"Suite Nothings" is a sleazy L.A. phone-sex hot-line voiced by failed models. Preying on them is Bobo, a psychotic killer who dresses in a clown costume. While the police try to uncover the clown's identity, the agency's models fall to Bobo's murderous rage.

A war is looming between the neighboring Eastern European states of Latveria and Symkaria. Called in by S.H.I.E.L.D., Captain America, Spider-Man, Wolverine and Luke Cage investigate. Discovering a non-human structure and an army of destroyed Doombots, they attempt to force their way inside, only to be met with deadly attacks. Spider-Man is captured as the others force their way out, with the team beginning to fight among themselves. An observing Optimus Prime decides to take the Autobots to counter the threat, as Megatron reveals to a captured Spider-Man that one of Doom's devices is responsible for the tensions, and they prepare to experiment on his mutated DNA. Falcon and Ms. Marvel arrive, followed by the Autobots. Prime's order for them to leave is met by a full attack by the Avengers.

As the fight continues, with Ms. Marvel and Wolverine in particular appearing highly vicious against their opponents, Doctor Doom intervenes and places a device on Captain America's neck that instantly calms him down. After he manages to talk down Ms. Marvel and Wolverine, the rest of the team talk to the Autobots, and Doom reveals that the Avengers' heightened aggression was caused by a device he developed which was stolen by the Decepticons. Doom departs to attempt to reach a diplomatic solution to the conflict with Symkaria, leaving the Autobots and the Avengers to storm the Decepticon base to rescue Spider-Man. However, Megatron has already determined that the mutated elements of Spider-Man's blood will enable him to enhance his forces' power to a level that not even Energon has accomplished, the enhanced firepower knocking out Optimus Prime just as Iron Man arrives on the scene. Iron Man, in new, Transformer-sized armor, helped to turn the tide against the Decepticons, allowing Prowl, Ratchet, Luke Cage and Wolverine to get inside the ship and rescue Spider-Man.

As Iron Man and Megatron face off outside the base, the Autobots track down Spider-Man, subsequently freeing him with the aid of Doctor Doom (who has turned on the Decepticons after they betrayed him). Realizing that the Decepticons are too powerful to take on as they are, the Autobots ask for Spider-Man and Wolverine's permission to use the same energy-enhancement method that the Decepticons used, taking blood samples from the two and using it to enhance their own abilities, and the two heroes agree to the procedure. While Spider-Man joins the Autobots outside the ship, Wolverine and Doctor Doom track down the device that initially amplified the Avengers' aggression and Wolverine destroys it, leaving Doom to make his own way out as he rejoins his teammates. Although Iron Man's Transformer armor is destroyed after it suffers an overload while fighting Megatron, the Autobots are still able to turn the tide, thanks to their power boost Spider-Man and Luke Cage knocking down Megatron and forcing him to flee. With the other Decepticons and the Autobots subsequently departing themselves, the Avengers are left to report to the government about the situation. Meanwhile, the Autobots reports that Ramjet has gone to earth and it is implied that he has taken the form of the Avengers Quinjet.

''Angel Cup'' is a story about the formation of a High School Girls' Soccer League in the Republic of Korea. It centers around two female players in particular; So-jin Lee and Shin-bee. For So-jin, she has given up on soccer years ago, after losing to her former rival, Shin-bee. But, when she transfers to Han Shin High School, So-jin challenges the boys' varsity team to soccer matches, when Shin-bee has been appointed manager of the Han Shin High boys' varsity team. However for So-jin, there was no girls' soccer league in Han Shin High. Or what’s worse, So-jin was literally insulted from derogatory remarks by the boys' team. So, So-jin decided to form a girls' varsity team, in order to get back at them for what they said and did. Now, through hard work and strong determination, So-jin Lee and her team, The Han Shin High Blue Angels struggle throughout soccer matches, and their everyday lives.

Binta is a young African girl who serves as the narrator. She talks about her father and his 'great idea'. Binta's father is a small-time, local fisherman in a peaceful village (near the town of Bignona) in Senegal. His friend who recently visited Europe describes what fishing is like there. He tells him that the Europeans can catch thousands of fish with bigger boats equipped with sonar. The man, very impressed by this, encourages the father to approach the government and request a permit for a bigger boat. Binta's father also hears from his friend how once he attains wealth he must get a permit for a weapon so he can defend his wealth. The friend also shows off his watch which has an alarm set to ring every day at noon. "What happens at noon?" asks Binta's father. "Why, the alarm rings!" his friend replies.

Binta's father is shown making his way up through the ranks of government, sharing his great idea with various officials. The film switches back and forth between the story of Binta and her father and the struggle between Binta's cousin, Soda, and her father, a village elder. Soda desperately wants to go to school, but her father believes African girls should not be educated; they should learn to tend the home and then get married and tend to home and family.

The village school children put on a play to convince Soda's father to let her attend school. In the end, the father is finally convinced, and Soda is allowed to get an education.

Finally, when Binta's father meets with the provincial leader, it is revealed what his great idea was: he wants do his part to make the world a better place by adopting a ''tubab'' (white child), "preferably weaned", to teach him or her qualities that Western industrialized society has largely lost, such as sharing, solidarity, and the sustainable use of resources.

Preamble

Elkinos Skander is an archaeologist stationed on the planet of Dalgonia. The planet was formerly occupied by the long-dead Markovian race, who are known only for the planet-sized computers they built into the crust of the planets they inhabited. He leads a group of students studying the ruins. Skander unlocks the mystery of the apparently dead computer. One of the students, patterned (and named) after a brilliant mathematician named Varnett, sees Skander interacting with the computer and confronts him. The two conclude that the computer runs on a form of energy unknown to human physics, forming the basic unified field that governs the existence of the universe.

The rest of the team discovers a surface anomaly near the north pole of the planet, where a hexagonal "hole" appears for a brief interval every day. Skander and Varnett both believe that they will be able to use this anomaly to access the planetary computer, and both set off to attempt to take control. Trying to protect the discovery, Skander stops at the team's camp and murders them. By the time he arrives at the anomaly, Varnett has already prepared for his arrival and the two struggle on the surface. They are swallowed up by the anomaly when it reopens.

Meanwhile, the interstellar freighter ''Stehekin'' is transporting three passengers and grain intended for famine relief. The passengers are a businessman named Datham Hain, his "niece" Wu Julee, and a diplomatic courier identified as Vardia Diplo 1261. During the trip, the ship's captain, Nathan Brazil, discovers that Hain is a "sponge merchant", a trafficker in a substance that causes an incurable, degenerative brain disease. Using the threat of withholding the arresting agent, the substance can be used to gain power over those it infects. Hain keeps Wu Julee as an example of what happens in this case; she has regressed to a mental age of five and will eventually be turned into a vegetable and allowed to die.

Brazil diverts the ''Stehekin'' from its course, in an attempt to reach the planet where the alien substance originated to obtain the retardant. Before they arrive, Brazil receives a distress call from Dalgonia and detours to investigate. There, they find the seven students murdered by Skander. Subsequently, the entire party travels to the polar gate, and while they are investigating there, the anomaly reopens and they are transported to the Well World.

Well World

The Well World is a Markovian construct that stabilizes the equation of our universe. Like Dalgonia, the planet consists largely of an enormous computer that can interact with and control the forces of nature. The surface has been patterned into a series of hexagonal patches where Markovians were allowed to experiment in creating their own new forms of intelligent life, and if they were successful they would be sent off into the universe to evolve on their own. Another Markovian was then allowed to try their hand at species design in the now-empty hex. The planet still contains 1,560 races that were on the Well World when the Markovians disappeared.

At the Well World, Brazil and his companions set off to track down Skander and Varnett, to stop them from gaining access to the central computer and causing harm to the universe. The complication is that travelling through the polar gate on Dalgonia has transformed all of the humans, with the exception of Nathan Brazil, into members of the various species which inhabit the planet.

As the book continues, Brazil comes to realize that his existence is not as it appears, and memories start to surface.

The film follows the plot of the original novel, but at times emphasizes different points. It opens with the dream sequence of an old man named Santiago, who dreams about his childhood on the masts of a ship and lions on the shores.

When he wakes up, we find out that he has gone 84 days without catching any fish at all. He is apparently so unlucky that his young apprentice, Manolin, has been forbidden by his parents to sail with the old man and been ordered to fish with more successful fishermen. Still dedicated to the old man, however, the boy visits Santiago's shack in the morning. The next day, before sunrise, Santiago and Manolin make their way to the seashore. Santiago says that he will venture far out into the Gulf to fish. Manolin wants to come, but Santiago insists on going alone.

After venturing far out, Santiago sets his lines and soon catches a small fish which he decides to use as bait. A big fish that he is sure is a marlin takes his bait. Unable to pull in the great marlin, Santiago instead finds the fish pulling his skiff. An unspecified number of days pass in this manner, during which the old man bears the tension of the line with his body. On one night, Santiago dreams of his youth, of how he won an arm wrestling match against the strongest black man in town. On another night, though he is wounded by the struggle and in pain, Santiago dreams that he and the marlin are brothers, swimming through the ocean together. An extended fantasy sequence is animated here by Petrov. Suddenly, he is woken up; the marlin tries to take advantage of the situation and escape. As the fish jumps out of the water, the old man sees for the first time just how big it is.

Eventually, the fish begins to circle the skiff, indicating his tiredness to the old man. With each circle, Santiago tries to pull it in a little closer. As the fish swims under the boat, Santiago manages to stab the marlin with a harpoon, thereby ending the long battle.

Santiago straps the marlin to his skiff and heads home, triumphant. However, in a short while, sharks are attracted to the trail of blood left by the marlin in the water. Santiago kills one with his harpoon, losing that weapon in the process. He makes a new harpoon by strapping his knife to the end of an oar to help ward off the next line of sharks and manages to kill a few more. Soon, however, the sharks have devoured the marlin's entire carcass, leaving only its skeleton. The old man castigates himself for sacrificing the marlin.

The next morning, a group of fishermen gathers around the boat where the fish's skeleton is still attached. Manolin, worried during the old man's endeavor, brings him food and drink and finds the old man lying in his cabin. When he wakes, he tells him that they had boats searching for him and that his parents allowed him to fish together once again.

''Dark Prince'' introduces the Carpathians, a powerful and ancient race. They have many gifts, including the ability to shape-shift, and extended life spans, living well over many years. Though they feed on human blood, they don't kill their human prey, and for the most part live among them without detection. Despite their gifts, the Carpathians are on the edge of extinction. There have been few children born to them in the past few centuries, those that have been born are all male and often die in the first year. It has been more than 500 years since a female has been born. Without females, many of the males are turning, becoming vampires, the monsters of human legend. After 200 years, a male Carpathian loses the ability to feel emotions and see in color. These will only return to him when he finds his lifemate, the other half of his soul.

Mikhail Dubrinsky, Prince of the Carpathians, has worked tirelessly for centuries to discover why so many of their children die in the first years. However, his efforts have come to no avail. It is at this time, when he is on the brink of despair and self-destruction that he meets a beautiful human psychic, Raven Whitney. Raven is a strong telepath, and has worked with the police to capture four serial killers. But her gift has come with a price: a life of isolation, and pain whenever she uses her gift. When he meets her, he is shocked and amazed when he suddenly is able to see colors in her presence; he realizes that she is his lifemate. Despite his joy, there is doubt in his mind. No human woman has ever been a lifemate to a Carpathian. All human females who were converted had become deranged creatures, feeding on children and had to be destroyed.

But he knows she is the only woman for him, the other half of his soul. He is determined to live as a human with her and to die when she does. However, this is not to be. Raven is attacked by fanatics, and he is forced to convert her to save her life. Her survival brings new hope to him and his people, for if one psychic human female can be a lifemate, surely there are others.

Fisherman Dutch Muller organizes a strike with his fellow thugs from the fishery, including the beautiful but tough Hattie Tuttle, against the owners of a tuna cannery. Jimmie is a teenager and uncle of two younger children. They all live with Pops, Hattie and his Aunt Lil in the same small dwelling on the wharf. The rich cannery owner Nick Lewis is also trying to romance Hattie with money and gifts, but she chooses Dutch.

In the late 1940s, Connecticut teenager Philippa "Flip" Hunter is sent to boarding school in Switzerland after recovering from a knee injury sustained in an automobile accident that also killed her mother. Her father Philip Hunter, an illustrator of children's books, is planning to travel around Europe making sketches for a book on lost children, and he is also being romantically pursued by the beautiful Eunice Jackman, whom Flip dislikes, partly because Eunice suggested the boarding school. Although Flip really wants to stay with her father, he thinks it would be better for her to be in the school where she can meet more young people and he can easily visit her at Christmas and Easter. Upon arrival at the school, Flip happens to meet a local boy named Paul Laurens, in whom she confides some of her unhappiness with Eunice and with being separated from her father.

After her father and Eunice leave, Flip has trouble fitting in at the school. She misses her father and her home, is still mourning her mother, performs poorly at school athletics due to her knee injury, and does not easily make friends with her sophisticated classmates, many of whom also come from dysfunctional family backgrounds. Her classmates mock her and give her the derisive nickname "Pill". In an effort to get some private time, she visits the school chapel, but this gets her reprimanded by the administrator and laughed at by the other girls, She resorts to going for illicit walks off the school grounds, discovers that Paul lives nearby with his father, and the two make friends and begin to meet regularly. After a hazing ritual in which Flip is physically abused by the other girls and then left blindfolded, gagged and tied to a tree in the woods, she is rescued by the art teacher, Madame Perceval. Madame Perceval also finds out about Flip's secret meetings with Paul, who turns out to be her nephew, and arranges things so that Flip can visit Paul at her home and not have to break school rules. Flip learns that Paul is a war orphan who was rescued by Madame Perceval's brother-in-law and that he has lost his memory of his past due to trauma he suffered in a concentration camp. Their growing relationship is therapeutic for them both.

As time goes by, Flip's talent for art is recognized by the other girls and her confidence grows as a result of her friendship with Paul and Madame Perceval. She begins to make friends and fit in at school. When she does poorly at skiing lessons and her ski teacher expels her from the class as being unteachable, Madame Perceval notices that Flip's skis are actually too long for her and caused the clumsiness, and provides her with a properly sized pair. Paul and Madame Perceval secretly teach Flip to ski so she can surprise the other girls. Madame Perceval over time becomes a mother figure to Flip, who reminds Madame of her own deceased daughter. Madame eventually decides to leave her teaching position and work teaching art to children affected by the war. In the course of this work, she meets Flip's father.

Paul's memory is restored after an encounter with a man falsely claiming to be his father results in an accidental injury to Flip. Flip participates in the school ski meet and, when the ski teacher and her schoolmates express doubts that she can ski at all, much less race, she reveals her relationship with Paul (and eventually Madame Perceval) and how she was taught to ski. She ends up performing well at the meet, but gives up her chance to win a race because she goes back to help her friend Erna, who has hit a patch of ice and broken an ankle, and then helps the captain of the ski team get Erna down the mountain for medical help. As a result, Flip is awarded the silver cup in front of her schoolmates, Madame Perceval, Paul and her father, who has come for the occasion. Flip's happiness at seeing her father, on top of winning the cup and being in a romantic relationship with Paul, is further enhanced when romance blooms between Philip Hunter and Madame Perceval.

Fifteen-year-old Camilla Dickinson narrates an important period of her life spanning approximately three weeks in November 1950. Camilla lives on Park Avenue in New York City with her wealthy parents Rose, who is beautiful yet irresponsible and overdramatic, and Rafferty, a stern, responsible architect. The quiet, thoughtful and undramatic Camilla dreams of becoming an astronomer, but must deal with the constant ups and downs of her parents' troubled marriage. Rose has begun an affair with a man named Jacques, which Camilla accidentally discovers when she walks in on Rose and Jacques kissing. Rose begs Camilla to keep it a secret, but Rafferty wants Camilla to be honest and tell him the truth. Rose and Rafferty fight, and Rose ends up attempting suicide, which has the desired effect of bringing Rafferty back to her. Camilla is torn between her loyalty to both parents, and begins to realize they are very imperfect people. She also has difficulty dealing with her feelings towards her parents, and initially does not want to discuss her situation with anyone outside the family.

Camilla's new best friend, Luisa Rowan, has parents with a similarly dysfunctional marriage who fight constantly and seem likely to get a divorce. In contrast to Camilla, Luisa's family is not affluent, she lives in Greenwich Village with bohemian parents, and she is more open to discussing her family problems. Luisa aspires to become a psychiatrist and at one point attempts to psychoanalyze Camilla.

Camilla then meets and befriends Frank, Luisa's older brother. Frank understands Camilla's problems and assists her in accepting her parents' flaws. Frank encourages Camilla to define herself, not by her family, but to define herself as who she truly is. Frank also takes the sheltered Camilla to see people and places that she has never experienced before, including visiting a young, disabled war veteran who ends up giving Camilla her first kiss. Frank and Camilla have deep conversations about life, religion, philosophy, growing up, and dealing with difficult situations, and the pair begin to form a romantic attachment, much to the chagrin of Luisa. Despite Luisa's anger, Camilla feels that Frank is the one person she can really talk to.

Just as Camilla is getting comfortable with the way things are, everything changes again. Frank and Luisa's parents break up, and Frank is forced to suddenly move away with his father, without even telling Camilla goodbye in person. Camilla's parents decide to work on their marriage and go on a European vacation together, sending Camilla to boarding school while they're gone. While Camilla is heartbroken by the loss of her closest relationships, she uses the inner strength she has gained in the past weeks to deal with the changes in her life.

A group of technicians in a bar meet someone whom they assume to be a drunken down-and-out. It slowly emerges that he is an ex-university professor who has not only built a time machine but has traveled back to the Mesozoic era to see for himself what happened to cause the extinction of the dinosaurs. He becomes more belligerent as he is teased and pressed, eventually revealing that by the time of his arrival, all the large dinosaurs had already been killed by small intelligent lizards armed with guns, who were systematically wiping out their own kind until there were none left to kill.

A group of scientists held a lunch-time discussion concerning the evolution and extinction of lifeforms on Earth, including the dinosaurs. One of them concludes that the present civilization may be coming to an end, that no one can tell what or who comes next, and if it is a part of the divine purpose. Furthermore, he strongly hints that in creating both robots and nuclear weapons, humanity has created its own doom and successors.

Richard Rahl has been captured by an Imperial Order commander, who spared his life (under the guise of Ruben Rybnik) to be the point man for the commander's Ja'La dh Jin team. Kahlan is also Jagang's prisoner, surrounded by special guards who can see her. During Richard's imprisonment, he is warned by a cloaked specter that he is now a player of the Boxes of Orden. Sister Ulicia is also visited by this figure, and is told that the time to open the Boxes has been reset to one year from the first day of winter-the day that Nicci set the Boxes into motion under Richard's name.

Rachel is discovered missing from the Keep. That night, the witch woman Six enters the Keep and steals the third box of Orden from Nicci and Zedd. Zedd discovers the Keep's warning that the Wizard's Keep is dying due to the contamination of the chimes, and places a spell to protect it from future damage. Zedd, Rikka, and Tom then head to Tamarang to remove the spell blocking Richard's gift.

In an attempt to breach the People's Palace, Jagang orders a massive ramp built to reach the plateau, bypassing the natural defenses of the Palace. While excavating dirt for the ramp in the Azrith Plains, Jagang's diggers stumbled upon the catacombs under the People's Palace, which provide a secret entryway. Three Sisters of the Dark enter, killing Ann and capturing Nicci, while soldiers are sent into the catacombs to prepare an attack. The Sisters of the Dark discover what they believe to be the original Book of Counted Shadows in Bandakar.

Richard, after realizing that Jagang and the Sisters with him would recognize him during team inspections and throughout the tournament, disguises himself by covering the faces and bodies of his teammates and himself with intimidating symbols and parts of spell-forms. His team defeats Jagang's team in the tournament final, but Jagang refuses to accept his team's loss and invalidates the win twice, leading to a riot in the camp, during which Richard and Nicci escape, while Kahlan is 'rescued' by Samuel. Richard and Nicci, with Adie's help, enters the Palace through the catacombs, where Cara and Nathan help them wipe out the Order forces hiding there.

Rachel is lured to Tamarang by Violet, who has drawn a spell around her that sets 'ghostie gobblies' to destroy her. Along the way, she is given a piece of chalk by Shota, disguised as Rachel's mother, and uses this to transfer the spell to Violet. Rachel then restores Richard's gift. Shota reappears as Rachel's mother and sends her to deliver a message with Gratch to the Mud People. On the way to Tamarang, Zedd, Rikka, and Tom are captured by Six, who is in league with Jagang and has helped attack D'Haran forces in the Old World.

Richard is warned by Nicci that he must not reveal his love for Kahlan to her, lest Kahlan's lost memories alone fail to be restored, much like Richard, in the first book of the series, could not be told before finding the way to intimately love a Confessor while being untouched by her power. Richard is taught many spells and spell-forms by Nicci regarding the Boxes of Orden. He tests his knowledge by helping priestess Jillian, who was brought to the Azrith Plains after Jagang's men hunted her down in Caska, give the Order's army terrible nightmares. Jagang is given particularly nasty dreams, mostly involving Nicci. After a demand for surrender by Jagang, Richard then sends himself to the Underworld, using Denna as a spirit guide, and retrieves everyone's memories of Kahlan. Unfortunately, he is attacked by the pursuing beast earlier sent against him. He destroys the beast and escapes by releasing Additive Magic into the Underworld, whence he is physically projected into a gathering of the Mud People. He is greeted by Chase and Rachel, who, with Gratch's help, had told the Mud People to hold a gathering to await him. At the Palace, Nathan assumes Richard is dead and, acting on Richard's instructions, accepts Jagang's terms of surrender, which include surrendering Nicci to Jagang and giving the Order's Sisters access to the Garden of Life in order to open the boxes.

Samuel attempts to rape Kahlan; during the struggle, she touches the Sword of Truth, which restores her knowledge, but not her memories, of being a Confessor and releases her power to take control of him. Samuel reveals he is an agent for Six, and that Richard and Kahlan were once married. He then dies when she refuses to forgive his attempt against her. Richard meets Kahlan on the way to Tamarang, but refuses to answer her questions about their marriage, for fear of contaminating the spell upon her. He gives her ''Spirit'' in compensation.

Six has imprisoned Zedd, Tom, and Rikka, and appears as Richard and Kahlan arrive in Tamarang. As Six is about to recapture them, Shota appears as Six's mother. She kills Six and then Richard, Kahlan, and Zedd fly back to the People's Palace on the red dragon Six had enslaved; now revealed to be Scarlet's son Gregory, whom Richard saved as an egg.

