for anyone brave enough to enter. At a sign-up meeting in the town saloon that night, the rules are explained: any contestant may challenge any other, no challenge can be refused, every contestant must fight once per day, and a fight continues until one contestant either yields or dies. The Lady announces her participation, insisting that she is only interested because of the large cash prize. While there, The Lady meets Cort, a former Herod henchman turned preacher whom Herod has captured and forced to enter the contest. The Lady saves Cort's life by shooting through the rope with which Herod's men try to hang him, then spends a drunken night with "The Kid", a brash young man who runs a gun store and hopes to impress Herod. Believing Herod to be his father, The Kid hopes to earn his respect by entering and winning the tournament. In the first round of duels, The Kid defeats a Swedish quick-draw champion while Herod kills a braggart named Ace Hanlon, who had taken credit for some of Herod's own exploits. The Lady defeats Dog Kelly, an enemy she had previously left shackled to a wagon. Since Cort has no money, Herod buys him a cheap, rusty gun and declares that he can only have one bullet at a time, so as to prevent him from shooting his way out of town. Even though Cort has renounced violence, he draws on his exceptional skill as a gunfighter and wins his first-round duel. Before the second round begins, Herod meets with Clay Cantrell, a professional gunfighter hired by the townspeople to kill him. Before they duel, Herod changes the rules and proclaims that all contests are now to the death. After killing Cantrell, Herod angrily addresses the townspeople and informs them that he will continue to raise his taxes on them until they learn to respect his absolute authority. During a rainstorm that evening, The Lady faces off with Eugene Dred after he rapes the saloon owner's young daughter. The Lady shoots him in the genitals but spares his life and returns to the bar. However, Dred ambushes her and she is ultimately forced to kill him. The next day, Cort is slated to fight Spotted Horse, a Native American who claims he "cannot be killed by a bullet". The Lady, still upset over killing Dred the night before, saddles up and rides out of town before Cort's fight. Cort outdraws Spotted Horse but fails to kill him with his first bullet and is forced to plead for a second one before fatally shooting him a second time. The Lady is found at a nearby cemetery by Doc Wallace who tells her that he recognizes her and knows why she is there. During flashbacks, it is revealed that the Lady's real name is Ellen and her father used to be the Marshal in Redemption until Herod invaded, killed all the deputies and had him strung up. Herod gave Ellen a pistol and three shots to try and break the rope her father was hanging from but she accidentally killed him on the first attempt. Doc then tells her that Herod's men dug up her father's body, burned it, and smashed his tombstone. He hands Ellen her father's old badge and begs her to come back and help rid the town of Herod as she and Cort are now Redemption's only hope. Ellen rides back to town and accosts Cort, securing his help in ridding the town of Herod. Ellen directly challenges Herod but is sickened to hear that he has already accepted a fight against The Kid. Ellen and Cort are the only other fighters left and are ordered by Herod to face off, threatened with execution if neither of them draws on the other. The Kid turns down Herod's suggestion to withdraw from the contest; during their duel, Herod fatally wounds The Kid while suffering a wound to the neck, and refuses to take the dying Kid's outstretched hand. Herod then states it was never proven that he was the Kid's father. When Cort and Ellen face off, Cort begs her to kill him, then draws and fires on her. Doc declares Ellen dead; Cort angrily demands to fight Herod immediately, but settles for dawn of the next day. Ratsy; one of Herod's henchmen, beats Cort severely that night and breaks his right hand, in retaliation for Cort repeatedly breaking his nose. The next morning, Herod angrily dismisses Ratsy from his service upon seeing Cort's injury, then kills him with a rifle as he tries to flee. He offers to fight Cort left-handed, but tells his henchmen to kill Cort if he wins. At the moment Herod draws, several buildings explode, including Herod's house and the clock tower. Ellen emerges from the smoke and flames, having faked her death with help from Cort, Doc, and a bottle of red ink procured from the Blind Boy and having used The Kid's stash of dynamite to blow up the structures. Cort kills Herod's remaining henchmen while Ellen faces off against Herod, revealing her identity by throwing her father's badge at his feet. Herod wounds Ellen but she shoots him through the chest, stunning him, and finishes him off with a bullet to the eye. Tossing the badge to Cort, she says, "The law's come back to town.", then saddles up and rides away. ===== Sixteen-year-old Guillermo (Israel Rodríguez) does not exactly hide his sexual orientation, even though his parents disapprove of it. He also seduces his English language tutor who introduces him to the pleasures of anal sex, and moves on to frequently cruise the toilets of the local mall for gay sex, getting caught once by mall security guards. As a consequence of that incident, his parents learn of his activities, and take him to a mental health therapist, who pronounces Guillermo to be mentally healthy and in no need of conversion therapy but recommends further sessions for his parents to help them accept their son's sexual identity. This short film was shown on British television network Channel 4. It is included in the gay and lesbian short film collection Boys Briefs 2. =====