At the Palace, Richard allows Jagang and his Sisters of the Dark to open the boxes of Orden. During the ritual, Jagang goes to retrieve Nicci from the dungeon. However, Nicci locks a Rada'Han around Jagang's neck, rendering him powerless. After taking him back to the Garden of Life, she eventually kills him unceremoniously to prevent his martyrdom.

In the Garden of Life, the Sisters of the Dark discover the correct box and open it; however, they find a flaw in their success. Richard explains that all of the ''Books of Counted Shadows'' were false keys to the boxes; whereas if they had the true key, they would still fail by reason of malicious intent. Immediately, the Sisters are drawn into the Underworld.

Richard explains that the true key to the Magic of Orden is the Sword of Truth. Kahlan tells Richard she loves him, revealing that her emotions have contaminated her chances of regaining memory. Richard uses the Sword to reveal the correct box and then to capture its magic. Now in command of life and death, he uses the magic to send the followers of the Order to a new world, devoid of magic; his half-sister Jennsen, her compatriots the Bandakar, and her suitor Tom decides to relocate to the new world. He also uses Orden to repair the damage caused by the chimes, and to send Chainfire to the new world he has created, ensuring the complete removal of magic from that world, and removing all its inhabitants' memories of their previous world. As Richard goes to close the opening between worlds, he fears Kahlan is lost to him; she, however, replies that she was protected from this loss because she had fallen in love with him on her own, much as he had with her from the beginning.

An epilogue shows Tom and Jennsen expecting a child, who will carry the Rahl name, and shows the immigrants gradually forgetting Richard and everything from their previous world. The book ends with the marriage of Cara and General Meiffert. It is revealed that the Sisters of the Light have moved into the Wizard's Keep, where along with Zedd, they can continue to teach young wizards. Chase (now a Warden of the Keep) and his family have also moved into the Keep, as have Adie and Friedrich, who are now a mated pair. Under Zedd's questions, Richard admits taking Panis Rahl's spell from red fruit, so that it is no longer poison, and to bringing back the Temple of the Winds to the world of the living. After Cara and Benjamin's wedding, the devotion bells begin to ring. Richard prevents the people from kneeling, proclaiming that they are no longer his subjects.

Jeanne Eagels is a Kansas City waitress. After losing a beauty contest, she asks carnival owner Sal Satori for a job. Her dance in a skimpy costume is called obscene. Sal joins his brother in New York and invites Jeanne to join them at an amusement park on Coney Island.

Taking acting lessons instead, the ambitious Jeanne becomes the understudy in a Broadway show and a star when she gets a chance to play the part. A former successful actress named Elsie Desmond wants to make a comeback in a new play, but Jeanne betrays her and takes the play for herself, willing to do anything to advance. Elsie denounces her in the theater before the first performance and then commits suicide. Sal is also disgusted by Jeanne's behavior. She accepts a proposal from a lowlife named John Donahue, but both descend into alcoholism. Jeanne misses performances and causes fellow actors to lose paychecks.

Jeanne's situation deteriorates further when she must pay alimony to John after a divorce. A new play fails because Jeanne, drunk and on pills, collapses on stage. The actors' guild suspends her for 18 months. Unable to work, she returns to Sal's amusement park and is offered a job dancing. Another performer sexually assaults her in a dressing room. Jeanne, her life in ruins, continues to spiral downward and hallucinate. While trying to take the stage one night, she collapses on a staircase and dies.

Amitz Dolniker, an aging Israeli Parliament member known for his high-winded babbling and tireless lecturing, is told he needs to take a break from politics after he collapses during a speech. Fainting, he starts out on a dream trip to spend some weeks in a far-away, backward Israeli village that has little contact with civilization. The farmers’ bucolic and carefree life repels him at first (and especially the fact that they have never heard of him), but then he decides to introduce some “order” to the innocent society. As none of the villagers agree to become the village head (they don't want the trouble), Dolniker hires a local horse and buggy and puts it at the service of the village barber, declaring him village head “de facto”. The barber objects at first, but as he becomes used to the perks that come along with the position, his grip on power tightens. This leads to a rivalry with other villagers (especially the cobbler) who think themselves equally worthy of becoming the village head (with free horse-and-buggy, of course), which is what Dolniker has expected. He suggests an election to determine the leader. The result, however, bears no resemblance to the orderly political process he is used to, and Dolniker finds himself entangled in silly power struggles, taxes imposed on 3-door closets, corruption, petty bureaucracy, and a ruination of the simple way of life the village once knew. Dolniker comes back to his senses, mildly laughing about himself.

In 1959 Paris, an out-of-work illusionist packs his belongings, including an ill-tempered rabbit, and moves to London. Unable to compete with modern entertainment, such as rock and roll, he plies his trade at smaller gatherings in bars, cafés, and parties. He accepts the invitation of a drunken party patron to visit a remote Scottish island, where he entertains the locals. Staying in a room above the pub, he meets a girl, Alice, who is captivated by his illusions and kindness, including a gift of red shoes.

Alice believes the downtrodden performer possesses genuine magical powers, and follows him to Edinburgh, where he performs at a modest theatre. They share a room in a run-down guest house favoured by other fading performers. The illusionist sleeps on a couch and the girl keeps busy by cleaning and cooking food that she shares with the neighbours. The girl's affections even tame the rabbit, but the illusionist's increasingly meagre wages, spent on gifts for Alice, lead him to pawn his magic kit and secretly take on demeaning jobs.

Alice attracts the affection of a handsome young man. After the illusionist sees them walking together, he leaves her with money and a note stating "Magicians are not real". He also releases the rabbit on Arthur's Seat, where it soon meets other rabbits. As Alice moves in with her boyfriend, the illusionist departs on a train, where he declines an opportunity to perform a magic trick for a child.

Series 1 (1997)

After leaving the Lakes to move to Liverpool, Emma (Emma Cunniffe) decides to return home after her husband Danny's gambling addiction begins to grow progressively stronger. Months later, Danny follows her and takes up a job looking after a rowing boat concession. Meanwhile, he is forced to reject the unsubtle advances of the attention-seeking Lucy Archer (Kaye Wragg), who unable to take the pain of rejection, becomes determined to take out revenge. When three schoolgirls drown in a boating accident whilst Danny is on duty at work, he is unwilling to tell the truth, having been distracted by betting over the telephone - despite promising Emma that he would stop gambling. As the community looks for someone to blame, Lucy lies to the police to implicate him.

Series 2 (1999)

When Lucy is raped by three locals, only Danny, enduring the claustrophobic hostility of the Quinlan family home, can testify as a witness - which puts him at odds with the village, his wife and her family.

Kay Dillon, a successful modeling agent, meets the young and handsome ranch hand, Tyler Burnett in Nevada, while attending an outdoor shoot. She notices his good looks and invites him to move to New York and start working as a model. Burnett, who has just been dumped by his girlfriend, accepts the invitation and goes to New York, where he shares an apartment with another model, Chuck Lanyard. Lanyard is addicted to alcohol and drugs; he is 35 years old, and therefore too old to be successful in the business. Burnett, who does not understand Lanyard's problems at first, is now being turned into one of America's best looking models by his agent and soon wins his first professional assignment.

However, Burnett wants a woman to settle down with in Nevada; he does not really like the fast-paced life in New York. After helping out Dillon during a fight with another agent, she falls in love with him and he believes she is the woman he could finally settle down with despite the age difference.

Burnett soon becomes America's most successful male model and Dillon realizes that it's impossible to continue a relationship with him, being his agent. After she confronts him with the sad truth, Burnett loses himself in a world of drugs and meaningless affairs. Things change when his former roommate dies of an overdose. Burnett flees back to Nevada where Dillon is able to convince him to return for one last shooting. Afterwards she lets him go and he returns to Nevada.

Disillusioned World War I flying ace Roger Shumann (Robert Stack) spends his days during the Great Depression making appearances as a barnstorming pilot at rural airshows with his parachutist wife LaVerne (Dorothy Malone), worshipful son Jack (Chris Olsen), and mechanic Jiggs (Jack Carson) in tow.

New Orleans reporter Burke Devlin (Rock Hudson) is intrigued by the gypsy-like lifestyle of the former war hero, but is dismayed by his cavalier treatment of his family and soon finds himself attracted to the neglected LaVerne. Meanwhile, Roger barters with aging business magnate Matt Ord (Robert Middleton) for a plane in exchange for a few hours with his wife. Tragedy ensues when Jiggs' anger about his employer's refusal to face family responsibilities causes him to make a rash and fatal decision. He manages, with some difficulty, to get Shumann's aircraft to start, but the plane crashes and Shumann is killed. After rejecting and then reconciling with Devlin, LaVerne returns to Iowa with Jack.

Pisces, or Pi, is a young orange wrasse living with his parents Pike and Piper in the polluted harbor of Boston, Massachusetts, until a fishing boat scoops them from the sea. Pi's parents help him escape the net, but cannot escape themselves. Before they are taken away, Piper tells Pi to promise her he would go live with his aunt Pearl. Pi's porpoise friend Percy and Percy's mother Meg agree to take him, but Pi refuses to leave in case his parents return. Meg tells him once anyone is taken by a net they are killed. Pi is heartbroken that his parents are gone forever.

Meg and Percy take Pi to live with his aunt Pearl on an exotic reef. The first residents Pi comes across are three elderly marlin named Moe, Jack, and Manny, which direct him towards Pearl's home. On his way there, Pi immediately falls in love with Cordelia, a beautiful angelfish model that has appeared on the cover of ''National Geographic''. He also meets his cousin Dylan, who quickly becomes Pi's best friend. However, Pi soon encounters Troy, the meanest, toughest tiger shark in the ocean, who is not only terrorizing everyone in the reef community, but also has his eye set on Cordelia to become his mate. Pi confronts Troy, only to be physically assaulted by him. Cordelia tells Pi that the only dangerous place on the reef is between Troy and whatever he wants, and if Pi wishes to help her he won’t interfere. Pi and Dylan find their way home, where Pearl is excited to see that Pi has arrived. She is a fortune teller along with her assistant Madge, a sea star and uses a pink pearl that Dylan's late father gave to her as a crystal ball. Pearl reads Pi's future and sees that he is destined for great things and that he will find his destiny on the reef. Pearl then tells Pi that he can go anywhere excluding an old pirate wreck and a forbidden place called "flat bottom". Pearl leaves Dylan in charge of showing Pi around. Dylan tells Pi about Nerissa, a wise old hermit loggerhead turtle that lives in an abandoned shipwreck and practices martial arts, leading to rumors that he is a wizard. Eventually they stumble upon flat bottom, the open sea which is outside of the wildlife sanctuary free for humans to come with their fishing nets.

Dylan leaves after a close encounter and Pi sees Cordelia, but per her instructions does not interact until he hears her scream after getting a lure stuck in her fin and swears to help her. Pi brings Cordelia to a crab and sawfish duo named Buddy and Lou who successfully remove it, afterwards she invites him to go to a concert with her. Beforehand, Pi meets Dylan once again and they observe Nerissa defend his blue pearl.

At the amphitheatre that night with Cordelia, Pi learns about the performer Thornton, a harbor seal that fought a large monster. Afterwards, Pi and Cordelia look at the stars and she falls in love with him. Suddenly, Troy arrives and pursues them. Pi refuses to leave Cordelia, but Troy starts abusing him worse than ever, until Cordelia makes a deal with him: if he leaves Pi alone, she will marry Troy, Pi is knocked unconscious by Troy and is carried to Nerissa's shipwreck by a current.

When Nerissa tells Pi the following day, he is fed up with Troy's abuse towards him, and asks Nerissa to teach him the ways of the ocean to combat Troy. Nerissa initially refuses, Pi asks other residents to help him, but the marlins think because of their age, they won't be useful, also revealing they used to be friends of Nerissa's. Thornton also refuses until Pi reminds Thornton of his tale. However, he states that he didn't actually fight a monster, but due to his "poetic license" it didn’t count as lying.

Meanwhile, Troy's henchmen Bart and Eddie try to steal Nerissa's pearl, but are frightened away by Pi and Dylan. Nerissa arrives and is impressed with Pi's skills, agreeing to train him the next morning.

On Pi's first day of training, Pearl is worried, telling Pi that she could not live with herself if he were killed. Pi reminds his aunt how she told him he would find his destiny on the reef, and he did when he met Cordelia and now he’s losing her like he lost his parents. Pi reminds Pearl how he couldn't do anything to save them, but he still has a chance to save Cordelia.

Nerissa leads Pi down a valley with obstacles.

Meanwhile, Cordelia is informed by Buddy and Lou about Pi's upcoming battle with Troy. Nerissa reveals the story of his blue pearl to Pi and he gave it to his wife, but she got hooked in the open sea and taken away to a wildlife sanctuary. Nerissa desperately begged for help, but no one was brave enough. Pi understands, but is unsure how to stop Troy for good; Nerissa tells Pi that Troy has never learned about anything larger than himself, stating the ocean itself is bigger than Troy and if Pi can use the ocean against him, his size wouldn't matter.

Cordelia finds Pi and tries to convince him to reconsider, willing to sacrifice herself for his life. That night Pearl's pearl has been stolen by Troy's henchmen. She is heartbroken, since it was all she had left of her late husband. Pi realizes that he cannot back down now no matter how much everyone else doubts him.

When Troy returns to the reef, Pi initiates a chase with Troy through the valley Nerissa instructed him to take. Nerissa tries to help by disabling Bart and Eddie and Dylan shoves them down a lobster hole, retrieving his mother's pearl in the process. Pi is then swatted by Troy's tail into a cliff, burying him in rocks. Nerissa attempts to help him, but is hit by Troy; just as all seems lost Thornton and the marlins arrive to fight Troy and they apologize to Nerissa for not helping him when he needed them.

Percy and Meg return and free Pi. Troy then sets Percy as a target. Pi sees a net and plans to trick Troy into it. Troy believes Pi is doomed since they are now in his domain. Troy chases Pi up to the surface, where he manages to lead Troy into a fishing net and narrowly escapes the shark's jaws. A screaming Troy, trapped in the net, begs for his life as the fishermen lift him out of the sea.

Pi is proclaimed a hero by the population of the reef who all mock Troy believing that he will be made into seafood. Nerissa admits he sees Pi as his son and gives him his pearl. Pi presents Cordelia with the pearl and she accepts it, they share a kiss as the reef celebrates, including a redeemed Bart and Eddie, who rejoice that they are all free from Troy.

Dancing In September tells the story of two hopeful and ambitious African-Americans attempting to make their mark in the television industry. One is a scriptwriter named Tomasina “Tommy” Crawford (Parker), who has grown weary of contributing to stereotypical characters and programming for African-Americans and dreams of creating a balanced, positive program for herself and the African-American public. The other is a newly appointed television producer named George Washington (Washington), who hopes to ascend to the highest levels of the television industry and carve out a special place for himself to help redefine African-American programming. When Tommy submits a script for a positive family sitcom titled "Just Us," she is indirectly brought into George's path. The rest of the film follows the struggles that both she and George face in their specific environments, mainly painting a positive portrayal of African-Americans in the media, in addition to staying true to their own culture and identity as African-Americans.

Geum Na-ra was once a top-ranked investment banker, until his life falls apart when his debt-ridden father commits suicide after constantly being harassed by loan sharks. Traumatized, his mother collapses and is rushed to the hospital. Na-ra applies for a bank loan but is flatly denied, and his disgruntled boss takes advantage of Na-ra's troubles and uses them as an excuse to fire him. His mother eventually dies, despite his and his sister Eun-ji's (Lee Young-eun) desperate efforts to obtain cash to pay for her hospital fees. Newlywed Eun-ji had become a room salon hostess, while Na-ra agreed to break up with his longtime girlfriend Lee Cha-yeon (Kim Jung-hwa) in exchange for cash from Cha-yeon's disapproving grandmother Madam Bong (Yeo Woon-kay). Believing that it's the source of all evil, Na-ra declares war on money and becomes obsessed with avenging his parents' deaths. However, realizing the only way to defeat his enemy is to understand the enemy, Na-ra decides to become a loan shark himself, and begins working as a ruthless money collector for the notorious loan shark Ma Dong-po (Lee Won-jong), while learning the trade secrets along with life's philosophies from the old and legendary pro Dokgo Chul (Shin Goo) who reluctantly takes Na-ra under his wing.

Na-ra enters into a rivalry with Ha Woo-sung (Shin Dong-wook), another moneylender who works for Madam Bong and has secretly loved Cha-yeon for years. Then Na-ra meets Seo Joo-hee (Park Jin-hee). Joo-hee was supposed to marry a divorced man to solve her family's financial problems, but on the day of the wedding, Na-ra showed up to collect the debts and ended up ruining her plans. Joo-hee vows to take her revenge on him but she falls in love with him instead. When Na-ra learns that his gangster boss Ma Dong-po was the very man responsible for his father's death, he keeps his cool, waiting for the right time and the right place to seek his revenge. Meanwhile, competition between banks and loan sharks is getting tense and a war over money threatens to erupt.

Michael O'Malley (Needs), rushes to his priest to tearfully inform him that he has accidentally killed his closest friend, Rachel Mathias (Parry). The story is told in flashback as Michael recounts their friendship, when he first befriended Rachel by hurrying her away from a group of schoolboys who were verbally bullying her on the playground. They quickly become the best of friends. The young children decide to become "blood brothers" by pricking their fingers and rubbing the blood together. They set off for an adventure, hoping to go to London to visit the queen, but instead are picked up by a kindly elderly lady (Sybil Thorndike) who takes them to her home for tea, pretending that she is a princess and that her mansion is one of the queen's homes, but that the queen is currently away. Her amiable deception goes over perfectly, and the children have a great time visiting with her.

Michael and Rachel are aware that they worship on different days and their religions are somewhat different, but they do not ponder the specifics. However, when a somewhat overbearing and destructively-outspoken classmate informs Michael that Rachel is Jewish and that "the Jews killed Christ", an outraged Michael rushes to Rachel at their clubhouse and angrily confronts her, "Why did you kill Christ?" Rachel is shocked and insistently denies it: "I didn't kill him. I don't even know him." Michael and Rachel conclude that God is angry at them for becoming friends, but they are not sure if He will forgive them. They decide to attend church with each other to see if God is mad at them, believing they will die if He does not want them to go to each other's church. Michael sneaks into the synagogue with Rachel the next Saturday and is somewhat puzzled and intimidated by the ceremony, but he stays and seems to like it as time goes on, especially after the kindly rabbi shows him a passage in the Torah that speaks of God's love shielding him from all fear. The next day, Rachel goes with Michael to his church, and while Rachel is initially somewhat unnerved by the services and statues, she too feels more comfortable after a while.

Having concluded it is acceptable to God that they remain friends, Michael and Rachel decide to take an inflatable raft on the River Thames for their next adventure, a trip to Africa. All goes well at first as Michael paddles and the raft drifts leisurely and makes smooth ripples on the calm water, but then when the duo passes into a dangerous section of the river with a swifter flow and strong rapids, Michael loses control of the raft, and Rachel is knocked overboard. Due to the stronger current and the riverbank's dense underbrush in which Rachel has become entangled, Michael has great difficulty reaching her, but at last pulls her out of the river; however, she is limp and unresponsive. Fearing the worst, Michael frantically rushes to get help, and adults in the area call for an ambulance. The film then returns to the present moment, with Michael in his grief-stricken state, and telling the priest that he's killed Rachel. The priest comforts him and tells him that Rachel may be all right, and then accompanies him to Rachel's home to see how she is. They are met at the front door by Rachel's rabbi who is leaving, and he smilingly informs them that Rachel has pulled through after all and is recovering well, but that perhaps it would be better to wait till tomorrow to visit her. Michael, immensely relieved, rushes home happy that his little friend is still alive, and the priest and the rabbi --- who earlier in the film have been established as being good friends despite their differing religions (just as the Catholic boy Michael and Jewish girl Rachel had become close), and acknowledging that their respective religions actually hold more in common than they may have realized before --- speak warmly to each other before walking away in different directions.

The story opens with an elderly man visiting Mrs. Allen, a widow who lives with her three children Lucy, Jamie and her baby Benjamin, in Camden Town, London. He offers her a job as caretaker of an abandoned house, which belonged to the late Mr. Latimer, until the Blunden, Blunden and Claverton company can find the rightful owner. Mrs. Allen takes the job, despite the rumours of ghosts haunting the old house.

One day, Lucy is walking in the garden to explore and to pick flowers when she hears the ghosts calling her name. She goes closer, only to discover the ghosts in person: a teenage girl and her younger brother.

Lucy and Jamie return the next day to discuss with the ghosts. It turns out their uncle is trying to "get rid of them", or murder them, and they are travelling forwards in time in order to get help. The ghosts' names are Sara and Georgie Latimer.

By drinking an infusion of various leaves, made from a recipe that Sara provides, Lucy and Jamie go back in time with the ghosts to meet Mrs. Wickens, the housekeeper and mother to Bella who is to marry Sara and Georgie's guardian, and Tom, the gardener's boy. The children also meet Mr. Blunden (who is believed to be the creator of Blunden, Blunden and Claverton company), who helps Jamie and Lucy rescue Sara and Georgie from a fire supposedly started by their drunk adoptive father.

In the end, Jamie and Mr. Blunden travel through the fire by holding hands, and because Mr.Blunden is the one who must suffer, Jamie will not have to. They save Georgie while Sara is safely outside.

In the end, a lawyer named Mr.Smith returns to the household. It turns out Sara married Tom (the gardener boy) and emigrated to America, whilst Georgie moved to Camden Town. According to a letter sent by Sara to Georgie, her great-grandson is the late Mr. Allen, Jamie and Lucy's father, so Jamie is considered heir to the house, being Sara Latimer's great-great-grandson.

Scientist Gilgram Zinder has finally decoded the ancient Markovian physics that controls our universe. Corrupt politician and drug dealer Antor Trelig is aware of Zinder's work through the efforts of Zinder's assistant, Ben Yulin. Trelig takes Zinder's daughter hostage and forces Zinder and Yulin to build a computer that can control the Markovian forces, like the dead Markovian computers that have been found on some planets. Zinder and Yulin construct "Obie", a sentient supercomputer, building it in Markovian fashion directly into Trelig's resort planetoid, New Pompeii.

Mavra Chang, freighter pilot and secret agent, is hired to rescue Zinder and halt Trelig's plans of universal conquest. In the process Obie accidentally makes contact with the Well World, which results in the entire planetoid being automatically transported into orbit around the Well World. Mavra and Zinder are aboard a spacecraft when this occurs, and find themselves flying over a "non-tech" hex. The Well World disables all of the technology on the ship and it crashes in the Southern Hemisphere. A war erupts on the Well World as the races of the nearby hexes race to collect all of the scattered pieces of the ship in order to escape the planet.

Mike Wilson, a young police officer, poses as a student under the alias Tony Baker and thus infiltrates a high school in order to investigate a narcotics ring. He lives in an apartment with Gwen Dulaine, a married woman who pretends to be his aunt in public but attempts to seduce him in private.

"Tony" flirts with pupil Joan Staples and incurs the wrath of teacher Arlene Williams as he makes acquaintances in school. He discovers that Joan uses marijuana and inquires about where she purchases it. He ultimately learns that a mysterious man known only as "Mr. A" is the one who sells drugs to the students, helped by an assistant called Bix.

With help from an undercover cop, Quinn, who risks his life to save Mike's, the criminals are apprehended and Joan promises Mike that her drug use is over.

In ''Exiles at the Well of Souls'', Mavra Chang was captured by the Olborn, who use magical stones to convert beings into beasts of burden. The Olborn were interrupted partway through transforming Chang, leaving her partially transformed. Eleven years later, Chang remains an involuntary guest in the native hex of the human equivalents on the Well, Glathriel. After multiple attempts to escape, she has been reconditioned to accept her existence, and a maimed Glathrielite, Joshi, has undergone a similar partial transformation in Olborn to serve as a companion for Mavra.

Inspired by the Diviner and the Rel, the Northern being that crossed from the Northern to the Southern Hemisphere in ''Midnight at the Well of Souls'', several competing factions have discovered that the Northern beings inhabiting the hex of Yugash can "possess" a Southerner and allow him to pass into Yugash. In ''Exiles at the Well of Souls'', two ships were crash-landed on the Well World. The first landed in the South, and was destroyed at the end of the war in ''Exiles.'' The second landed in the north, and now the factions that fought the war in ''Exiles'' are girding for a race to the second ship.

Several other players who participated in the drama in ''Exiles'' are also introduced. Antor Trelig was a politician as well as the head of the sponge syndicate, in control of a significant fraction of the council governing human space. He was transformed at the Well World into a Makiem, a giant frog-like creature. Renard was the librarian on Trelig's resort planetoid of New Pompeii, which was subsequently transformed into the home of Obie, the supercomputer capable of using Markovian physics to manipulate the universe. Renard was transformed into an Agitar, a blue-colored satyr who rides winged horses. Ben Yulin was the assistant to Dr. Gilgram Zinder, Obie's designer, as well as an agent for Trellig. Yulin was transformed into a Dasheen, a minotaur.

After a showdown between Mavra's party and Yulin's party, the remnants agree to a truce with Yulin and return in the ship to Obie. In addition to Mavra and Yulin, the other members of the party are Renard, a Yugash, a Bozog (another northern species, they moved the ship from the non-tech hex it landed in to their own high-tech hex), a Lata (a southern species resembling a pixie) named Vistaru (previously Vardia Diplo), and a Yaxa (a southern species resembling a giant butterfly) named Wooley (previously Wu Julee and Kally Tonge). Once they arrive, Ben Yulin attempts to take over Obie, but the computer assists Mavra and the others in destroying the circuit that forces Obie to obey Yulin. Obie returns to human space, and when a Council fleet arrives to destroy him, he fakes his own destruction and departs with Mavra to explore the rest of the universe as partners.

The film centers on the trial of Wilhelm Grimm, a war criminal. Each character witness provides a flashback scene to a previous part of Grimm's life. In the trial, it is revealed that Grimm (Alexander Knox), who fought for Germany in the World War I and lost a leg in battle, returns after the war to the small German village of Lidzbark (now part of Poland) where he had been a teacher. Despite the recent hostilities, he is welcomed back into the community and resumes his teaching. He also resumes his relationship with Marja Pacierkowski, a local Polish girl to whom he had become engaged before the war.

He is bitter about Germany's losing the war and it is obvious he has been changed by the experience. He treats the villagers with disdain, and his upcoming marriage is cancelled. He calls his fiancée a "peasant" only interested in her wedding dowry.

Taunted by the school's pupils, who say he is not fit to marry any Polish woman, he molests one of them, Anna, a young girl. The rape is blamed on her young male friend, Jan Stys, but Wilhelm's fiancée accidentally stumbles on the truth from Anna. The girl subsequently drowns herself in the lake. A mob gathers seeking vengeance, but a trial is required. Nevertheless, Jan throws a stone, putting out Wilhelm's left eye. After the trial fails to convict him, Wilhelm returns to Germany, after borrowing money from the priest and the rabbi.

In Germany he goes to Munich to the house of his brother Karl, who is married with a young family. Karl clearly despises the Nazis, referring scornfully to "that Hitler creature". Karl cannot dissuade Wilhelm, though, and Wilhelm joins the Nazi Party and rises through its ranks. In 1929 he is sought by the police after the Nazi Party is made illegal. His nephew keeps the police at bay and Wilhelm rewards him with a swastika badge. As the Nazis grow in strength, Karl decides he has no option but to leave Germany and go to Vienna. He threatens to reveal Wilhelm's part in the Reichstag fire unless he joins them but, instead of doing so, Wilhelm turns them over to the authorities, sending his own brother to a concentration camp. He then arranges that Karl's son enters the Hitler Youth.

When World War II starts, Grimm becomes the commander of the occupying force of the same village where he had previously lived. He treats the villagers brutally. He forces Marja, now a schoolteacher, to burn the children's books, saying they will be replaced by German books. He cruelly says that time has not treated her well and taunts her for rejecting him due to his leg injury. His nephew Willie, whom Wilhelm asserts that he treats as his own son, is now serving under him and pursuing Marja's daughter, Janina.

Grimm, who is now a Reich Commissioner, next becomes involved in the large-scale deportation of the Jews and other minority groups. He commands the rabbi to quell dissent among the crowd as they are being placed on a train. The rabbi, knowing that they are going to die, instructs the crowd to rebel instead, upon which the Nazis turn machine guns onto the crowd. Wilhelm kills the rabbi with his pistol. Father Warecki exchanges final words with him as he dies.

Willie finds Marja and Janina hiding Jan Stys, who is injured, but he leaves without Jan when Marja rebukes him, and seems to soften in his attitude. Wilhelm sends Janina to work at the "officers' club," the Nazi name for enforced prostitution. Willie begs that she be released, to no avail. When Janina also dies, Grimm's nephew renounces his Nazi allegiance, having realized what an evil path Wilhelm has led him on. While Willie is praying by the side of Janina's body in the church, Wilhelm shoots him in the back.

We return to the courtroom. Wilhelm refuses to accept the authority of the court and continues to spout Nazi propaganda. The judge leaves it to the people to decide Grimm's fate.

The story begins with the death of Fionn's father Cumhal, leader of the Fianna, at the hands of Goll mac Morna. Cumhal's wife Muirne was pregnant at the time and eventually gave birth to their son, called Demne in his youth. Fearing for his safety, she sends the boy to be raised by Cumhal's sister, the druidess Bodhmall, and her companion Liath Luachra. The two warrior women raise him and accompany him on several adventures, including one in which he receives his nickname, ''Fionn'' (the fair; the pale). As he grows, his exploits attract increasing attention, and finally his foster mothers send him away for fear that Goll's men will find him. Subsequent episodes depict his service to the king of Bantry, his recovery of Cumhal's treasures by slaying Liath Luachra (a different character than his caretaker), and his meeting with the aged and dispossessed Fianna who had fought with his father.

;Finn's wisdom Another episode recounts how Fionn gained the ability to gain wisdom whenever he applied his thumb to his tooth. He developed this ability after inadvertently tasting the salmon which would grant universal knowledge to whoever consumed it. The salmon, which dwelled in the pool of Fés, was coveted seven years by Finn's mentor, the poet Finn Éces. Finn cooked the salmon, obeying his mentor's instruction not to partake any of the salmon before serving it to him, but burnt his thumb while cooking and sucked it, thereby receiving its gift of wisdom.

Though it is not stated explicitly, it is inferred that this was a Salmon of Wisdom that probably ate the hazelnuts at the Well of Segais.

;Fairy mound attack

Fionn travels to the capital of Tara, which is set aflame each Samhain by Aillén the Burner, one of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Goll and the Fianna are powerless to stop it, since Aillén puts everyone to sleep with a magical tune. Fionn inhales poison from his own spear to prevent sleep, and dispatches Aillén. He reveals his identity to the court, and the king grants Fionn his rightful position as leader of the Fianna. Goll steps down, and engages in a truce with his enemy.

Jungle Jim battles evil ivory poachers, mutant giants, stock footage, and cheap sets with the help of a pretty anthropologist and his cute chimp Tamba.

Kimo, prince of a South Seas island whose residents are suffering a plague epidemic, is accused of murdering his father, the chief of the island natives. Kimo is alleged to have administered to his father poisonous medicine provided by a group of American scientists stationed on a field laboratory on the island. The true murderers of Kimo's father—Tano, a witch doctor, and Maranka, the new chief—sentence Kimo to be executed by having a knife driven into his heart. Kimo begs his wife Korey to exonerate him, but she denies his innocence. He swears revenge on Tano, Korey, and the new chief, Maranka. After his execution, Kimo is buried in a hollow tree trunk.

American doctor Terry Mason arrives to the island on assignment to help conduct research and treat natives affected with the plague. She is greeted by Dr. William Arnold, one of the scientists already stationed on the island. They meet up with fellow scientist Professor Clark, and Terry is introduced to Mrs. Kilgore, who runs a trading post on the island. Norgu, an island native, visits the laboratory with his wife Dori. Dori is recovering from the plague, and is also suffering from slight radiation burns, the result of nuclear fallout caused by the dropping of an atomic bomb on a nearby atoll.

Later, Terry and William come across Kimo's grave, and find a tree stump growing out of it. After they inquire to Clark about how a stump could be growing out of the ground, Norgu recounts a legend of an island chief who returned from the dead in the form of a vengeful tree monster called a "Tabanga". The scientists determine that the tree stump is radioactive and has a pulse. They remove it from the ground and bring it to their laboratory. When its pulse begins to weaken, Terry injects it with a formula to keep it alive. By the next day, the tree stump, a Tabanga, escapes from the laboratory.

Korey laments that Maranka, for whom she betrayed Kimo, acts coldly towards her in favor of another woman, Naomi. Jealous, Korey tries to attack Naomi with a knife, but the pair encounter the Tabanga. Naomi flees, and the Tabanga kills Korey by throwing her into a pit of quicksand. It then finds Chief Maranka and fatally throttles him. Tano and the other natives, after learning that Kimo has been resurrected as a Tabanga, lure the monster into a pit, which they set aflame. However, the Tabanga emerges from the fiery pit and finds Tano again. It throws Tano down a hill, causing him to be impaled on a woody plant below.

At the insistence of some natives, the scientists go out searching for the Tabanga. The Tabanga abducts Terry and attempts to throw her into the quicksand. Eddie, an American who was previously stationed in the same location as one of Terry's prior assignments, fires shots at the Tabanga. One of the bullets hits the knife which still protrudes from the monster's chest, causing it to be driven fully into its heart. The Tabanga sinks into the quicksand, dead. William and Terry embrace, and a native asks Professor Clark if he is willing to replace Tano as the island's medical practitioner.

The documentary, hosted by actor Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock), follows the creation, preparation and final execution of a highly visible live auction of ''Star Trek'' props from all five series and movies by auction house Christie's. The documentary starts with a brief overview of the ''Star Trek'' series and movies, and Nimoy then describes how Paramount Pictures decided to partner with Christie's to release and sell a multitude of valuable ''Star Trek'' props to the general public to celebrate the 40-year anniversary. Over the course of the documentary, we follow ''Star Trek'' experts Michael Okuda and Denise Okuda as they peruse a big warehouse and uncover a variety of ''Star Trek'' props ranging from models of the ships, costumes worn by cast from all series as well as other things such as weapons, tricorders and masks. Intertwined in this documentary are short sections of interviews with notable cast and crew members such as Patrick Stewart, Nichelle Nichols and Rick Berman that describe the history of ''Star Trek'', its cultural impact and ''Star Trek'' creator Gene Roddenberry's vision. In the later part of the documentary, we follow how staff members of Christie's prepare the selected props, photograph them for an auction catalog, display selected pieces at a ''Star Trek'' convention in Las Vegas before they are finally being auctioned off in New York over a period of three days. The documentary ends with house-visits of a few of the high-winning bidders as they proudly show off their recently acquired items.

In the interviews, cast and writer producers were noted for being impressed by the franchise's longevity and how much they loved those they worked with.

Morioka, a prosecutor in Tokyo, is accused of theft by a woman and again by a man. The stolen items are found at his house, much to his bewilderment, and he flees out the bathroom window. Morioka's superior revokes his position as prosecutor and calls out a manhunt on him, assigning detective Yamura (from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department) to the case. Morioka tracks one of his accusers to Makami Village in the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture but finds her dead. Among her items he finds a wedding photo of her and the other accuser. After Morioka has left, the police later arrive and find the body, tracking her husband Yokomichi Keiji back to a town called Kounogi in Hokkaido, where they set up an ambush. Morioka soon arrives but manages to escape the chasing police.
While moving through the woods, Morioka notices and disarms a tripwire hooked to a shotgun then uses it to scare off a bear attacking a woman who is stuck up a tree. The bear chases Morioka off a cliff and into a river. The woman, Mayumi, rescues him and nurses him back to health at her family home. Morioka states that his name is Maeda but Mayumi's father Tonami Yohinori, who wants to run for governor, recognizes him as Morioka and offers to help. Tonami's assistant Nakayama calls the police in an attempt to help Tonami's political ambitions and Morioka flees the house. Mayumi follows him on horseback and helps him escape, confessing what she has done to Yamura when the police arrive at her house. Yamura follows her to a seaside shanty where Morioka is hiding and forces them back toward her house at gunpoint. While walking they are attacked by a bear and Yamura is clawed. Morioka helps the injured Yamura back to the hideout and cauterizes the wound with a burning branch. Yamura asserts that he will still arrest Morioka despite this but Morioka easily overpowers the weakened Yamura and escapes with Mayumi to a cave hideout. Mayumi's father finds them there and offers his private plane to Morioka so that he can hurry to Tokyo to find Yokomichi. Tonami then withdraws from the race for governor and sends Mayumi to Tokyo under the guise of concluding a business deal for him.
Morioka crash lands on a beach near Mito, sneaks past police roadblocks on a truck, and makes his way through the woods to Tokyo. He falls ill and is helped by an unknown woman who recognizes him from the wanted posters. The next night Morioka is spotted by police in Tokyo and chased through the crowded streets before being rescued by Mayumi on horseback leading a pack of horses that crashes through a shield wall set up by the police.
The next day Yamura arrives at Mayumi's hotel and shows Morioka a copy of Yokomichi's medical record from a mental hospital where he is being treated for paranoid schizophrenia under the name Suzuki Takeshi. He states that the hospital is operated by the Nagaoka Company owned by Representative Nagaoka Ryosuke. Representative Ryosuke was speaking with Representative Asakura before Asakura suddenly jumped out a window in an alleged suicide, an explanation that Morioka always doubted. The day before Asakura died, a large amount of money was extorted from him by the Tonan company, a company that also purchased guinea pigs from Yokomichi Keiji.
Morioka and Mayumi escape from the hotel before police can arrive. Yamura's superior reprimands him and reminds him of the five-year prison sentence that is mandatory for making deals with suspects. Morioka and Mayumi drive to the mental hospital, where they pretend that Morioka is her husband and have him committed. The doctor, Vice President Doto, recognizes Morioka and taunts him by showing him Yokomichi, who has been rendered incoherent by a strong sedative. Doto force-feeds the same sedative to Morioka and imprisons him in the mental hospital as a schizophrenic under the name Tsuyama and refuses to release him to Mayumi. Morioka intentionally spills some of the pills given to him so that he can pocket them. He slips a pill into Mayumi's hand when she visits and she takes it to Yamura.
Representative Ryosuke visits the hospital and is given a demonstration of the effects of the sedative known as "AX" that blocks parts of the brain responsible for will and makes those who take it obedient to commands. The doctor demonstrates this by commanding a patient to stab himself in the arm, which the patient does. The patient formerly headed the protests against Ryosuke's company but the new drug will be used as a means to get rid of people like him. Morioka, who has been vomiting up the pills after swallowing them, is instructed to write a suicide note then taken to a roof and instructed to jump. Morioka walks to the edge of the roof but instead of jumping he explains that he now understands that Asakura was convinced to jump after being given drugs by Nagaoka. The orderlies attempt to strangle Morioka as Yamura and Hosoi arrive. Doto runs from Yamura and commits suicide by jumping off the roof and Ryosuke's assistant Sakai is found dead as a result of suicide as well.
Morioka, Yamura, and Hosoi catch Ryosuke preparing to fly to South Korea with a briefcase full of dollars and Morioka explains that they know Asakura was blackmailing Ryosuke about the drug "AX". He continues that Ryosuke knew that he did not believe it was a suicide and therefore sent the Yokomichis to stop him. Morioka also recognizes Ryosuke's assistants as the men who killed Mrs. Yokomichi and later shot at him in Hokkaido. Yamura orders Hosoi to arrest Ryosuke's men and Ryosuke tells his men that he will get them out of jail the next day. Ryosuke attempts to leave for his flight but Yamura pulls out his gun and commands Ryosuke to jump out the window but Ryosuke fights back so Morioka and Yamura both shoot him and call it self-defense. The General Prosecutor accepts this explanation but states that Morioka will still have to face prosecution for some of his actions. Morioka explains that he now believes that some criminals cannot be battled with the law along and that he no longer wishes to be prosecutor. Yamura says that when he comes to arrest Morioka he will give him another chance to escape. Morioka leaves and meets Mayumi, explaining that they will have to live on the run. She accepts this and says that she will stay on the run with him.

Susan ("Mitch") Mitchell is pledging to the Tri Epsilon sorority at fictional Cranston University. She is seen as a boon to the sorority due to her father's significant wealth, and the sorority is promised a new silverware set from the alumni if she is accepted. Large, ungainly, and shy, she is drawn to older sorority member Leda Taylor who is direct and independent; they become roommates and have double dates—Leda with boyfriend Jake and Mitch with the sullen, boorish president of the "Sig Eps" who humiliates her during a fraternity party. Mitch flees the party after striking the fraternity president on the head and the sorority is blackballed. Much-more-experienced Leda trades her exasperation with Mitch's innocence with overt affection for her in rapid mood switches.

To avoid further exclusion, Mitch is persuaded by her sorority to invite the fraternity president to a dance at the sorority house, where he rapes her after getting her drunk. Afterwards Leda finds her stunned and calms her down by telling her how much she loves her. They begin a secret affair while Leda publicly continues dating Jake, whom she tells Mitch she rather despises, and Mitch going with relatively harmless "independents" (non-fraternity boys), which is frowned-on by the sorority leaders.

Mitch's only friend in the pledge class is kicked out of the sorority after getting home at 1 AM because her date had a flat tire. Leda tries to teach Mitch that they must put men first so they aren't disrespected, but they may love each other in private. Leda's promiscuous, alcoholic young mother visits, and Leda tries to test Mitch so she's able to answer her mother's questions about men, but Mitch is shy and reluctant to lie about her feelings. But after her mother leaves, Leda apologizes for ignoring Mitch, shows her affection again, and tries to reassure her that they aren't lesbians.

Mitch tries to sleep with her date to see if he makes her feel the way Leda does, but he is unable to perform. Convinced that she is abnormal and infectious and that Leda is a temptation, Mitch writes to Leda telling her she's leaving the sorority. Leda tries to stop her by seducing her again, but their sorority sisters enter the room and see what is happening. In an emergency meeting, Leda reads the sisters Mitch's heartfelt letter and explains that Mitch has had a crush on her and the sisters had seen Mitch attacking Leda.

While the Dean of Women interrogates Mitch, Leda gets drunk and wallows in her guilt for selling Mitch out to the sorority. When the Dean asks to see Leda, sorority members find her sobering up, but she is still not sober enough to drive and she crashes the car; in the aftermath, witnesses hear her calling out deliriously for Mitch. Her injuries are serious enough that she is hospitalized for 3 days, during which Mitch moves out of the sorority house and back into the dorm. They meet a final time when the Dean drives Mitch to visit Leda in the hospital; the tenuous confrontation leaves Leda laughing and crying simultaneously as Mitch departs. The day the sorority's new silverware set arrives, they learn that Leda has had a complete nervous breakdown and is to be institutionalized. Mitch begins new friendships as she realizes that she never really loved Leda after all.

The story starts off in eastern Nigeria after the civil war has ended. The protagonist, Jonathan Iwegbu, was able to keep his bicycle, which he turns into a taxi to make money. In two weeks he makes 150 pounds. Jonathan then travels to Enugu to search for his home, and to his surprise it is still standing when other structures around it are demolished. The house needs some repairs, so Jonathan finds some supplies around and makes it look like a home again. He then moves his family back in. The entire family works hard to earn money and rebuild their lives. The children pick mangoes and sell them to soldier’s wives, while Maria makes akara balls to sell to their neighbours. After finding that his job as a miner isn't a possibility, he decides to run a bar for soldiers out of his house.

Jonathan gets an "egg rasher" (a butchered pronunciation of the Latin ex gratia, which translates into "as a favor") for turning in rebel currency to the Treasury, and in exchange they gave him 20 pounds legitimate currency. The next night, a large group of robbers show up at his house demanding 100 pounds. When Jonathan replies that he only has 20 pounds, the leader of the robbers demands he hand the money through the open window. After they take the money, life goes on as usual for Jonathan because "Nothing Puzzles God," meaning that the robbery has a greater meaning in God's eyes than how it seemed to Jonathan.

Isidore Wellby has just left the army and, abandoned by his girlfriend, feels lost and let down. In desperation, he signs away his soul in blood to a demon named Shapur. On the proviso that eventually he will be forced to enter hell, either as an ordinary damned soul or as a member of the cadre, he is allotted a number of demonic powers, the nature of which are not initially explained to him.

Ten years later, he has become a successful businessman and has married his erstwhile girlfriend. Shapur reappears to demand his price. If Wellby can perform a simple task using his demonic powers, Wellby will be accepted as a member of the elite of hell. Otherwise, he will be just an ordinary damned soul.

Wellby is confined to an apparently sealed bronze room and challenged to escape from it. Eventually, with little time left, he realizes that he has the power to move through time - the fourth dimension - and travels backward, thus escaping from the room.

In the story's climax, it is revealed that he has moved back to the time before he had signed away his soul and so he is able to turn down Shapur's persuasive offer, much to the demon's fury. However, he still had his ten successful years, since deals with Hell can give a person nothing he could not have obtained on his own. And since the demon no longer owns his soul, he has many more years left.

George Kilroy, a 30th-century historian, briefly travels in time to the twentieth century to research the life of the Second World War foot soldier. He arrives in North Africa as soldiers are landing on the beaches of Oran, and before leaving, he makes his mark on the wall of a hut.

Team Quest, working as associates for international spy operation Intelligence-One, are given an assignment to investigate occurrences of mutated animals and plant life in Peru. Dr. Benton Quest and his bodyguard "Race" Bannon bring along Benton's sons Jonny and (adopted from India) Hadji, and their dog Bandit. Also coming along is Benton's biologist wife Dr. Rachel Quest, who usually does not come along on their adventures.

Upon arriving in Peru, Race runs into his ex-wife Jade Kenyon, who was sent by Intelligence-One as their civilian contact for the investigation. Just after Jade's arrival, Benton and Rachel are kidnapped by Dr. Zin, who has caused the mutations while perfecting processes to bring monsters called "replicants" to life. Zin has also been working on cloning technology, and manages to successfully clone himself before Race, Jonny, and Hadji arrive to save Benton and Rachel. However, Rachel is taken hostage by Zin's clone and, after Benton freezes while attempting to shoot down Zin in his hovercraft (as he would have shot Rachel as well), both Rachel and Zin's clone are killed in the erupting volcano.

Rachel's murder causes Benton to quit I-1, and drives a wedge into his already strained relationship with Jonny. As he begins shutting down the Quest compound in Mexico, an American girl named Jessie turns up with a mask made of synthetically pure gold, which she tells Team Quest she was to deliver to an associate of her alchemist father, Dr. Victor Devlon. When approached by Intelligence-One to discover the whereabouts of Dr. Devlon and the secrets to his alchemy process, Benton reluctantly accepts.

Team Quest and Jessie begin a globe-trotting search for Jessie's father and his associates, pursued at every turn by Dr. Zin and his operatives, one of whom is revealed to be a reluctant Jade. Dr. Quest uses a sentient supercomputer, 3-DAC, to help him, the rest of his team, and Jessie follow the trail of Devlon from Tokyo, to Paris, and then to Rome. During the trip, Jonny and Jessie begin to grow fond of one another, while Jonny's relationship with his father continues to deteriorate. Convinced Benton could have taken the shot and saved Rachel, Jonny swears to kill Zin in revenge, avenge his mother's death, and show up his father.

Later that night, after a quick coffee break at the cafe, Team Quest and Jessie enter the catacombs of Rome, where Devlon is hiding out in a makeshift lab. It is revealed Devlon was an employee of Zin's who ran away with an alchemy formula he'd helped invent, as 100% pure gold was the key ingredient to improving his cloning process. However, Devlon got greedy which is the reason he stole the formula for himself. Everything Jessie had told Team Quest about her father and the mask were lies to have them help Zin find Devlon, as Zin had kidnapped Jessie's mother - Jade - and forced them to play parts in his schemes.

Dr. Zin kills Devlon and kidnaps Race with a tentacled robot, taking him to a compound in the Australian Outback to use Race's DNA to improve the vitality of Zin's own clones. When Zin's intelligent replicant bodyguard Snipe prepares to execute the rest of the group himself, Hadji attempts to hypnotize him into letting them go, but Snipe is unaffected by hypnosis, so Hadji brings the mummies to life. They attack and kill Snipe, allowing Team Quest, Jessie and Jade to get away. Jade later reveals to Jessie that Race is her father.

The group arrive at the Australian compound to save Race and destroy Zin's robot along with the remaining replicants, but when Zin captures Benton and Jonny is faced with the same dilemma of whether or not he can take a shot at Zin while he is holding Benton hostage, Jonny freezes as well. However, he is able to use a dolphin communicator his mother had given him to get a pair of dolphins to bump Zin away from his father. Jonny tried to fire at Zin; however, Zin escapes to a getaway submarine and sends a missile to destroy the compound. This plan backfires when Zin's sub ends up trapped beneath falling debris, and he is left to die. As the plant begins to explode, Jonny is separated from the rest of Team Quest in their escape, but his dolphin friends lead him safely out of the compound underwater.

Jonny and Benton reconcile, Jonny realizes that what happened to his mother wasn't Benton's fault, and Benton makes a full-fledged return to Intelligence-One work. Race, who now knows Jessie is his daughter, joins Jessie and Jade on a sea cruise vacation - but not before Jessie gives Jonny a goodbye kiss. As the Bannon-Kenyon family sets sail, one of Dr. Zin's clones is revealed to be floating in the ocean waters in a tube, having survived the explosion of the Australian compound.

Two couples childless visit their doctor to discuss the matter. Stevie is married to Sonny, an Italian footballer who plays for Newcastle United, but who has succumbed to frequent injury. He is desperate for a child, and it soon emerges that Stevie has not really been trying. She is reluctant to become pregnant as she does not want to get fat. Jenny and Neil are trying to adopt, as Neil is infertile. Being childless has turned Jenny into something of a monster, and Neil now views her with dislike. He wants to break with her but is too kind-hearted. He goes ahead with the plan to adopt to keep her happy. When Stevie meets Neil on the day he comes to deliver her brand new kitchen, it is already too late for love at first sight. Too late for both of them. Stevie is already five minutes pregnant by her Italian footballer husband. And too late for Neil, too - his wife Jenny has already applied to adopt an African girl. But too late or otherwise, love at first sight is exactly what happens. How can Neil and Stevie get out of their mistaken marriages and into each other's arms?

;Part I: ''La Révolution française: les Années lumière'' (''The French Revolution: Years of Hope''), directed by Robert Enrico The first part focuses on the events of the early days of the French Revolution.

The film opens in 1774 with a young Robespierre reading a document in front of a carriage in the College Louis le Grand. He is splashed with mud after a horse's hoof smacks the muddy ground, prompting his classmates to laugh at him. Robespierre's classmate, Desmoulins, comforts and reassures Robespierre. The film jumps 15 years later at the calling of the Estates General of 1789, which proves to be a disaster as many members of the Third Estate had sworn an oath on 20 June 1789 to not stop convening as a committee until they are given more rights. In response, King Louis XVI closes the assembly. In a private lunch following the incident, Marie Antoinette gives Louis a few ideas, such as using force should the people refuse the monarchy's demands. Meanwhile, many orators rouse the people to demand for change. The situation only worsens after King Louis XVI dismisses and banishes finance minister Jacques Necker, a friend and popular figure of the people.

On 14 July 1789, revolutionaries gather at the Bastille prison, seeking weapons and gunpowder for their revolutionary cause. A battle ensues between Revolutionary forces and the prison's garrison, headed by the Marquis de Launay, where the Revolutionaries emerge victorious after a bloody struggle and tense negotiations. Launay is lynched and his head stuck on a pike, the revolutionaries dancing "La Carmagnole" around it in celebration.

Louis XVI arrives at Paris while the Marquis de Lafayette reads the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen out to the National Assembly as people from all corners of France read it for themselves or hear it. Soon after, Georges Danton rallies the people to march on Versailles via newspaper. As a result, thousands of women march on Versailles, demanding bread, later being joined by male revolutionaries. The women storm the palace, overpowering the guards but stopping short of the King and Queen, protected by guards and soldiers. After the mob demands that the King appear on the balcony to prove he hasn't left and abandoned the people, Louis XVI appears on the balcony, followed by his wife, Marie Antoinette. As the mob prepares to shoot her, she kneels down, pleading forgiveness, and the mob relents, shouting "God save the Queen!".

Afterward, Louis meets with inventor Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, and is presented with a model of a new execution device he names the Guillotine. At first, Guillotin proposes a crescent-shaped blade, but Louis, who claims he is experienced with mechanics, proposes a triangular blade instead, and designed like a saw, to Guillotin's delight. Meanwhile, Danton starts his own political newspaper. A few days later, a celebration is held at the Champ de Mars, known today as the Fête de la Fédération. Some of those in the masses are Danton, Maximilien Robespierre, and many other revolutionaries. Lafayette and the people swear an oath of faith and loyalty to France. Soon afterwards, a mutiny in the Nancy garrison is quickly put down, many being beaten publicly to death or hanged.

In a speech before the National Assembly, Danton demands the resignation of the Interior Minister, Minister of War, the Monsieur de la Tour du Pin, and many others, to the support and agreement from many delegates present. Soon afterwards, riots against the clergy are incited, and many attacks against clergymen, churches, cathedrals, and monasteries across France being ransacked and looted. Baptism is mocked, and organists are forced to play revolutionary music on the organ. Subsequently, Lafayette signs an edict demanding the arrest of all Revolutionaries in the National Assembly. Meanwhile, the royal family flees Paris, hoping to reach the Austrian Netherlands disguised as servants. However, they are identified by an innkeeper at Varennes, and returned to Paris. Speakers around France demand that Louis XVI be stripped of his royal title as King of France and be reduced to merely "Citizen Louis Capet".

The Mayor of Paris, Jean Sylvain Bailly, is forced to declare martial law after Danton and his supporters gather at the Champ de Mars. Initially dispersed by the National Guard, they return on 17 July 1791, gathering souvenirs, banners and flags. However, the National Guard also returns, and after the soldiers fire a warning shot above the heads of the civilians, the crowd begins to throw stones and other objects at the soldiers. Taking this as a sign of hostility, Bailly orders his troops to open fire, despite Lafayette's efforts to maintain peace between both sides. The resulting massacre is a bloodbath, with dozens dead or wounded. The survivors quickly scatter, and this only worsens the situation.

A few weeks later, Louis XVI and the National Assembly declare war on the great powers of Europe, but Robespierre knows that the campaign will be a disaster, and his prediction initially proves to be true. French troops march on the Belgian frontier, but are quickly annihilated by forces of Prussia and Austria, and a French general is killed by his own soldiers. Jean-Paul Marat demands that "ten thousand heads must fall here in France." The Duke of Brunswick issues a manifesto demanding that France surrender, or he will "burn Paris to the ground." Another call to action is given at the National Assembly, with Robespierre again certain that the next campaign will be a disaster. While French soldiers make their way to the front, they are given provisions in the towns they enter, and sing a new song: "La Marseillaise".

On 10 August, thousands of Revolutionaries surround the Tuileries Palace. Initially, the National Guard are ordered to defend the palace, but unwilling to fire upon their fellow brethren, they switch sides and point cannons at the palace. An armed standoff takes place, where Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and the rest of the nobility are escorted out of the Palace for refuge in the meeting place of the National Assembly, where the children watch the proceedings. Back at the Tuileries, the insurrectionists break through the Palace gates, and an intense firefight ensues between the Swiss Guards and the revolutionaries. Despite the Swiss Guards' best efforts, and heavy losses sustained by the Revolutionaries, the Palace is taken. Louis then tells his son that "there is no longer a King in France".

;Part II: ''La Révolution française: les Années terribles'' (''The French Revolution: Years of Rage''), directed by Richard T. Heffron The second part focuses on the aftermath of the 10 August Insurrection and the Reign of Terror.

On 13 August, Louis XVI and his family arrive at the Temple, a fortress and prison, where they would remain as prisoners until their sentence. With the King deposed and Danton serving as Justice Minister, Camille Desmoulins believes that everything they have done in the Revolution is over and they can finally rest, but Robespierre overrules this by pointing out it could only be the beginning. Lafayette then is forced to step down from his position as commander of the Army of the North and is later taken prisoner by the Allies. As Prussian forces advance closer to Paris, desperate measures are taken by Danton and his associates. Death warrants are issued, with many thronging the steps pleading for Danton to spare a relative, or a friend. Meanwhile, Prussian troops ransack cities and continue to annihilate the French armies in the field. The September Massacres slaughter thousands of nobles and anyone suspected of loyalty to the monarchy. Not even Marie Antoinette's lady-in-waiting, the Princesse de Lamballe, is spared, and her head is shown to Marie Antoinette, who collapses on the floor, sobbing. On 20 September, French forces fight and emerge victorious over the Prussians at the Battle of Valmy, and celebrations ring out throughout France and the National Assembly.

Louis XVI is brought before the National Assembly after Louis Antoine de Saint-Just demands his execution. Louis denies the charges brought against him, and when the topic of the Swiss Guards is brought up, Louis responds that he doubled the guards for his own safety, then denying that he caused the bloodshed on August 10 and that there were no armories in the Tuileries at the time. The next day, Louis declares before the assembly that his conscience is clear, and that the worse thing that wounded his heart were the accusations that he had shed the blood of the people. Later that night, the court votes to execute Louis. On 2q January 1793, Louis is brought to the scaffold in a closed carriage. He attempts to make a speech to the crowd, but is drowned out mid-speech by drums ordered to sound by the commander. Louis is then beheaded by the guillotine to cheers from the previously-silent crowd. Shortly afterwards, his own son, Louis Charles, is taken by soldiers to be tutored by a man named Citizen Simon, much to the dismay of Marie Antoinette.

Robespierre confers with Danton and considers a new Revolutionary Tribunal, despite them being branded as dictators. Marat is brought before the tribunal and acquitted, as Danton knew he would be. However, Danton drives out the Girondins from his office, including Brissot. In another conference with Robespierre, Danton announces that he wants Brissot executed. Armed citizens surround the Convention and drive out Brissot and his supporters. Soon after, a young woman named Charlotte Corday hears a speech criticizing and denouncing Marat, and decides to act. She manages to get into Marat's room and stabs Marat whilst he is writing for a newspaper in his bathtub, killing him instantly. During Marat's funeral, Robespierre proposes new granaries for the starving populace to resounding support (Corday is afterward executed offscreen).

On 15 October 1793, Marie Antoinette is escorted by her guards to the Revolutionary Tribunal for her trial. She is asked by the court on who provided the carriage for their flight to Varennes, where she replies with Count Alex von Fersen. Jacques Hébert then testifies before the court that whilst he was interrogating Citizen Simon, the latter had said he had seen the boy do "indecent and harmful acts", and then questioned him on who had taught him these things, to the young Capet admitting it was his mother and aunt, also admitting he had been forced to sleep with both of them, and that they "committed acts of debauchery", to which Marie Antoinette responds with an emotional appeal to all mothers in the room, crying out that "Nature itself reels from such an accusation". Antoinette is then convicted and condemned to death, and is executed the next day on October 16. Marie maintains great dignity and courage during her execution.

Saint-Just makes a speech before the Convention and declares that "Terror is the order of the day." The next day, Saint-Just and Robespierre witness the execution of Brissot and his supporters. Danton is remarried (after the death of his old wife a few months earlier). Danton later gives a speech in front of the Convention, calling it a "den of faction, lies, and insanity", seeing churches desecrated outside, and asks, "is this the Republic we wanted to create?" He then demands that a "Committee of Clemency" be established, and receives support and applause from many in the audience and in the Convention, even from Robespierre himself, to the surprise of those near him. Hébert has great concern for the possible comeback of Danton, and expresses his need to "use every weapon against him". Hébert then denounces Danton via newspaper, and later to a crowd, accusing him of treason and having betrayed the Revolution. Robespierre then appears and asks for a Committee to investigate Danton's career and integrity, and declares the accusations false and fraudulent, saving Danton's life in the process. Hébert then incites his followers to insurrection. The Committee of Public Safety then unanimously votes for the arrest of Hébert, and he is arrested (later executed, also offscreen).

The Committee of Public Safety debates on Danton's situation, and decide on his immediate arrest. Danton later tells one of his associates that even if there were a trial, he would win. Danton and Camille are both arrested. Danton's trial is chaotic, with the stands and seats full of his supporters, as well as the jury being hand-picked to ensure he is convicted. At a local play, Robespierre is discovered by the actors and the audience quickly shouts for his downfall. Saint-Just finds a letter uncovering a conspiracy between Desmoulins' wife Lucile with some aristocrats to free Camille and Danton. The Committee decides to present it as a testimony of Desmoulins and Danton's treachery, and Camille's wife is arrested. The next day, the evidence is presented, and Danton and his supporters are condemned to death and executed. As they are led out of the courtroom, the audience, who is supportive of Danton, sings La Marseillaise. Desmoulins' wife is also executed a few days later.

Robespierre holds the Festival of the Supreme Being on 8 June 1794. Initially, the festival is triumphant and majestic, but it proves to be a disaster. Robespierre speaks for so long that some in the crowd start sleeping. Some even murmur that Robespierre thinks he's either the Pope or God Himself. When Robespierre declares that the Supreme Being's religion is Virtue, someone in the crowd yells that Robespierre's is Murder. As Robespierre's speech goes on, the crowd starts to be more aggressive to him and many begin to leave, either discontented with the contents of Robespierre's speech or simply bored of the entire thing. The Committee starts denouncing Robespierre, saying that he has "executed more people in the last two months than in the last two years", although he is defended by ardent supporters such as Saint-Just. The Committee decides that things have gone too far and plot to bring an end to Robespierre. At the Convention, Robespierre makes a speech detailing his situation, from his perspective, to his hearers, whilst his political enemies decide to stop him in his tracks on that day. Robespierre's opponents then demand that he read out the names of those he accused as Robespierre finishes his speech. When Robespierre refuses, the Convention denounces him a tyrant and unanimously votes for his execution.

Robespierre and his supporters take refuge in the Hôtel de Ville, Paris and organize a defense of the building. The Convention musters a large force, commanded by a drunken general, to storm the building and take Robespierre prisoner, whilst Robespierre's followers barricade themselves in the building. A cannon brings down the barricaded door, and a brief skirmish ensues between forces of the National Guard and Robespierre. The doors to the main room are broken down and a large scuffle ensues, with Robespierre himself accidentally shooting himself in the jaw after being tackled to the floor, following an attempt to shoot a soldier targeting him. Robespierre and his supporters are all arrested and await execution. The next day, Robespierre, Saint-Just, and other prominent Robespierrists are taken to the Place de la Révolution and guillotined, effectively marking the end of the Reign of Terror. In the closing scene, family members of some of the leading revolutionaries light candles in a church, before leaving.

The film tells of Rulo (Luis Margani), a moderately successful musician in the 1970s.

Today he's divorced and an unemployed forty-something day-laborer living in Buenos Aires in the late 1990s. He's anxious for whatever work he can find. He lives with his son who's also musically inclined, and his mother (Graciana Chironi).

His best friend Torres (Daniel Valenzuela), who has connections in the Argentine construction industry, finds him work as a large crane operator.

Rulo is dating Adriana (Adriana Aizemberg), who runs a sandwich shop.

He lands a job as an excavating machine operator in distant Patagonia. The workers live in a remote farmhouse and the relationship between management and labor is difficult.

One day the workers are not fed during lunch so they refuse to work until they eat. Rulo soon discovers that making a fresh start at a late age proves to be harder than he first thought.

Puchi (Jennifer Lopez) talks about her late husband, salsa legend Héctor Lavoe "El Cantante De Los Cantantes" ("The singer of all the singers") (Marc Anthony), during a 2002 interview. Héctor Pérez leaves Puerto Rico, even though his father tries to persuade him not to go because if he does he'll lose a father. Héctor decides to go anyway against his father's will in an attempt to pursue his dreams. On his first night in the city he meets Eddie (Manny Pérez) and discovers the new sound of salsa flowing through the streets. He eventually becomes the lead singer in a salsa group performing in a bar. One night he is approached by salsa musicians Willie Colón (John Ortiz) and Johnny Pacheco. Johnny offers them a deal with Fania Records Company and Hector accepts. The company also suggests that he change his name to Héctor Lavoe. "Lavoe" meaning "the voice" in French.

Héctor is falling for Puchi, a girl he saw dancing at the club where he was allowed entry and also to perform by her brother Papo (Antone Pagán), the club manager. Papo invites Héctor to the sweet 16 party he is throwing at his apartment for his sister Puchi and there they get to speak further since noticing each other at the club and begin to further fall in love. He confesses to her that his mother died when he was young, his brother was killed the night he came to New York and that he didn't have many people in his life. She tells him that they'll take care of each other. It is revealed that Héctor was cheating on Puchi with another girl named Carmen. Puchi reveals that Carmen and she were pregnant with a baby of his at the same time. But she is the only woman of his life because he chose her. They eventually get married and have a son named Tito. On a night of hard partying, Héctor catches Eddie doing drugs and does so too. This will be the start of his drug addiction.

Through the years, after Héctor's consistent tardiness to gigs, Willie grows tired of Héctor's irresponsibility and decides to go solo. Héctor's drug and alcohol addiction continues to grow stronger and becomes very noticeable. Puchi is infuriated when she finds Tito eating alone and Héctor shooting up while the gas was on. She begs Héctor to quit the drugs and to turn his life around for their son and because he is always high and is missing out and she loves him.

One night, Puchi wakes up to Héctor sitting with a gun staring into space, suicidally depressed. In fear she sends him to rehab. Puchi can't help feeling extremely guilty when Héctor's sister Priscilla blames all of Héctor's problems on her. She later takes him out and he is put on medication. A jealous Héctor calls Puchi a whore and frequently accuses her of having affairs with many different men. Héctor maintains sobriety and takes his family to Puerto Rico for vacation. When Héctor tries to reconcile with his father after leaving against his will, he rejects Héctor. This causes him more pain. He is diagnosed with HIV and advises Puchi to get tested as well. He maintains sobriety for a while but soon has a relapse and goes back to his old ways. Puchi and Héctor fight often and it usually ends with him leaving the house and then coming back and apologizing to her.

Tito is killed when his friend accidentally shoots him while playing with the gun Héctor kept in the house. This scars Héctor for the rest of his life. In the interview, Puchi admits that Héctor was never the same after that, and he died along with their son. She says everyone expected too much from him. Héctor confesses to Willie that he loves Puchi and that he wishes he would've done things differently, but it's too late and nothing is the same anymore. Willie encourages him to perform at a gig in Puerto Rico. At the concert, there is less than half of the audience due to bad managing and advertising. Still, he decides to perform for the few people who still showed up while it starts raining. He just couldn't hold in all the pain anymore. The depression and guilt are too much for Héctor to handle and it drives him to attempt suicide by jumping out a window. He survives the fall and lives another 5 years.

Puchi is seen in her new apartment, listening to a voice mail from Hector, wishing her a happy birthday and that he'll always be there and love her. She smiles and begins to dance while looking at a picture of her and Héctor on the wall. The movie ends with Héctor performing and the credits revealing that he died at the age of 46 of AIDS from sharing needles. It is also revealed that Puchi died shortly after this interview in 2002.

One night in the Old West, a man named Cat tries to ride out of a town and is ambushed by a large number of men. He is wounded, but manages to lure them away and hides in a wagon belonging to a circus company. Outside town the wagons are searched by men who are shot by Cat and the trapeze artist Thomas, who is a former gunfighter.

Cat leaves the company as soon as he can travel. The same night men arrive and search the wagons during the show and discover traces of him. To retaliate they shoot down Thomas’ partner Joe during their performance. Thomas finds Cat and nurses him back to health saying that he needs him as ”bait for my trap.” Cat takes him to Hutch, who lives in a house together with another big man, who is called Baby Doll and is a mute. Hutch receives Cat with hostility. Cat explains that Sharp, a friend of Hutch who is a prospector, needs help to stop mining boss Fisher from taking his claim, and that Cat had won the deed to the claim in a rigged poker game to be able to take it out of town (that is why he was attacked in the beginning). Hutch reluctantly agrees to come along, together with Baby Doll. They find the remnants of the circus with its manager Mami, refit it, and gather the artists.

At the mining town a county commissioner arrives to review the claims, but the miners are afraid to talk to him – except for the McGavin family, but they are besieged in their home and eventually destroyed with dynamite by the large outlaw band of Finch, who co-operates with Fisher. However, at night a message is delivered to the commissioner in his room by a dwarf from the circus.

In the morning the circus arrives, and the commissioner convinces Fisher to invite everybody to the show. At the circus show they perform pantomimes about the threat to the miners and the killing of the McGavins. The miners find guns under their seats, while Fisher’s men find feathers. There is a fight and Fisher’s men are killed. The four go out to face the might of the Finch gang in a nightly fight. They get help from the circus people (including dwarves and can-can dancers), and eventually the miners also join in and the gang is wiped out. Fisher shoots Mami in the back. Cat appears and says it means the gallows for Fisher unless he wants to try his luck with the gun. Fisher lays his down, and Mami says that makes him the real clown.

At the end Cat and Hutch ride away together, while Baby Doll, who has started talking, stays with one of the can-can dancers at the circus.

Shred is a motion picture that tells the story of two washed up pro snowboarders from the 1990s named Max (Dave England) and Eddy (Jason Bothe) who attempt to cash in on the fantastic growth of the sport by starting their own snowboard camp. Hoping to recapture their former glory, they begin by sharing their wacky wisdom with a group of up and coming young snowboarders. The story takes them from the run down ski hill where they grew up to a major event at one of the biggest resorts in the west.

The pair face off against Kingsley Brown (Tom Green), a deviously sleazy corporate snowboard rep and nemesis to Max and Eddy. With the assistance of his lackey Sphinx (Shane Meier), the underhanded Kingsley sets out to ruin the ambitions of Max and Eddy by any means necessary.

The Burmese army is seeking to invade Ayutthaya to block the invasion in Bang Rachan. The forces are at first led by Nai Taen, who is injured in an early battle.They use all their resources to prepare the village for a siege, including melting down all available metal farming implements into a crudely constructed cannon. Lacking horses, the village drunkard, Nai Thongmen, mounts an old water buffalo and rides the draft animal into battle.

Ervinka is a young man living in Tel Aviv of the 1960s. He does not believe in work, morality, law and order, and settling down. He ekes out a living as a petty con man by charging parking fees to a lot that doesn't belong to him, stealing electricity from his neighbors, eating for free in family events he is not invited to, and extorting money from movie directors by revving up his moped engine near their film sets. He also finds ways to con the authorities, taking advantage of the stupidity, laziness, and inefficiency of bureaucrats (a favorite subject of Kishon's work). Ervinka even ingratiates himself with the local underworld by getting them out of trouble with the law over a robbery. His only dream is to win the lottery so he would not have to get by on his wits anymore.

Ervinka's carefree life becomes complicated when he falls in love with Ruti, a police officer. While she loves him, she is equally appalled by his way of life and is concerned that he is on a slippery slope to a life of crime.

Tired of never winning the lottery, Ervinka devises a devilish con to rob the lottery offices in Tel Aviv. Under the guise of making a movie, he has his underworld friends try to crack the lottery safe open while all around him are spectators and even police officers, all under the impression that they are watching a film director at work. When the underworld has problems getting the safe to open, the police volunteers its own expert to help them so that filming could proceed as planned. Thanking them for their help, Ervinka and his friends leave with the money seconds before the authorities realize what is actually going on.

With next week's jackpot safely tucked in a bag behind his moped seat, Ervinka believes he has realized his dream. However, his police officer object of affection tracks him down, while he's making his escape. She confesses her feelings for him to be just as strong as his are for her, but makes it clear she will not associate with a criminal. Choosing her over the money, Ervinka returns the money to the General Manager of the lottery in an official ceremony just like the one he had always imagined himself receiving this money in.

The plot continually shifts back and forth between Diouana's present life in France where she works as a domestic servant, and flashbacks of her previous life in Senegal.

In the flashbacks, it is revealed that she comes from a poor village outside of Dakar. Most people are illiterate and Diouana would roam the city looking for a job. One day, the character of 'Madame' comes to the square looking for a servant and selects Diouana from amongst the unemployed women. Diouana was chosen because she does not aggressively demand a job like the other women; unlike the others, she did not crowd forward demanding a job. Initially, Madame hires Diouana to care for her children in Dakar. As a gift, Diouana gives her employers a traditional mask that she had bought from a small boy for 50 guineas, and they display it in their home. When Diouana is not working she goes for walks with her boyfriend. Monsieur and Madame then offer Diouana a job working for them in France. Diouana is thrilled, and immediately begins dreaming of her new life in France.

Once she arrives, Diouana is overwhelmed with cooking and cleaning for the rich couple and their friends. Madame treats her unkindly, and Diouana is confused as to her role. She thought that she would be caring for the children as in Senegal, and would be able to go outside and discover France. Yet, in France, her character does not leave the apartment, cooking and cleaning the house - a clear contrast to her previous life in Senegal where she spent much time outdoors. When Diouana works, she wears a fancy dress and heels. The mistress of the house tells her to remove them, telling her "don't forget that you are a maid". At one of the couple's dinner parties, one of their friends kisses Diouana in typical European fashion on the cheeks, explaining "I've never kissed a black girl before!"

Diouana receives a letter from her mother, which Monsieur reads to her. Diouana's mother asks why she has not heard from her daughter, and asks for money. Diouana rips the letter up. Madame doesn't let her sleep in past breakfast time, and yells at her to get to work. Diouana attempts to take back the mask she gave to Madame, and a struggle ensues. Madame tells Diouana that, if she does not work, she cannot eat. Diouana refuses to work. Then, after Monsieur attempts to pay her salary and Diouana refuses to accept her pay, in an unexpected plot twist that is the climax of the film, Diouana commits suicide by slitting her throat in the bathtub of the family's home. The film ends with Monsieur journeying to Senegal to return Diouana's suitcase, mask, and money to her family. He offers Diouana's mother money, but she refuses it. As Monsieur leaves the village, the little boy with the mask runs along behind him.

Bobby graduates high school with his friend Mike. His father encourages him to forge his own identity and gives him a book of romantic poems. At college, Bobby and Mike join a fraternity where Bobby can be himself and not follow in his dad's footsteps. The fraternity leader tells Bobby to instruct his fellow pledges to be more like his father.

At a party, Bobby meets Sybil and fails to impress her with the poems. Bobby encourages Mike to stop taking his dad's advice and find a girlfriend. Bobby and Mike witness an argument between Diana and her boyfriend Derry because he does not care what she thinks. When she breaks up with Derry, Bobby asks her out, but she tells him off. Derry apologizes to Diana, and they get back together.

Bobby tries to woo Sybil again while trying to find a course to study. He ends up in an all-female classroom studying the sociology of women in history. He and Mike find out that they are enrolled in taxidermy class. Bobby, Mike, and their pledge brothers reminisce about ''The Brady Bunch'' for the fraternity leader. The leader wants them to steal a painting from the Zeta Alpha Zeta sorority house. After four failed attempts, Bobby pretends to be "Roberta" and fools the sorority sisters, though he is unable to get the painting. Bobby has difficulty maintaining both identities; he misses out on fraternity activities as himself but wants to keep the Roberta identity to be close to Diana.

Bobby asks Diana for help studying, but she believes he is asking her on a date. While study during a thunderstorm, Bobby fails to seduce her, and she discovers his sorority scheme in a pledge book. When Roberta is elected president of the pledge class, the sorority sisters take Roberta for drinks. The girls tell Roberta they look up to her. When Derry sees Roberta, he flirts with her, and Bobby is intentionally disgusting. Bobby tells Mike that Derry is flirting with him, and they devise a plan to have Diana catch Derry in a compromising position.

The next day, Derry walks into the library and reads notes suggesting he take his clothes off. When Diana sees this, she breaks off their relationship. After a while, Bobby learns more about girls. As Roberta again, he tries to convince Diana to love Bobby. He changes into his normal clothes, but when he kisses her, he gets slapped. He ends Roberta and steals the painting. When the painting is discovered missing, one of the sorority sisters suspects Roberta. After that, Mike sets up Roberta on a date with Wally who is one of the pledge brothers.

Bobby tries again to get Diana but ends up carrying encyclopedias for her. Diana tells Bobby the differences between them are too great for them to date; then she tells him she knows what he is really doing. Bobby first believes that she knows about Roberta, but she meant about what happened to Derry. They finally get together. Bobby is then shocked to learn that Diana has nominated Roberta for sorority queen.

Bobby's dual responsibility stresses him out. Bobby undresses from his Roberta clothes while Diana watches from an open window. She believes Roberta is making out with Bobby. As Roberta, Bobby returns the painting to the sorority house, drawing the ire of the fraternity. Bobby and Diana argue in class about women in history. Bobby then tells the teacher about what he has really been doing and gets moved by it.

Bobby begins to play football with his fraternity house. He wants Wally to play although Wally is not a good player. During the last play of the game, Bobby ask Mike to throw the ball to Wally. Wally falls down but catches the ball, and their fraternity house wins the game. Bobby attends the ceremony as Roberta and reveals himself and makes a passionate speech about what he learned. After the speech, Mike applauds, and then everyone joins. Later that night, Bobby's dad come to him and tells him that he loves him. Bobby apologizes to Diana and they make up.

In 1970s Rome, four young delinquents, nicknamed Ice, Lebanese, Dandi and Grand steal a car. Crashing through a police road block, the driver, Grand is crushed by the steering column. Back at their hideout, a small disused caravan near a beach, they are discovered by the police. Cold, Lebanese and Dandi run away, but are captured. Grand, who is mortally wounded, dies in the caravan. Roll opening credits. Some years later, in the 1970s, Ice is released from prison and joins up with Lebanese, who tells him he has come up with a plan to kidnap and hold to ransom Baron Rossellini, a wealthy aristocrat for whom Lebanese's parents worked. He has formed a gang with Dandi - they are Black, Bright Eye, Ricotta, Bufalo, Rat and Ciro and Aldo Buffoni. After negotiating the ransom of 3 billion lire, the Baron is shot by one of the Cannizzari brothers who have been entrusted by Lebanese to guard him. Nonetheless, they take a picture of the dead man with a newspaper and get the 3 billion lire. However, the local Police Commissioner Nicola Scialoja manages to record the serial numbers of the ransom money before the gang receives it, setting out to capture the gang. As the gang divide up the money, Lebanese proposes to split 500 million lire between them, and use the remaining 2.5 billion to build a foothold in the criminal underworld of Rome, starting with drug dealing. However, the drugs racket is owned by the dealer Terrible, and so the gang wipe his gang out apart from Gemito, who Lebanese bribes to help them. After his home is raided and his body guards killed, Terrible wakes to find Ice, Lebanese and Dandi in his bedroom. Cornered, he reluctantly agrees to let give control of the racket to the gang.

The gang grows in influence and ambition. Rome falls under their rule, and the rule of Lebanese. Dandi meets and becomes enamoured with an upmarket prostitute, Patrizia, who, in order to be kept under the sway of the gang and in order to prevent Dandi becoming involved in brawls provoked by his jealousy, is bought over and given a brothel. Ice, meanwhile falls in love with his younger brother Gigio's tutor, Roberta. However, Lebanese begins to consider Ice's romance a weakness, a point reinforced when Ice asks to be dismissed from the gang. In response, Lebanese casts up the car theft from their childhood, where his leg was permanently damaged by the pursuing police. Cold and Roberta begin to learn English with the idea that they will elope. However, when Ice is at the Bologna Train Station, there was an organized bombing, representing the state collusion. Later, Ice receives a phone call informing him that Lebanese is dead, stabbed by Gemito after a bitter game of poker.

Then begins Ice's quest for vengeance, aided by Dandi.

Yet Scialoja is on their trail and succeeds in capturing Ice, then the other members of the gang except Dandi. Ice plans to escape from prison with the help of his friends, but a deadly spiral of score settling has already begun to coil around them all.

Dr. Asira is faced with the contrast between Western medicine and traditional East African spirituality when a woman, Samehe, who is admitted to a psychiatric hospital, claims to be under the care of Maangamizi, a mysterious ancestor / shaman.

In 2008, Sally Sparrow, intrigued by a message written to her under peeling wallpaper about "the Weeping Angel", explores the abandoned house Wester Drumlins with her friend Kathy Nightingale. Kathy is sent back in time to 1920 by a Weeping Angel statue. At that moment, Kathy's grandson, Malcolm, delivers to the house a message from 1987 about the long life Kathy led. Before leaving, Sally takes a Yale key hanging from the hand of a statue. Sally visits Kathy's brother, Larry, at work to tell him that Kathy loves him, as the letter requested. Larry explains that he has been documenting an "Easter egg" in seventeen different DVDs containing a video message of a man having half of a conversation with the viewer. Larry gives Sally a list of the DVDs. Four Weeping Angel statues follow Sally to the police station, where they take an impounded fake police box and send DI Billy Shipton back to 1969. The man in the Easter egg, a time traveller called the Doctor, has also been sent to the past, and asks Billy to relay a message decades later. Billy puts the Easter egg on the DVDs. In 2008, a much older Billy phones Sally to visit him on his deathbed in the hospital. Before he dies, Billy instructs Sally to "look at the list". The list is Sally's own DVD collection.

Sally and Larry return to the house and play the Easter egg on a portable DVD player. Sally discovers she can converse with the Doctor in 1969, as he possesses a copy of the complete transcript that Larry is currently compiling. The Doctor explains that aliens called Weeping Angels turn to stone statues when any living creature observes them. He fears they are seeking the vast reserves of time energy in the police box, which is his time machine the TARDIS, and could cause enormous damages as a result.

A Weeping Angel pursues Sally and Larry to the basement where the TARDIS is. Sally and Larry use the Yale key to hide inside, while the four Weeping Angels attack. Larry inserts a now-glowing DVD, which also functions as a control disk, in the console's DVD player. The ship returns to the Doctor, while leaving Sally and Larry behind. The Weeping Angels standing around the TARDIS get tricked into looking at each other and are permanently frozen. A year later, Sally and Larry meet the Doctor prior to his being stuck in 1969. Sally hands the Doctor Larry's transcript, and warns that he will need it.

Horatio Alger Huntington-Ackerman, a successful businessperson, marries Mousey Huntington-Ackerman (née Malone), a striving actor, and has a child named Sandy. They move with their butler Bentley and his wife Flossie to a new country estate called Eclipse with no neighbors except the residents of Walnut Manor, a convalescent home. One evening when Sandy is a young adult, his uncles Bart and Bernie visit Eclipse. The uncles feed the family a poisoned birthday cake in an attempt to inherit the family fortune, sending everyone but Sandy and Bentley into a coma.

A court ruling mandates that a doctor be present to oversee care for the comatose patients ("the sleepers"). To meet this requirement, Sandy moves them next door to Walnut Manor. There, he meets Dr. Waldemar, the director of the facility, and Sunnie Stone, a nurse hired to care for the sleepers. While Bentley researches a cure of the sleepers' comas, Sandy and Sunnie acquaint themselves with the other patients of Walnut Manor and ultimately fall in love with one another.

With the help of Dr. Waldemar and the manor's residents, Sandy and Sunnie discover that Walnut Manor's patients were placed in the facility's care by their relatives, who, as Walnut Manor's board of directors, have been embezzling from the home. They expose the board of directors' misdeeds and Bentley revives the sleepers from their coma. Sandy, Sunnie, Dr. Waldemar, and the residents of Walnut Manor together thwart Bart and Bernie and send them to prison.

After Paul Bannerman, an ecologist, is diagnosed with thyroid cancer and receives an operation, he is left radioactive. As a consequence of his radioactivity, Bannerman is left in the care of his parents so as to avoid affecting anyone else. While he is isolated, he becomes unhappy with his wife, who is a marketing executive, as he sees her as lacking convictions and enabling those he opposes as an environmentalist.

Louise (Danielle Darrieux) is an aristocratic woman of ''Belle Époque'' Paris, married to André (Charles Boyer), both a count and a high-ranking French army general. Louise is a beautiful, but spoiled and superficial woman who has amassed debts due to her lifestyle. She arranges to secretly sell her costly heart-shaped diamond earrings, a wedding present from her husband, to the original jeweler, Mr Rémy (Jean Debucourt). Relations between Louise and André are companionable, but they sleep in separate beds, have no children, and André has a secret mistress, of whom he has recently tired. Louise disguises the disappearance of the earrings by pretending to have lost them at the opera. The search for them eventually reaches the newspapers ("Theft at the Theatre") which in turn prompts Rémy to go to André and "discreetly" offer to sell them back. He accepts cheerfully and, rather than confront his wife, coolly gives the earrings to his mistress, Lola (Lia Di Leo), whom he happens to be seeing off permanently to Constantinople.

At her destination, however, Lola soon sells the earrings herself to settle gambling debts and they are later purchased by an Italian baron, Fabrizio Donati (Vittorio De Sica), who is on his way to a high diplomatic post in Paris. Through a series of encounters, Donati becomes infatuated with Louise, later dancing with her long into the night at a ball. André's long absence "on maneuvers" facilitates the couple's affair. With each passage of time, the baron asks Louise if she has heard from her husband. André's return prompts Louise to stop seeing Donati, but during a hunting excursion where all three are present, she witnesses Donati fall from his horse and faints. She is said to have a "weak heart," but André sees this behavior as an affectation, and the event makes him suspicious.

Louise becomes disconsolate and announces that she will take a long holiday in the Italian Lake region, alarming both her husband and her lover. Donati brings gifts: roses with the very earrings she had sold earlier. What she had cast aside so easily before suddenly has meaning to her. On her own in Italy, Louise tries to forget Donati who regales her with letters, to which she writes responses, all of which she promptly destroys. She meets with him secretly again and confesses that she's able to console herself only through possession of the earrings, which she now identifies with her lover, not her marriage. Upon her return to Paris, Louise resolves to continue with the affair. To explain the reappearance of the earrings, she now creates an elaborate ruse that they had been misplaced in one of her gloves the entire time, making a big show of "finding" them in front of André. He knows she is lying but says nothing.

At yet another formal ball, André takes the earrings from Louise, quietly takes Donati aside, and confronts him about them, revealing their true history. He then gives them to Donati instructing him to sell them back to the jeweler, so that he may buy them back a third time to give yet again to Louise. Before departing, Donati informs Louise he can no longer see her and expresses his pain at learning of her lies. Louise falls into a deep depression. André presents her with the earrings he has bought back and informs her that her unhappiness is her own fault and that she must give the earrings away to his niece who has just given birth. Louise tearfully agrees. The niece is soon forced to sell the earrings yet again to Rémy to pay off her own husband's debts, and Rémy offers to sell them back to André for a fourth time, but he now angrily refuses. Louise goes to the jeweler herself and buys the earrings back with money from sales of her other jewelry and furs. She informs André of what she has done. In his anguish at having lost her love – or perhaps never having had it – André goes to the gentleman's club where he confronts Donati on the pretext of a slight and challenges him to a duel with pistols.

Louise pleads with Donati not to go through with the duel; André has been seen to be an excellent shot and will surely kill him. Donati is pensive, but refuses to withdraw and arrives at the dueling field with his and André's seconds. Meanwhile, Louise goes to the Church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont to pray fervently at the shrine of St. Geneviève that Donati be spared – the same place where she was seen earlier praying frivolously that the jeweler will be willing to buy back her earrings. She then races with her servant to the duel just as the agents inform the duelists that the "offended party," André, is allowed to fire first. He takes aim at Donati, who stands unflinching. As Louise hastens up the hill toward the duel, a single shot is heard, but no second shot, implying that one duelist may be dead. She slumps against a tree as the servant runs for help.

Ultimately, it is seen that Louise has left a burning candle at the shrine, along with her prized earrings, and a card reading that they are a gift from her.

Jerry Miles (Wally Brown) and Mike Strager (Alan Carney) are employed as Broadway press agents. Their latest idea is to hire a "genuine zombie" for the opening of the Zombie Hut, a new cabaret nightclub owned by gangster Ace Miller (Sheldon Leonard) that will open on Friday the 13th of the next month. The boys plan is to dress a former boxer up as a zombie, figuring no one will know the difference. However, Ace's nemesis, Douglas Walker (Louis Jean Heydt), a Walter Winchell type radio celebrity is friends with the boxer and vows he will publicly humiliate Ace Miller if a real zombie is not at the opening of the club.

The boys are threatened with death unless they produce a real zombie. They discover a lead from a museum curator that a mysterious Professor Renault (Bela Lugosi) lives on the Caribbean island of San Sebastian and has been creating zombies. Followed by Ace's henchmen, the boys are immediately placed on a tramp steamer sailing to San Sebastian in the Virgin Islands and ordered to bring a real zombie back or forfeit their lives. Upon arrival they meet the beautiful cabaret singer Jean La Dance (Anne Jeffreys). In exchange for her help in locating Professor Renault, Jean wants passage off the island. Miles and Strager eventually meet up with the zombie expert Professor Renault. Unknown to them, the professor's zombie, Kalaga, (Darby Jones) has captured Jean and brought her to the Professor's secret laboratory, While Miles and Strager investigate the house, Jean awakes to find herself gagged and strapped to a table as the Professor's next test subject. Before he can proceed to give Jean the serum his guard dogs detect intruders. Jean is quickly spirited to a secret dungeon where she is tied up but manages to escape. Strager becomes "zombified" by being under the spell of Renault's secret formula and Miles, Jean and Strager the zombie return home where Miller's henchmen are waiting for them. Convinced that Strager is a real zombie, they bring him to the club. When Strager comes out of his trance, the boys must face the wrath of Ace Miller, a nightclub owner, who is more frightening than anything they've seen yet.

Clara Goldstein (Norma Aleandro) is a Jewish woman who places a personal ad in the Buenos Aires newspaper requesting the company of an older Jewish man. Her sole respondent, Raul Ferraro (Federico Luppi) turns out to be a Gentile from Uruguay. Clara at first spurns him, but soon she realizes she needs him: Her brother is coming to visit her from Boston, and she has been lying to him about being in a romantic relationship. Raul goes along with the ruse. Not long after, the couple begin to fall in love.

Two French vagrants, Pierre and Jean, decide to take the pilgrimage route from Paris to Santiago de Compostela along the traditional Way of St. James. As they walk along a roadside in France, they encounter a man in a black cape who tells them to sleep with a prostitute and have children with her, an instance of the prophecy in Hosea. Then the pilgrims reach an inn, they find a police sergeant and a priest discussing the nature of the eucharist and transubstantiation. The priest is taken away by staff from a nearby mental hospital. Later, the pilgrims find shelter for the night on a farm, while a secret Priscillian sect is meeting nearby. Their secret service involves ritual repetition, a short statement of faith, followed by sexual encounters between the male and female congregation.

Next, the pilgrims unsuccessfully seek food from an expensive restaurant, whose manager is explaining to his staff the controversy of the divinity of Jesus Christ as debated during the First Council of Nicaea. Later, the pilgrims pass by a boarding school, and watch the children perform for their parents and teachers. As a class of young girls recites heresies and proclaim them "anathema", one of the pilgrims imagines the execution of a pope by a band of revolutionaries. After they curse a passing car, it crashes and the driver is killed. Investigating the wreckage, they encounter a strange man, maybe the Devil, who gives one of the pilgrims the dead man's shoes. At a chapel along the way, the pilgrims encounter a group of Jansenist nuns, who are nailing one of their group to a wooden cross. Outside, a Jesuit and a Jansenist have a sword duel, while arguing over doctrines of predestination and irresistible grace for sinners.

Finally, the two pilgrims reach Spain, where they agree to take care of a donkey for two other men. These new men leave the pilgrims and travel to a nearby abbey where they watch the official desecration of a priest's grave because of the discovery of heretical posthumous writings regarding the nature of the Trinity. The two men proclaim loudly that the Godhead is not trinitarian and escape. In the forest, they switch clothes with some hunters swimming in a lake, and destroy by gunfire a rosary discovered in one of their pockets. Later that night, a vision of the Virgin Mary appears to them and returns the rosary. The two men and the original pilgrims meet again at an inn, where they tell a local priest about their recent miraculous vision. The priest recounts another miracle, in which the Virgin Mary takes the form and duties of an errant nun for several years until the nun returns to the convent as if she had never left. Later that night, the priest further explains how her virginity must have remained intact during both the spiritual conception and the physical birth of Jesus, like "sunshine penetrating a window".

On the outskirts of Santiago de Compostela, the two pilgrims meet a prostitute who wants to become pregnant and gives the same names for the children as those predicted by the man in the cape at the beginning of the film. In the last episode of the film, two blind men encounter Jesus and his disciples. Their blindness is healed but they cannot understand what they are seeing or walk unaided.

Eric Sanderson wakes up with no memory of who he is or any past experiences. He is told by a psychologist that he has a dissociative condition known as fugue but a trail of written clues purporting to be from his pre-amnesiac self describe a more fantastic and sinister explanation for his lack of memories. According to these, he has activated a ''conceptual shark'' called a Ludovician which "feeds on human memories and the intrinsic sense of self" and is relentlessly pursuing him and will eventually erase his personality completely.

When the Ludovician attacks Eric Sanderson, he decides to go in search of a doctor named Trey Fidorous, identified by the letters from his previous self, in the hope he may be able to help to explain what happened to him and how to defeat the shark. Eric travels through Britain in search of clues and is contacted by a mysterious figure called Mr. Nobody, who is part of a megalomaniac network intelligence called Mycroft Ward. Mr. Nobody attempts to subdue and control Eric but Eric manages to escape with the help of an associate of Fidorous named Scout. Scout takes Eric to meet Fidorous, travelling through ''un-space'' (an underground network of empty warehouses and unused cellars). They begin a romantic relationship during the journey but Eric feels betrayed when he discovers that Scout has brought him to Fidorous to use him as bait for the shark in the hope of destroying Ward.

With their help Fidorous builds a conceptual shark-hunting boat and they sail out on a conceptual ocean. After a battle with the shark they throw a laptop hooked up to the Mycroft Ward database into its mouth, destroying both Ward and the shark. Eric and Scout remain in the conceptual universe while Eric's dead body is discovered back in the real world.

Gex, a young anthropomorphic gecko, lives by himself watching television and eating snacks in his mansion in Maui, Hawaii, which he acquired after inheriting a large sum of money following the death of his great uncle. While looking for a good show to watch after doing some "nude funkercising", he consumes a passing house fly. This house fly turns out to be a small undercover drone being controlled by Rez, the overlord of the Media Dimension. Rez uses the droid to "bug" Gex, and pulls him into the Media Dimension through the TV set, intending to use him as the network's new mascot character. In order to escape, Gex needs to traverse the Media Dimension and find remote controls which he could use to destroy the TV sets blockading his exit back to the outside world.

Gex fights his way through the Media Dimension, finding remotes, and defeating Rez' henchmen along the way, before eventually defeating Rez himself using some of the tyrant's own drones against him. Upon returning home, Gex resumes watching his TV, wondering what was on HBO.

The Frost Line Outer Space Defence System is a network of missile bases in Northern Canada, tasked with protecting Earth from extraterrestrial threats. In a transmission to Earth, the Mysterons (voiced by Donald Gray) warn Spectrum that they intend to attack key Frost Line installations. They use their powers to destroy a snowcat driven by maintenance technician Eddie and reconstruct both Eddie and the snowcat as agents in their service. The reconstructed Eddie passes security at two bases – Red Deer and Cariboo – and plants devices inside their ventilation systems that render the air unbreathable, killing 250 personnel at Red Deer and 70 at Cariboo.

In a transmission to Cloudbase, the belligerent Frost Line commander General Ward warns Colonel White (voiced by Donald Gray) that he will fire missiles at Mars if another base is attacked. Fearing the Mysterons' response to such an action, White orders Captain Scarlet and Lieutenant Green (voiced by Francis Matthews and Cy Grant) to investigate Red Deer. Arriving at the base, the officers discover that the personnel have suffocated not due to the introduction of a toxic gas, but the removal of all oxygen from the air.

Obtaining a Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle from a trapper, Scarlet and Green speed to the next base, Big Bear, only to learn that Eddie has already passed through and is now on his way to the Frost Line command centre. After knocking out a guard who is barring entry to the base, Green removes Eddie's oxygen-depletion device from the ventilation system before it can affect the air. Meanwhile, Scarlet takes the SPV and chases Eddie. The snowcat is carrying liquid oxygen, which Eddie dumps into Scarlet's path to force him off the road. Scarlet draws his gun and fires several rounds into a snow-covered slope nearby; this triggers an avalanche that pushes the snowcat over a cliff, causing it to explode on the rocks below. With the command centre saved, Ward, no less arrogant than before, radios Cloudbase to make peace with White.

Each episode documents the experiences of two different people who switch places for a day and learn how the other person lives. As the two subjects express their thoughts and impressions on camera, as well as in online diaries on Noggin's website, they learn to appreciate diverse perspectives. The show was designed to help viewers get a first-hand look at how people from different backgrounds and perspectives see the world.

Based on an incident from Goes's own experiences during World War II, the action of the story takes place over one night on the Eastern Front in Russia in 1943. A German Army pastor has been flown in to oversee the military execution of a convicted deserter. The pastor finds himself sharing a room with an officer who is due to be sent to fight with the German Sixth Army in the Battle of Stalingrad, virtually a death sentence itself. Through studying documentation surrounding the case, the pastor comes to realise that the deserter is in fact innocent, but his execution goes ahead as scheduled in the morning. The officer, however, earns a temporary reprieve as news comes through that the Sixth Army has fallen and the battle for Stalingrad has ended in defeat.

A friend sets Theresa up on a blind date with a nice guy named Tony who works in the computer industry. It is awkward, but not too awkward as Theresa accepts a second date. (They even find a couple things in common such as both being from the Midwest.) By the end of this date, she realizes that he is not right for her and politely excuses herself from the date. Tony continues to intrude further into Theresa’s life, with unexpected visits to Theresa’s office and unsettling phone messages at her home. Theresa starts to worry as she realizes that Tony knows where she lives. At her co-worker's urging, she calls the police, but when Officer Beck investigates, Theresa realizes there is not much that the police can do. Beck suggests moving out of her apartment and changing her name. Despite all her efforts to avoid him by hiding in her work and opening up to her colleagues, she eventually realizes that he has and will always have control over her life. She eventually loses everything, including her identity, humanity, and will, as she changes her name and moves out of New York City to Denver, a shadow of the woman she once was.

The setting for the story is an ancient Cornish house called Kilmarth, which is based on the house the author had recently bought following the death of her husband.

After giving up his job the narrator, Dick Young, is offered the use of Kilmarth by an old university friend, biophysicist Magnus Lane. Dick reluctantly agrees to act as a test subject for a drug that Magnus has secretly developed. On taking it for the first time, he finds that it enables him to enter into the landscape around him as it existed during the early 14th century. He becomes drawn into the lives of the people he sees there and is soon addicted to the experience. Dick finds himself following Roger, who lives at Kilmarth, acts as steward to Sir Henry Champernoune, and is a secret admirer of the beautiful Isolda, wife of Sir Oliver Carminowe. She has been conducting a secret affair with the brother of Sir Henry's wife, Sir Otto Bodrugan, who is waylaid and killed by Oliver's men.

Each visit corresponds to a key moment in the story of Isolda and Roger. Each time Dick returns to real time he is more confused; throughout the experience he is unable to interact with the couple. Any attempt to do so brings Dick crashing back to the present in a state of nauseated exhaustion. The drug has other dangers in that following Roger means that Dick walks unaware through the modern landscape with all the danger that entails.

Dick's American wife Vita and his young stepsons join him at Kilmarth and are worried by his bizarre behaviour. It is made clear that Dick has no passionate feelings for his wife, does not want the new job in the US she has found for him and has no fatherly affection for her two boys—which makes plausible his increasing desire to escape into the past. Magnus intends to join Dick but is killed in what seems like a bizarre accident or suicide—struck by a train whilst straying onto the local railway track. Dick knows that Magnus was under the influence of the drug; this makes the inquest difficult.

Dick's penultimate trip ends with him attempting to defend Isolda from Sir Henry's vindictive widow Joanna in the 14th century, but in reality attacking Vita. She and her children hide from him and he contacts a doctor who helps to wean him from his addiction to the drug. Dick explains the power of the drug, and is informed by the doctor that analysis has revealed its extremely dangerous nature. However, Dick's addiction is such that he takes the last remaining dose soon after.

Dick's last visit occurs during the Black Death in 1349. A dying Roger confesses his love for Isolda and the fact that she died peacefully from a drug he administered rather than from the plague. After the death of his doppelgänger Roger and the Isolda they both loved, Dick has little incentive to return to the other world, but in any case there is no drug left to allow his passage there. As the book closes, Dick attempts to pick up the phone but suddenly finds he is unable to grip it. Speaking of the novel's unresolved ending, Daphne du Maurier said in an interview: "What about the hero of ''The House on the Strand''? What did it mean when he dropped the telephone at the end of the book? I don’t really know, but I rather think he was going to be paralysed for life. Don’t you?"

In 1980, Jorge Pellegrini (Ricardo Darín), a young and talented Argentine writer, upon returning from a trip to Europe, is forced to write short love stories for "Cosas", a local, light-themed magazine, to aid his dire financial situation. His boss and best friend, Roberto (Eduardo Blanco), constantly censors Jorge's stories, by deciding which parts to take out or which stories not to print. Jorge's friend and mentor, Mastronardi, often visits the magazine HQ asking Roberto for work, but due to his history of courageous confrontation against the last military dictatorship in Argentina, he finds himself blacklisted and therefore cannot find work.

In the showing of a short film, based on a story by Jorge, he meets Laura (Soledad Villamil), a passionate, beautiful and charming young girl who works as a waitress in a restaurant. He is instantly smitten by her, and she gives him the custom matchbook of the restaurant she works at, saying is her card. Days after, he receives news of the death of Mastronardi, and begins to write a story about his deceased friend. However, he experiences writer's block, and cannot get around to finish it. Jorge then finds the matchbook Laura gave him, and decides to go the restaurant where she is a waitress. They go on a date to a bar, and they display chemistry and understanding, and Laura reveals that she has a boyfriend, an artist on a tour in Uruguay. Things go awry when the police raid the place and take Laura and a group of people who could not show their documents to jail, to be investigated as part of the military operations to maintain the social order during Argentina's dirty war. Jorge is taken to jail himself after trying to help Laura. Upon their release, Laura and Jorge spend more and more time together, and Jorge reveals his feelings for Laura. She then tells him that she currently does not reciprocate, but she will call him if she "figures out any context" in which she could.

Months go by and Jorge buries himself in his work, starts a diary (which he then throws away) and loses hope of receiving Laura's phone call. However, she then calls him and they arrange a date, at which she reveals that she wanted to be sure of not waiting for her boyfriend anymore before starting a new relationship. They kiss, make love and start a relationship. The first months are full of romance and passion; however, when Laura decides to quit her job to work for free at a local radio station, Jorge begins to lose interest in her, and is constantly bothered by the monotony of their relationship. To make matters worse, Laura has decided to make a great writer out of Jorge, and constantly pressures him to stop writing the short and simple-minded love stories and focus on a powerful book.

When Jorge reaches the breaking point and cannot stand the current status of his relationship with Laura, he cheats on her with a girl he meets at the magazine (Carola). Laura finds out and leaves him immediately. Jorge, once again, buries himself in his work during two years, until he receives news from Roberto that, due to a new format, the magazine will no longer publish his stories. However, he is offered a job as the movie and theatre critic of the magazine, which he angrily refuses. He then finds the inspiration to finish Mastronardi's story and take it to the theatre. However, the play is a failure, and because of the effort and money he put in it, Jorge is heartbroken. Laura goes to see the play but he avoids her. After the closing of the play, Jorge receives an emotional visit from Mastronardi's spirit in a dream, who asks him to look after his son, Sebastián.

In 1987, things have changed: Jorge has accepted the job offer as the movie and theatre critic, and Roberto is engaged to Marita, a friend of Laura's whom he met in a double date set by Jorge and Laura years before. Jorge is in a relationship with a new girl; however, he finds himself shocked when he receives news that Laura is to be married to her old boyfriend. This prompts Jorge to track Laura and, after spending a day together, they make love, and Laura then decides that she will get married anyway.

Once again, years go by, and in the 1990s, a bitter and disillusioned Jorge, still works as a critic. However, due to his failures and disappointments, and to the loss of his spirit and morals, we learn that he now asks for money in return for writing favorable reviews. This works against him when Laura, one of the producers of the movie he asked money to write a favorable review for, personally delivers him the money, and looks at him with disgust.

One day at the office, due to a disagreement, veteran political journalist Márquez (Ulises Dumont) has a heated exchange with his boss, young Micky (Rodrigo de la Serna) and is fired. This then prompts Sebastián, Mastronardi's son, to blame Jorge for his father's death. Unable to cope with guilt, and after realizing how much he has changed, Jorge attempts suicide. This attempt, however, is frustrated by Roberto, who arrives just in time to save him. After the suicide attempt, there is a surprise party, at which the employees of Cosas decide to donate one twelfth of their salaries to Márquez. Laura and Jorge meet once again, and share a long talk about their lives, hopes and crushed dreams.

The movie ends with a hint that Jorge and Laura will give their relationship one last chance. Jorge, reinvigorated, and looking like a happy man for the first time in years, watches her taxi depart with a broad smile. He is then greeted by his friends, Márquez, Sebastián and Roberto, and tells them of the new love story he is planning to write.

Mawarti, the mother, who dies from mysterious illness, leaves behind her work-obsessed businessman husband Munarto, quiet and introverted son Tomi, party girl and extroverted daughter Rita, and their sickly but religious servant Mr. Karto. On the first night after Mawarti's death, Tomi sees his dead mother, but he does not talk to her. The next day, Tomi takes the advice of his friend and visits a fortune teller, who warns that his whole family is in great danger and may die, and advises him to fortify himself with black magic.

Tomi becomes strange and withdrawn. Rita's boyfriend, Herman, says that for 40 days after a person dies, that person's spirit will linger at the house. Shortly after Herman’s visit, a new housekeeper named Darminah arrives, allegedly sent by an acquaintance of their father to look after the house. That night, after a party, Rita is scared when she sees a kuntilanak.

Herman warns that Darminah is not the kind of person to be trusted, and offers to consult a shaman about the situation the next day. Mr. Karto also begins to notice her strange and suspicious behavior. Tomi meets with a kyai at a bookstore, who advises him to begin performing his religious prayers, but when he tries to begin, a kuntilanak appears and commands him to stop. The next day, Tomi finds Mr. Karto's corpse, hung. Later that day, Herman is also killed when he is run over by a truck after nearly colliding with the mysterious Darminah. That night, Tomi and Rita agree that the ghosts in their home must be removed. When Rita leaves, she is chased by the now-undead Herman. The next morning, Rita and Tomi tell their father to call a shaman, who does so. Upon his arrival, the hired shaman is attacked by broken glass and flower petals. Rita, Tomi, and Munarto watched in horror as the shaman's head is impaled and pelted by a spinning chandelier.

When everything is over, Darminah sneaks out, but Tomi follows her to the cemetery, where the sinister housekeeper meets with the now-undead Herman and Mr. Karto and then raises Mawarti, ordering her to kill her family. When they notice Tomi spying on them, they give chase, but he escapes. At home, Tomi immediately warns his father and sister about Darminah. Rita believes him, but their father dismisses his warning. He takes them to check Darminah's room, but she is somehow already there.

The next day, the siblings dig up their mother's grave to confirm that her body is still there. When they return, the entire family is assaulted by the undead: Herman pursues Rita, Mr. Karto haunts Tomi, and Mawarti harasses Munarto. They escape into the dining room, only to find Darminah there holding a skull and frizzy hair. It is revealed that Darminah is a demon who preys on those of weak Islamic faith. After being terrorized and dying without repentance, those people become slaves to the devil in hell.

The family runs to the front door and opens it to flee, only to discover the kyai and his supporters there to help. Together, they confront Darminah and the three zombies with the letter of the Qur'an, which sets them all on fire. The film ends with Munarto, Tomi, and Rita, all newly re-converted to Islam, returning from the mosque to their car. The camera reveals that the woman in the car next to them is Darminah.

The story follows lonely introvert Mason, a telesales insurance company worker by day and talented painter as well as a lover of classic jazz by night. His only friend is his boss, Berkeley (Levi), who keeps an eye on him and humors his bizarre behavior. When awkward Mason meets social Amber, a new co-worker, he begins to come out of himself, and reveals the depth and darkness of his mind.

Fantômas is a man of many disguises. He uses ''maquillage'' as a weapon. He can impersonate anyone using an array of masks and can create endless confusion by constantly changing his appearance. In the first episode of the series he is unhappy with Fandor, because of a fictitious interview the journalist wrote about him. He takes his revenge by abducting Fandor and threatening to kill him. He then uses his formidable makeup skills to commit a spectacular crime while disguised like Fandor. When commissaire Juve joins the chase, chameleon-like Fantômas promptly commits a crime wearing a mask looking like Juve. In the end Fandor, Juve and Fandor's girlfriend Hélène are all on the master criminal's trail, all to no avail as the man of a thousand masks finally manages to escape.

The action takes place in an uncertain mildly-authoritarian country, in an unnamed town. Famous writer Victor Banev, a middle-aged heavy drinker, comes from the capital city to the town of his childhood where the rain never stops.

Banev finds himself in the middle of strange events linked to ''slimies'' or ''four-eyes'' - strange leper people suffering from disfiguring "yellow leprosy" manifesting itself as yellow circles around the eyes. These ''slimies'' live in a former leper colony. The town's adult population is terrified by their existence, considering them to be the cause of all the bad and odd things in the town. Nevertheless, the town's teenagers simply adore ''slimies'', that including Banev's daughter Irma. A boy named Bol-Kunats, Irma's friend, invites the writer to a meeting with the town school's students. Banev is deeply shocked by teenagers' high intelligence and disullusioned point of view. They appear as superhuman geniuses despising the dirty and corrupt human world and having no pity for the adults.

Banev makes acquaintance with Diana, and discusses ''slimies'' in dinner conversations with the chief doctor of the leprosarium Yul Golem, a drunken artist Ram Quadriga and sanitary inspector Pavor Summan. Banev dislikes the mayor, a patron of local fascist thugs, and also the military who guard the ''slimies''. Golem mentions that the genetic disease of ''slimies'' represents the future of humanity, a new genetic type of people, intellectually and morally superior to ordinary people.

Events begin to unfold dramatically. Banev discovers that Pavor Summan works for counterintelligence, and, learning he's guilty of kidnapping and killing of a ''slimy'', notifies the military out of spite. The town's children leave their parents' homes and move into the leper colony. Adults of the town are gripped with a sudden overpowering feeling of terror, and exodus begins. As soon as all the residents have left town, the rain stops. Golem leaves the last. Banev and Diana enter the city, now disappearing under the rays of Sun. They see Irma and Bol-Kunats all grown up in a day and happy, and Banev's saying to himself: "All this is nice and fine, but I mustn't forget to return."

In the second episode of the trilogy Fantômas kidnaps distinguished scientist professor Marchand with the aim to develop a super weapon that will enable him to menace the world. Fantômas is also planning to abduct a second scientist, professor Lefebvre. Journalist Fandor develops an ingenious scheme whereby he disguises himself as Lefebvre and attends a scientific conference in Rome, Italy to lure Fantômas into attempting to kidnap him.

The plan seems to work until commissaire Juve steps into the fray and as usual messes things up, although Juve redeems himself by saving the troupe with an array of special gadgets which he has developed especially for his hunt for Fantômas. Yet, once again Fantômas escapes in style, using his Citroën DS with retractable wings that converts into an airplane in what amounts to one of the most unexpected and spectacular scenes of the genre.[https://web.archive.org/web/20110611092746/http://home.wtal.de/olliweb/technoclassica/2003/DS%20Fantomas%2002.jpg Picture of the Fantômas Citroën DS with retractable wings] through Internet Archive

In the Nevada mountains between Las Vegas and Reno in the desolate nuclear testing grounds of Dreamland (Area 51), a young couple Megan (Jackie Kreisler) and Dylan (Shane Elliott) stop in a greasy spoon cafe where they learn about the Area 51 government base a few miles away. After they get back on the road, Dylan turns on the radio. The only broadcast he can find is a speech from Adolf Hitler at the 1936 Olympic Games. The car dies and a visitor appears from another moment in time. When Megan and Dylan look closely they realize that it is Hitler from the past. Past and present intersect throughout the film. Demonic versions of those long dead are also encountered.

In the third and final episode of the trilogy, Fantômas imposes a head tax on the rich, threatening to kill those who do not comply. Journalist Fandor and commissaire Juve are invited to Scotland by Lord McRashley (played by Jean-Roger Caussimon). Lord McRashley, one of Fantômas' potential victims, uses his castle as the headquarters to set up a trap for the menace called Fantômas.

On the French-Spanish frontier, a French patrol led by a colonel of Napoleon's Imperial Guard overtakes a carriage containing a priest and three nuns. The priest is the confessor of El Mirador, Wellington's best secret agent; he is tortured into revealing the spy's identity. Then, he and two of the nuns are killed, but the youngest (Emily Mortimer), a novice, gets away.

Major Sharpe (Sean Bean) and his riflemen show up and rout the French, taking a captain captive, while the colonel is killed. Sharpe finds a piece of paper on the prisoner filled with cryptic numbers and suspects that his captive is actually the colonel in disguise. However, he is unable to convince his superior, nor his fellow officer, Captain Jack Spears (James Purefoy); the Frenchman is allowed to give his parole and is not imprisoned. The young woman (referred to simply as "the Lass"), having lost her faith and being rendered mute by the horror she has witnessed, attaches herself to Sharpe.

Back at camp, Wellington's spymaster, Major Mungo Munro (Hugh Ross), has received word that Napoleon himself has sent Colonel Leroux (Patrick Fierry) of the elite Imperial Guard to capture El Mirador. Munro assigns Sharpe the task of killing the colonel, but refuses to divulge the spy's identity. He sends Sharpe and the South Essex Regiment to the town where El Mirador is based.

The British already control the place, but there is a French-held fort close by. When the men near the town, a surprise artillery barrage (rendered extra-surprising by the use of exploding roundshot) from the fort causes enough confusion to allow the prisoner, who is in fact Leroux, to break his parole and escape to its safety.

Sharpe meets two people, his old enemy Sir Henry Simmerson (Michael Cochrane), now the British representative to the town, and Father Curtis, an Irish priest (John Kavanagh), who runs the hospital.

The regiment attacks that night, but the French have been forewarned and the assault is bloodily repulsed. Berkeley is killed at the outbreak of the battle, leaving Sharpe in charge. As Sharpe gains the top of the wall, he is faced by a counterattack led by the escaped French colonel. After a duel, Sharpe is not only physically wounded, but demoralised at the loss of his sword. While he recovers, he sends for British artillery and orders his most literate rifleman, Harris (Jason Salkey), to decode the message he took from Leroux. During this time, the woman regains her voice and her faith as Sharpe convalesces. In addition, Patrick Harper makes a deal with the father and promises to marry Ramona (the proposal that strains Harper as his mother hasn't gotten over the grief of the loss of the woman that would form his arranged marriage) in exchange for a new sword for Sharpe. The new sword revitalizes the wounded Sharpe.

Harris succeeds in breaking the code. The message unmasks Spears as a traitor (he had been taken captive, tortured, and then blackmailed by Leroux). However, Spears is unable to bring himself to kill El Mirador, who is revealed to be Father Curtis. When the cannon arrives, Sharpe gives the officer the opportunity for an honourable death.

After the fort is softened up by an artillery barrage, Spears charges singlehanded and plants a British flag at the fort's entrance, rousing the morale of the British soldiers, but is killed shortly after. Sharpe and the South Essex then storm the fort. When Leroux tries to surrender, Sharpe offers him a duel to the death instead; if he kills Sharpe, he can go free. Sharpe wins.

Taking advantage of Sharpe's absence, Simmerson attempts to rape the novice (who had humiliated him earlier when he had made a crude advance), but is stopped by Father Curtis. The priest accuses Simmerson of warning the French of the first attack; when Simmerson advances on him with sword drawn, Father Curtis, an ex-soldier, unexpectedly draws his own and teaches him a very painful lesson.

Min-june (Uhm Jung-hwa) is a believer in true love and always very dedicated to her current boyfriend. However, men always break up with her - her latest boyfriend ends their relationship on his birthday. Distracted by the latest break-up, she bumps into a car and a man steps out of it - who turns out to be her new boss, Robin Heiden (Daniel Henney). Heiden has very clear ideas about a relationship and love: both are a game of power and Min-june seeks advice from him, as she doesn't want to get dumped again. However, when she starts to treat men like Heiden treats women, she realizes that she prefers her older behavior, even if that means that she gets dumped again; she doesn't see love as a game of power and never will. Heiden, who has to deal with his own heartbreak, as he loved a woman so much that she had to shoot him to get the message across that she wasn't interested in him, starts to soften at Min-june's attitude towards life. He eventually falls in love with her and both get into a real relationship and a happy ending of their own. Instead of trying to make her understand that love is a game of power, he learned from her that love is the purest language of hearts; no need of rehearsals, judgements, hidings at all.

One of the unique concepts of the movie is that Robin Heiden speaks only English because he finds Korean hard to speak, while Min-june speaks mostly in Korean. The two seem to understand each other perfectly without any outside translation, although in the film it is explained that Heiden understood Korean but has difficulty speaking it. This was a new style of dialogue for Korean films, and it is partially credited for the film's success.

Set in Motomachi Town (もとまちタウン), a fictional 1980s Japanese suburb, the story begins on Zenon's first school day following spring vacation. After school, he goes to a hill in the town together with Narumi looking for X-Ranger, a superhero in a children's TV show, who allegedly appears in Motomachi Town for some reason. After meeting a man in X-Ranger's costume, Zenon and Narumi fight a bad monster in the hill in hope of helping him. Thanks to this, Zenon becomes popular enough with school-age children to be invited to their "secret base" to join them.

Later Zenon and the gang happen to visit X-Ranger's hideout, and touch the panel of a giant machine sitting in there without his consent. Then they find themselves in a strange town, where they save Zeta (ツェータ) from Hart (ハルト), a spoiled mean child, and are befriended with him. Once prohibited to use the machine by X-Ranger, later they are allowed to go between two cities. A cat-like creature, Max (マックス), is also acquainted with them.

After some events, Zeta notices that Zenon's town is very similar to his, Motomachi City (もとまちシティ), and questions X-Ranger on it. He reveals that he is a 19-year-old Zenon who came from the future (Motomachi City) to his past (Motomachi Town) by a time machine in order to recover hopes and dreams of people. Eidos (エイドス), a Priest of Time (時の神官), later confronts X-Ranger claiming that X-Ranger's action causes the timeline to shift, as well as Max, who, being also a Priest of Time, helped X-Ranger complete a time machine.

In autumn, a new toy Rocket Monster (ロケットモンスター) has become a fad among kids in Motomachi City. However, suddenly one of them goes berserk, and it results in severe criticism to the product by parents. Zenon and his friends find out that it was plotted by Hart's father, who intended to damage the profits of his rival firm by harming repute of their product, Rocket Monster. In consequence, Rocket Monster has succeeded in recovering its status.

After the next year began, people in Motomachi City suddenly all got melancholic. Zenon and his friends investigate the case, and fight with X Ranger's shadow. After the battle, X-Ranger realizes that this world is not real and he in reality is presumably unconscious for an attempted suicide. Also, this dream world was shared by Hart in reality. He acquires in his dream immense power, and challenges Zenon and Zeta again, only to be defeated. Out of grudge, he destroys Sphere (スフィア), enshrined in the Realm of Time (時の神殿), which maintains the order of worlds, while the master of the Shrine, Volatilis (ボラティル), restores it in exchange for his life. Despite this, still Sphere was split in two.

Since Sphere was broken, Zenon was no longer able to access to the future. X-Ranger decides to return to his reality, and together with Zenon, visits the Realm of Time to challenge the Final Trial, in which X-Ranger faces his surrounding problems. At the end of the Trial, Volatilis' spirit awaits to kill Zenon so as to extinguish the world of the dream. With the help of X Ranger, however, Zenon and his friends defeat Volatilis. After this, X-Ranger and Max return to each place. In March, Zenon and Narumi attend the graduation ceremony of their kindergarten.

By order of the Council of Ascendants and approved of by the Chief, it is decided that the Day of Resurrection is due on Earth, despite the protestations of Etheriel, a junior Seraph with responsibility for the world. Whilst he seeks an audience with the Chief to plead for a stay of execution for "his" planet, the Last Trump is sounded, and as of January 1, 1957, time comes to a stop on Earth.

A mysterious figure known only as R. E. Mann (a pun on Ahriman, the Persian name for Satan)—later revealed as the devil—makes his way across the world, seeing what has happened in the Hereafter and pleased with it. All the dead are coming back to life, naked and uncaring. He meets a former professor of history who observes that the people have indeed been judged and are not in heaven but hell. He also meets a manufacturer of breakfast cereal, who angrily threatens to sue, since no one will need his product any more.

Etheriel has his meeting with the Chief and argues that the date January 1, 1957, unqualified, is meaningless, and that therefore a single Day of Resurrection is also impossible. The Chief agrees and declares that the end will come only when all the peoples of the Earth agree on a common date (which, given the wide variety of cultures on Earth, is extremely unlikely to ever occur). The world is instantly restored to normality.

R. E. Mann, frustrated in his endeavours, plans to promote the adoption of a new calendar system, based on the Atomic Era, to begin on December 2, 1944.

In this film, Puss (Christopher Walken) transforms from cat to a bespoke gentleman who requests a pair of boots, and then tries to restore the reputation of his master (Jason Connery). When he puts his boots on, he transforms back to and from his cat form.

Jesse Weill is founder and owner of Dreams Inc, a company that produces dreams for the individual's private use, just as films used to be viewed, although they've been superseded by 'dreamies'. Dreamies can be viewed in private at home by anyone with the equipment and cash to buy or rent them (like present day videos or DVDs). They are produced by specially trained individuals, often social loners or eccentrics as a result of their intensive training over many years.

Weill is shown a new development—under-the-counter pornographic dreamies—and asked by the government to assist in cracking down on them. Meanwhile, he interviews a ten-year-old boy as a potential dreamer, a lucrative occupation if he turns out to be suitable and undergoes training.

He also gets told by one of his best dreamers that he does not want to work any more, as it is ruining family life, the dreamer also feels he has lost himself. But Weill knows from experience that the dreamer can't stop dreaming once he's become used to that way of life, even if he wants to.

One of Weill's staff tells him that a competing company is opening a chain of 'dream palaces', where everyone can absorb the same dream simultaneously, but he is of the opinion that it will not work. As he says, dreaming is a private thing.

The narrator, a woman named Estelle, discusses her feelings about fantasies of rape. She recounts a story about her lunch break with three other women, her office co-workers, where they discuss their fantasies of rape over a card game. While her friends all have romanticized “rape” fantasies, Estelle points out that the situations they are describing are not about rape, because they involve the women's desire and no coercion or violence. Estelle breaks the trend by sharing fantasies of thwarting a rape attempt through humorous turns of events. In her stories she manages to escape rape in many ways, from having the rapist help her get lemon juice to squirt in his eyes, to helping the rapist get to the bottom of his emotional problems. Concerned that her rape fantasies are abnormal, she continues to share more stories, none involving an actual rape.

70,000 football-fans stream into Berlin Olympic Stadium in order to see the final of the DFB-Pokal. The men of the security center pay no attention to what is happening. In front of them several armed terrorists attack the central, five hostages arrive in the hands of gangsters. Kant, the gang leader, orders his men to close and lock all exit doors, because the game ends in a few minutes. It comes under the stadium visitors to a mass panic. Security Chief Bender has no chance to stop Kant alone, in addition he paid Kant using an old account.

The picture has four vignettes and all of them take place in the late 1990s in Buenos Aires during political elections.

'''The Wish:''' centers on a poor boy from the country who finds success in the fast city by participating in one of its many illegal operations.

'''Life and Works:''' follows a band of Paraguayan bricklayers as they try to reestablish a sense of cultural pride and community after meeting a woman whom one of them believes is the Virgin Mary.

'''Hard Times:''' follows a teenage outcast and his efforts to find romance with an upper-class Buenos Aires girl.

'''Comrades:''' the sound recorder of a political campaign finds himself falling for the candidate's girlfriend.

Billy Jack (Tom Laughlin) is appointed a United States Senator to fill out the remaining term of another senator. It is hoped that he will quietly vote the party line, but his term in the Senate runs into trouble when he proposes a bill to fund a national youth camp which happens to be on the property where a nuclear power plant is also being proposed. His fellow senator, Joseph Paine (E. G. Marshall), claims to oppose nuclear power but is secretly taking graft to influence his votes in favor, and moves to try to keep Billy Jack out of the way when the bill is being debated.

Seeking to keep Billy out of the Senate on a day when a controversial energy bill is being voted on, Senator Paine suggests he should meet with a grassroots group that day instead. The group is working to pass a national initiative and Billy Jack becomes convinced of their cause.

Billy is invited to meet with a group of lobbyists attempting to offer him bribes and other perks if he will vote their way. Up against a man named Bailey (Sam Wanamaker) who wields a powerful influence in his home state, Billy Jack has his political career and reputation at stake if he does not cooperate. Billy responds with anger at their threat.

The next day in the Senate, he tries to speak on the floor in opposition to the nuclear power plant. Paine responds by proposing to expel Billy from the Senate as unfit for office. Billy's assistant quits after the murder of a lobbyist, fearing for her own safety, but returns after Billy Jack is about to be expelled from the Senate, to help him learn Senate procedure in order to filibuster. Billy collapses on the Senate floor in the effort, whereupon Paine confesses to his colleagues that every word Billy spoke was the truth.

Sixteen-year-old Stephanie Daley collapses in a pool of blood while on a school skiing trip. A doctor discovers that in the blood is afterbirth. Soon afterward, the body of a newborn baby girl is found in a toilet, its mouth blocked with toilet paper. Despite Stephanie's insistence that her child was stillborn and that she had no idea that she was pregnant, she is arrested for the murder of the child and becomes known as the Ski-Mom.

Awaiting trial, Stephanie is interviewed by a forensic psychologist, Lydie Crane, who is also approximately 30 weeks pregnant with a son. Lydie is hired by the Prosecution to make an independent evaluation of Stephanie. When Lydie first meets the Daley family, Stephanie's mother is quick to stipulate that Stephanie will not accept a plea bargain. Lydie is eager to get to know Stephanie.

Lydie suspects her husband is having an affair after finding an earring that doesn't belong to her in their home; their marriage has been on the rocks since she gave birth to a stillborn child three months before she conceived the child she is now pregnant with. As Stephanie discusses her sexual history and her relationship with her parents and her child, Lydie is forced to face her hitherto buried emotions about her own child.

Through her interviews with Lydie, Stephanie talks about the father of her baby, Cory, a boy she met at a party and then slept with and never saw again because he enlisted in the Marines. When Lydie asks Stephanie if she knew she was pregnant, Stephanie avoids the questions and claims she was being "punished" by God because she was "weak", and that the pregnancy was a "test". Visibly annoyed at this, Lydie reveals to Stephanie that she had a baby girl a year before who had been stillborn, and asks Stephanie what she thinks Lydie was being punished for. Stephanie replies "you tell me."

The truth is told through flashbacks, when Stephanie is on the ski trip at her school, (none of her friends know of her pregnancy; and she doesn't reveal it to anyone) she begins to go into labour and makes it to the bathroom, where she quietly but painfully delivers the child on her own, and it is revealed through Lydie's explanation that the baby fell into the leg of Stephanie's ski pants. Stephanie says she wrapped the baby in toilet paper and left it there, but still maintains she was dead.

Meanwhile, Lydie confronts her husband about the affair; he claims he has not slept with anyone, but has indeed thought about it. He also blames the problems in their marriage on Lydie having not properly grieved for their stillborn daughter (she confides in a friend that when their stillborn daughter was cremated, in a fit of anger during an argument with her husband on the drive home, Lydie opened the window and just tossed the ashes out) and says that she does not truly want the baby she is carrying. Lydie screams in his face that she does want the child.

Soon before her trial, Stephanie is getting a glass of water and a car drives by her house with drunk young men in it who scream out, "Be the mother of my baby!" and drive off laughing, Stephanie having gained notoriety as being the Ski-Mom. This event makes Stephanie break the glass in her hand and cut her palm, severely upsetting her mother.

Before the trial begins, Stephanie returns to Lydie and says she is going to accept a plea bargain. Lydie states that she thinks this is a good idea and reaches out to shake Stephanie's hand when she notices the cut and asks what happened. Stephanie then tearfully admits the truth to Lydie, that her baby girl was alive when she delivered her, but was so small, and "her breathing was all wrong", and so in her mind she told her child to die, and she did. Stephanie believes she did kill her baby with her mind. Lydie hugs Stephanie, then thanks her.

Travis, a gunslinger receives a letter from his mother Maw, asking him to bring his brother Moses and his family to a Christmas reunion and to give them an unknown treasure she claims to have inherited it from his father. Moses is a bounty hunter, who is angry at Maw, for letting his stolen horses loose, forcing Travis to set up a plan. Travis saves an outlaw named Sam Stone from being hanged and teams up with his brother to catch him. When the brothers stay at Moses' family's house, Travis gives them plans to get to Maw's. When they head off the next morning, Moses' family heads on their way to Maw's.

While passing some time at a town, Travis gets into a fist fight with a man, named Dodge and his gang, who were teasing a young woman. Moses unwillingly comes and helps Travis finish them off. The woman, Bridget invites the brothers to have cookies and tea with her and her sister, Melie. After leaving and setting up camp, Travis finds Stone and gang, talking about robbing a bank, the next day at noon. The next day, the brothers plan a trap to catch Stone. The plan backfires when they come in at the wrong time. The sheriff and his deputy mistake Travis and Moses as part of Stone's gang and arrest them.

Bridget bails Travis out, revealing that Stone took their beloved bear. When Moses is sentenced to hang the next morning, Travis tries to free him in the same way he freed Stone (shooting the noose.) A dog attacks Travis and Moses is hanged, but due to his enormous size, he destroys the gallows. Moses survives with only a few splinters. He comes up with a plan to catch Stone, but the plan fails and they are captured. Travis reveals to Stone that he saved his life, and Stone lets them go. Moses comes up with plan B, which works. When Moses falls asleep, Travis frees Stone and Stone dummy-ties him.

Moses abandons Travis, but he hitches a ride from nearby Navajo Indians. Moses' son, Junior wants to buy a horse for his father. He heads to town and is captured by Stone, who learns of the Christmas reunion. Travis and Moses reunite and wait for Stone's next move. Junior escapes and follows the brothers. He camps out for the night. Junior wakes up and finds himself face-to-face with a western diamondback rattlesnake. He attempts to flee but gets bitten on the leg. He manages to ride to Travis and Moses' camp. The brothers take him to Bridget's and Melie's. Bridget injects Junior with a serum that neutralizes the venom.

Travis reveals the reunion, angering Moses. Moses is about to fight with Travis, but Junior warns them about Stone's plan. Before leaving, Bridget and Travis share a kiss. The brothers finally arrive at Maw's and discover that she is holding Stone captive. Moses' family, Travis, Bridget and Melie all share a Christmas dinner as a family. However, the sheriff, deputy, Dodge and his gang plan to kill them but drop their guns when they are hypnotized by the night sky's beauty. A giant fist fight occurs between the two groups, involving the family winning. One of the daughters calls the event "The Fight Before Christmas."

The next morning, Maw reveals that the treasure is where their hearts are, much to Stone's dismay. Maw then leaves for Denver and all the people have their picture taken by the photographer.

One year after the previous series, satellites begin falling out of orbit and crashing into major cities, resulting in massive civilian casualties. The G.I. Joe Team, deactivated at the end of the previous series, is reactivated to deal with the new threat. Led by General Joseph Colton, the core roster initially consists of Duke, Flint, Roadblock, Scarlett, Shipwreck, Snake Eyes, Stalker and Storm Shadow. Their new headquarters is in Yellowstone National Park and is code named "The Rock".

Thinking that Cobra is responsible for the attacks, General Colton, Duke and Storm Shadow interrogate the Baroness, who is being held in a classified sub-level of The Rock. Duke, Scarlett and Snake Eyes all leave to conduct solo investigations, while the rest of the team follows a lead to Puerto Rico. They discover the attacks were made possible by Destro's M.A.R.S. operation, and call in Firewall to help retrofit the VLA in New Mexico, in order to counter the tractor beam that is pulling the satellites out of orbit. Despite an attack by Iron Grenadier robots, the G.I. Joe team tracks the signal to Oregon, and discovers that a man named Vance Wingfield, who once attempted to start a nuclear war and was presumed dead, is behind the attacks.

Snake Eyes returns, to find that Scarlett has been captured while investigating Cesspool. Unable to authorize a rescue mission for Scarlett, General Colton puts the team on leave from active duty. They discover Scarlett on Destro's submarine in the Pacific Ocean, and succeed in rescuing her, but Destro escapes and Snake Eyes dies during the operation. General Colton meets the team at a U.S. Naval base in Kyushu, Japan, where Kamakura arrives to discover that Snake Eyes' body is missing. The Joes investigate information on all Cobra enclaves, in order to recover Snake Eyes. Storm Shadow confronts Major Bludd in Australia, and the team encounters a Cobra enclave in Canada. Meanwhile, the Red Ninja Clan, under the control of Sei-Tin, has stolen Snake Eyes' body in order to resurrect him. The Joes track the Red Ninjas to China, where Sei-Tin takes control of Snake Eyes, and uses him to exact his revenge against Storm Shadow and Kamakura. They eventually defeat Sei-Tin and return Snake Eyes to normal.

Snake Eyes renounces his ninja background and returns to his "commando" persona. Flint leaves the team. General Colton confronts Hawk to find out where Duke has been. He sends the Joes to Peru, where they take out a Cobra cell and rescue Spirit, who had also been working on a classified mission for Hawk. Meanwhile, Cobra Commander, who has been rebuilding his forces since the end of the previous series, infiltrates the U.S. government by disguising himself as White House Chief of Staff Garrett Freelowe. He tries to convince the President to shut down the G.I. Joe team. When he fails, he creates a new team called the Phoenix Guard led by General Philip Rey, a former G.I. Joe commander, and consisting of Friday (Zarana), Halo (Wild Weasel), High Tide (Copperhead), Mech (Scrap-Iron), and Snake-Eater (Firefly). They initially upstage G.I. Joe, by beating them to a Cobra base in Utah, before the government sends them to take over The Rock and displace the G.I. Joe team. Before they arrive, Storm Shadow leaves for parts unknown, but the Phoenix Guard infiltrates The Rock, and manages to capture Roadblock, Shipwreck, Stalker and Hawk. The remaining Joes fight off the attack, as Duke finally returns, and General Rey discovers the true identities of the Phoenix Guard members. G.I. Joe finally captures most of the Phoenix Guard, but the Baroness escapes during the fight, and after the failed attack on G.I. Joe headquarters, Cobra Commander abandons the White House.

General Rey goes on a sabbatical following the invasion of The Rock, to fill in some of the holes in his memory. Duke accompanies General Rey, because he does not trust his intentions. During the sabbatical, General Rey and Duke discover that Zandar was involved, and travel to the Florida Everglades. They learn that one of Zandar's aliases was hired to broker a deal between The Coil and a group of Army generals known as "The Jugglers". This leads them to General Rey's psychiatrist Dr. Scott Stevens, who reveals that General Rey is a clone of Serpentor. Dr. Stevens is then revealed to be Cobra hypnotist Crystal Ball, who has brainwashed General Rey, and commands him to kill Duke. General Rey breaks free from Crystal Ball's control with Duke's help.

Meanwhile, the Baroness pursues her campaign of revenge against her betrayers, Cobra Commander and Wraith. During her quest, she locates and horribly disfigures the Cobra surgeon Scalpel, in order to find Wraith's location. She also enlists the aid of Major Bludd. While the Joes find Scalpel barely alive, the Baroness finds Wraith in a club in Prague, and lures him into a cemetery where she confronts and defeats him, shooting him in the head. She trades his armor to the Red Shadows in exchange for information on the whereabouts of Cobra Commander. Flint, who is tracking Red Shadows' leader Wilder Vaughn, spots the Baroness with Vaughn and alerts G.I. Joe. Hoping to throw the G.I. Joe team off the Baroness' trail, Major Bludd raids an oil refinery in Saudi Arabia, but he is captured by the Joes. The Baroness locates the Commander in Honduras, but finds that Destro, her husband, is also present. Spirit and Snake Eyes also track Flint to the Baroness' location, where the three of them are attacked by Black Out. After a brief fight, Destro agrees to trade the M.A.R.S. corporation, his Iron Grenadier forces, and his eldest son Alexander to Cobra Commander, in exchange for his and the Baroness' baby. Cobra Commander also avoids capture, by revealing that he possesses the personal information of every G.I. Joe agent, because of his time working in the White House.

World War III

G.I. Joe counters by going on the offensive, launching missions to capture Cobra agents still at large. To spread chaos and violence, Cobra Commander sells M.A.R.S. weaponry to insurgents, terrorists, and rebel groups. In response, the entire G.I. Joe roster is mobilized, and the team deploys its armed forces around the world. G.I. Joe is warned of a coming "World War III" by Agent Delta, an undercover operative who joined Cobra before the organization's rise. Agent Delta contacts G.I. Joe after Cobra tells him to assassinate the Israeli Prime Minister. G.I. Joe manages to stop the assassination attempt, but discovers that it was a set-up.''G.I. Joe: America's Elite'' #25-29 (2007)

As part of Cobra Commander's sinister plot, Cobra sniper Black Out sneaks on board a Russian submarine and launches missiles at Boston. America declares a state of war. Cobra then attacks Washington D.C. and Cobra Commander assumes control. He sends the elite squadron known as The Plague to attack G.I. Joe headquarters. Cobra bombs Russia, claiming retaliation for the missile attack on Boston, and seizes control of U.S. military installations. In Israel, the evenly matched Plague and G.I. Joe teams clash. As Alexander attacks England and France, Cobra sleeper cells attack government buildings in nations across the globe.

Storm Shadow returns to stop Cobra from liberating prisoners from the G.I. Joe prison facility "The Coffin". He is partially successful, but Tomax manages to free Major Bludd and several others, while killing those Cobra Commander considered "loose ends". Storm Shadow then tracks down Destro and the Baroness, so that they can help disable Cobra's M.A.R.S. tech devices. They join the rest of the main team, in defeating several Cobra cells, and disarming nuclear weapons that Cobra Commander has placed in the Amazon and Antarctica.

Cobra Commander and The Plague retreat to a secret base in the Appalachian Mountains, where the final battle takes place. The series ends with G.I. Joe forces defeating and apprehending Cobra Commander, by taking control of the M.A.R.S. satellite systems (with aid from Destro). In the aftermath, the Joes are still active and fully funded. Destro turns himself in. Major Bludd and several Cobra agents are back in The Coffin. And Cobra Commander is locked away in a special underwater prison.

Part One: Jerusalem

Clarel, a young theology student whose belief has begun to waver, travels to Jerusalem to renew his faith in the sites and scenes of Jesus Christ's mortal ministry. He stays in a hostel run by Abdon, the Black Jew — a living representation of Jerusalem. Clarel is initially amazed by the religious diversity of Jerusalem; he sees Jews, Protestants, Catholics, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists walking its streets and recognizes their common faith in divinity. Clarel also senses a kinship with an Italian youth and Catholic doubter named Celio, whom he sees walking in the distance, but does not take the initiative and greet him. When Celio dies shortly thereafter, Clarel feels he may have passed up an opportunity to regain his faith.

Gethsemane.

While walking through Jerusalem's streets, Clarel meets Nehemiah, a Christian who hands out proselytizing tracts to pilgrims and tourists. Nehemiah becomes Clarel's guide and shows him the sights of Jerusalem. At the Wailing Wall, Clarel notices an American Jew and his daughter, whom he learns are Agar and Ruth. Nehemiah later introduces Clarel to Ruth, with whom he falls in love. But Jewish custom and a jealous rabbi keep Clarel and Ruth apart much of the time, so the student continues sightseeing with Nehemiah.

In Gethsemane, Clarel meets Vine and Rolfe, two opposites. Rolfe is a Protestant and religious skeptic who historicizes Jerusalem and calls into question Christ's claim to divinity. Vine is a quiet man whose example leads Clarel to hope for faith — at least initially. When Vine and Rolfe decide to take a tour of other important sites in the Holy Land — the wilderness where John the Baptist preached, the monastery at Mar Saba and Bethlehem — Clarel wants to accompany them, but he does not wish to leave Ruth.

At this critical juncture, Ruth's father Nathan dies. Jewish customs prohibit Clarel's presence, so the student decides to take the journey, confident that he will see his beloved when he returns to Jerusalem. The night before his departure, he sees a frieze depicting the death of a young bride, which makes him pause with foreboding. He banishes his doubts and sets off on his pilgrimage.

Part Two: The Wilderness

Clarel travels with a wide range of fellow pilgrims — Nehemiah, Rolfe and Vine accompany him, and Melville introduces new characters for this book: Djalea, son of an emir, turned tour guide; Belex, the leader of six armed guards protecting the pilgrimage; a Greek banker and his son-in-law Glaucon; a Lutheran minister named Derwent; an unnamed former elder who has lost the faith; and a Swedish Jew named Mortmain, whose black skull cap constantly forebodes ill. The tour through the desert starts with an explicit invitation to compare Clarel and his companions' journey to "brave Chaucer's" pilgrims to Canterbury.

Unaccustomed to desert hardships, the banker and his son-in-law soon abandon the group for a caravan headed back to Jerusalem. When Clarel and his companions come to the stretch of road where Christ’s good Samaritan rescued a Jew from robbers, the taciturn elder also departs, scoffing at the cautions of Djalea and Belex, who fear robbers. Mortmain is the final deserter; he leaves before the party makes a stop at Jericho, refusing to enter a city he considers wicked. During their travels, Clarel's party is joined by Margoth, an apostate Jewish geologist who scoffs at the faith expressed by Derwent. Listening to Margoth's atheism prompts Rolfe to move closer to Derwent’s faith. The company also speaks briefly with a Dominican friar traveling through the desert.

In the absence of these travelers, Derwent and Rolfe engage in a number of heated debates as to the veracity of biblical accounts and the relationship between the various Protestant sects. Derwent staunchly maintains his faith in biblical accuracy, while Rolfe questions the Holy Book’s basis as factual history even as he acknowledges his desire to believe. Clarel eagerly listens to these conversations but rarely participates, unsure of whether his faith is being shored up or torn down by the debates. He seeks Vine out for companionship, but Vine’s stoic silence resists interpretation, and Vine denies Clarel's request for more open talk.

When the party arrives at the Dead Sea, they make camp, and are rejoined by Mortmain. Seeming disturbed, he drinks the salty Dead Sea water despite warnings that it is poisonous. Mortmain survives but, when the pilgrims wake in the morning, they discover that Nehemiah has died in the night. He saw a vision of John's heavenly city in the air, above the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah. While the company buries the man by the Dead Sea, Clarel looks out over the water. He sees a faint rainbow, which seems to offer hope as it did for Noah, but the bow "showed half spent —/Hovered and trembled, paled away, and — went".

Part Three: Mar Saba

Mar Saba in 1900.

Clarel and the other pilgrims travel to the Greek Orthodox monastery of Mar Saba, where one St. Saba discovered a fountain in the desert and planted a palm tree now more than one thousand years old. On their way to the monastery, they meet a young man from Cyprus who has just left Mar Saba and is traveling to the Dead Sea. The Cypriot's faith is unshaken, and all who hear his singing envy him. On their way to Mar Saba, the travelers pass through the "tents of Kedar", where a band of robbers camp and exact a toll of travelers to the monastery. These robbers recognize Arab royalty in Djalea, however, and let the pilgrims pass without molesting them.

At Mar Saba, Clarel and his friends are fed by the monks and entertained with a masque portraying the story of Cataphilus, a wandering Jew. Hearing Cataphilus described as having lost his faith "and meriteth no ruth", Clarel thinks he resembles the Jew. The monks leave the group with Lesbos, a Muslim merchant visiting the monastery. Lesbos leads the group in a drunken revel, persuading even the staid Derwent to participate. He also introduces the group to Agath, another visitor at Mar Saba, a Greek sailor who was sent to Mar Saba to recover after being attacked in the Judean desert, similarly to the wounded Jew in Christ's parable of the Good Samaritan. Reminiscent of Melville's novels such as ''White-Jacket'' and ''Moby-Dick'', Agath and Lesbos tell several sea stories to Clarel, who listens attentively to the tales.

In conversations among the pilgrims and monks, Clarel learns that no one has faith—not Vine, Rolfe, Belex, Lesbos—nor Derwent, whose professions until this point had been staunch. After confessing his lack of faith to Clarel, Derwent takes a tour of the monastery. He cannot appreciate the monks' faith; he scoffs at the holy relics showed him by the abbot, considers several of the monks to be insane, and cannot believe that the holy palm tree is either holy or a thousand years old. When he takes his eyes from the palm, Derwent sees Mortmain’s skull cap flutter down from an outcropping where the Jew is observing the palm.

All of the pilgrims fall asleep looking at the palm tree. In the morning, when the caravan is about to leave, Mortmain is missing. They find him on the outcropping, his glassy, dead eyes fixed on the palm tree. The monks bury the Jew outside the monastery, in an unconsecrated grave, "Where vulture unto vulture calls, / And only ill things find a friend."

Part Four: Bethlehem

When the pilgrims leave Mar Saba, they take Lesbos and Agath with them. After a short distance, Lesbos turns back and returns to the monastery, giving the pilgrims a military salute. Ungar, a new traveling companion, joins the company. A veteran of the American Civil War, he is descended from Catholic colonists and American Indians, and is the only one among them with faith. This new group travels to Bethlehem together. Once in Bethlehem, Agath leaves to join a new caravan. The remaining pilgrims pay Djaleal and Belex for their services in guiding them through the desert.

Ungar’s faith attracts Clarel. Derwent is antagonized by his insistence that man is "fallen" and cannot reclaim his lost glory without divine aid. Their debates over human nature and religion reach to the morality of democracy and capitalism. Vine, Rolfe and Clarel, all Americans, take Ungar’s part, leaving the Englishman to believe that they argue with him out of prejudice against the Old World.

In Bethlehem, the group is shown the cave where Christ was born by a young Franciscan friar named Salvaterra (save the earth in Italian). He seems almost divine to them, as if he were a reincarnation of St. Francis. The monk inspires Clarel’s faith. Clarel’s faith is strengthened after his time with Ungar and Salvaterra, and he views the setting sun as an inspiring beacon.

Ungar leaves the group and Salvaterra remains in the monastery, leaving Clarel to grapple alone with his fledgling faith. He returns to Jerusalem hopeful, eager to rescue Ruth and Agar from their exile in Palestine, and return with them both to the United States. As Clarel approaches Jerusalem during the night before Ash Wednesday, he meets a Jewish burial party. In his absence, Ruth and Agar have died. His newfound faith is rocked to its depths. All through the rituals of Holy Week, Clarel waits for a miracle: for Ruth to return from the dead as Christ did. But Easter passes without Ruth’s resurrection. Clarel is left a lone man in Jerusalem, wondering why, though “They wire the world—far under sea / They talk; but never comes to me / A message from beneath the stone.”

The last canto of ''Clarel'', the epilogue, offers Melville’s commentary on the existential crisis of faith suffered by Clarel in the wake of Ruth’s death. Though Clarel remains beset by troubles and doubts, Melville offers the poem as an exordium to faith:

<BLOCKQUOTE>"Then keep thy heart, though yet but ill-resigned—<br>

Clarel, thy heart, the issues there but mind;
That like the crocus budding through the snow—
That like a swimmer rising from the deep—
That like a burning secret which doth go
Even from the bosom that would hoard and keep;
Emerge thou mayst from the last whelming sea,
And prove that death but routs life into victory."

In a change from previous Ultraman movies, this takes place in real world, in which ''Ultraman Gaia'' is just a popular kids' TV show.

A young boy named Tsutomu Niiboshi, is failing in school from his obsession to Ultraman Gaia. One day, while watching an ''Ultraman Gaia'' episode, he gets teleported into hyperspace where he sees a girl and behind her a scene of mass destruction. He later sees that same girl, named Lisa Nanase, in his class. Later on, he finds a mysterious glowing ball (Also from the dream) that tells him it can make any wish come true. The one thing Tsutomu wants more than anything else is to meet Gamu Takayama, Ultraman Gaia's human host. After his wish is granted, Gamu actually appears, but a bully takes the ball and makes the second wish; for a monster, Satan Bizor, to fight Gamu. After Gamu transforms into Ultraman Gaia, he finds he is losing power quickly, but manages to defeat the monster regardless. Afterwards, reverting into Gamu, he is chased by kids through the neighborhood until he finally manages to elude them by hiding in a toy shop. Once inside though, Tsutomu and his friends find Gamu and Tsutomu explains to Gamu just how he was brought to their world. Tsutomu tries hiding Gamu in an abandoned hangar, and during this time, Gamu sees that Tsutomu has a present for Lisa, a book called "Gulliver's Travels", which was a favorite of Gamu's as a child. While scanning the ball for the answers, not only do the police find him, but Gamu suddenly finds himself back in his own world, and accidentally takes the book with him. He is soon able to recall the events and checks the data he scanned from the ball, and gets a vision telling him that Tsutomu's world will soon be destroyed.

Unfortunately, during the whole ordeal, Tsutomu loses the ball, and the bully finds the wishing ball and wishes for a giant monster to appear. King of Mons is created and starts destroying their suburban Tokyo neighborhood. Gamu becomes determined to open a gateway between the two universes to stop the monster and save the world Tsutomu lives in. Gamu is soon able to find his way there with the aid of a new mecha, the XIG Adventure, and transforms into Gaia to battle the giant monster. Soon, Gaia is in a deadly battle against the monster. The monster then spawns two more monsters that are equally as strong as the original, one whose specialty is in water and the other whose specialty is sky. Tsutomu, knowing that Gaia is in trouble, tries to wish for help only to be sent flying into the air by one of the monster's stray beams. Just as all seems lost he is rescued by Ultraman Tiga and Ultraman Dyna, who have come via "The Light" into the battle to help Gaia. The three Ultramen battle the monsters. Tiga and Dyna destroy King of Mons' spawns. Gaia manages to obliterate King of Mons with a highly powerful laser blast and saves the day. Gaia then turns back into Gamu and reveals Lisa's secret to Tsutomu: She is the human-interface of the ball. Even though Lisa will disappear forever, she urges Tsutomu to wish for the ball to vanish forever, repairing all of the damage that had been caused by it to that world. Before returning to his world, Gamu returns Tsutomu's book to him and tells him "Thanks to this book, we were able to meet again."

At the end of the film, Tsutomu relives the day Lisa appeared in his class, but is unable to recall the events of this film. During the credits, though, as he shows Lisa the book, there is an autograph and a message to him from Gamu, as he sees the XIG Fighter EX flying through the air before disappearing.

Cándida Villar is a clumsy Galician maid who speaks improperly, get a lot of troubles in all the conversations with her bosses, simple and straightforward who from night to morning becomes the most lucky woman of the word because she met a hilarious gallery of character in an art gallery.

The movie starts with flashbacks of Lansky's life, first showing an elderly Lansky looking for a rock to put on his grandfather's grave in Jerusalem. Upon seeing soldiers of the Israeli Defense Force, Lansky expresses regret that his grandfather never lived to see them. As he walks through a tunnel, he catches sight of an old man. He recalls how at the age of ten, he witnessed an elderly Jew being bludgeoned to death with an axe during a pogrom. Another flashback shows Lansky and his family fleeing as their shtetl is burned to the ground, his parents hastily packing up their valuables and preparing to immigrate to America. Lansky's grandfather watches skeptically and refuses to leave, believing it to be an act of cowardice not to fight back. His son, Lansky's father, replies with "You think I should fight? You stay, and you fight."

The setting then moves forward several years later to the Lower East Side of New York. After his mother gives him money to go buy challah for Shabbat, Lansky comes upon a game of craps on the street corner. He returns home, penniless and ashamed, to face a brutal reprimand from his parents for betraying their trust.

Later, Lansky and his friend Benjamin Siegel are shown eyeing the Irish-American boy who operates the craps game. Lansky makes a bet, but then sees the operator's friend sliding him another set of dice as he throws his. Certain that the game is rigged, Lansky shouts that he has won the bet. The operator shoves him, Lansky shoves him back, and then the operator's friend pulls out a knife and cuts his arm. Siegel suddenly arrives and hits the knife-wielding kid with a brick, shouting at him to hand over the money. As Lansky and Siegel are walking down to the docks, they see the Irish kid who bet against them; the kid sees them and starts yelling antisemitic Irish slurs. Lansky tackles him into the water and slits the Irish kid's neck.

As blood is sliding around in the water, the film returns to the elderly Lansky, drinking wine with the Jewish man he saw earlier. The Jewish man goes to pray in the synagogue as the film transitions to a younger Lansky now running his own craps games. Lansky goes into an alley to count his money, where he meets teenage hoodlum Charles "Lucky" Luciano. When Luciano tells him that he needs to pay protection for running games in his neighborhood, Lansky refuses and receives a severe beating from Luciano's gang. Nevertheless, he refuses to pay up.

Luciano takes a liking to Lansky's guts and recruits him and Siegel into his gang. By the early 1920s, Luciano and his boys have become involved with the bootlegging of illegal alcohol. Siegel, Luciano, and Lansky are shown driving one of their trucks loaded with alcohol when they are suddenly ambushed by associates of wealthy Jewish gangster Arnold Rothstein. Luciano and Lansky cut a deal to hand over a truckload of their liquor to Rothstein to avoid being killed, but by the time they've made their escape, Rothstein's men realize the "shipment" is nothing more than a bunch of empty suitcases. Impressed, Rothstein invites the gang to his house for a sit-down. He offers Siegel and Lansky jobs in his organization, recognizing their talent.

After Rothstein is murdered in 1928, Lansky and Siegel work with Luciano, now a powerful gangster in his own right, to take over New York's criminal underworld by assassinating Mafia bosses Joe Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano. Luciano takes control of Masseria and Maranzano's gangs and establishes the Commission, declaring that the Five Families can now work freely with the Jewish and Irish mobs. Lansky builds up his prestige by opening and running several highly profitable casinos in Cuba and helping Siegel get a start in Las Vegas. After Siegel overspends on his own casinos and his girlfriend Virginia Hill is suspected of stealing money, Meyer uses his influence to buy his childhood friend time to turn the venture around.

A month after warning Siegel that the Flamingo is not earning enough of a profit, Lansky can no longer prevent the Commission from taking out Siegel, and reluctantly approves a hit on his friend. Years later, Lansky, now facing federal charges of tax evasion, flees to Israel and tries to settle there by exploiting his Jewish heritage, only to be arrested after two years and extradited back to the United States. He manages to avoid prison and retires to Miami, his personal fortune all but gone now that his Cuban casinos have been dismantled by Fidel Castro's regime.

At the climax of the film, Lansky gives an interview to a French journalist. When the journalist asks him what he would do if he could live his life over, Lansky responds, "I wouldn't change a thing."

A small alien spaceship is cruising around the Solar System. When it reaches the vicinity of Earth, it is struck by an asteroid and crashes at night in the small town of Perry Hall. Some hunters hear the impact and alert the county sheriff, Cinder. When they go investigating on their own, however, the pilot emerges and kills them with a disintegrator ray. The beast also attacks a couple in their home, and a family out for a drive.

Cinder confronts the beast with his men and some armed residents including a man named Jamie. However, the beast appears invulnerable to bullets and they lose many men to the disintegrator. The next morning, they enlist the help of an expert marksman who shoots off the disintegrator, disarming the beast. However, the marksman's son and another officer perish during the shootout.

The police department begin evacuating the town. However, they are unable to convince mayor Bert Wicker to cancel his party for governor Embry. Meanwhile, a delinquent named Drago abuses his girlfriend, who has been sleeping with Jamie. The police then arrive to give her the evacuation order, and after they leave, Drago returns and strangles the girl. When Cinder's police find out that Wicker's party is in progress, Jamie bluffs that poison gas is escaping from a nearby mine and the partygoers flee in panic. Wicker and his secretary Mary Jane, dispirited by this turn of events, stay home and begin drinking heavily.

At the office of doctor Steven Price, the beast appears and kills a few men. Price and nurse Ruth hide in the basement, and devise a trap to electrocute the beast with some frayed electrical cord. It works, and the beast flees the building. The body of Drago's girl gets discovered and taken to Price; Jamie, suspecting Drago, goes out on his dirt bike and beats him. Soon after, Cinder and his deputy Lisa discover a mutilated corpse, and the beast shows up. Lisa and Cinder make their escape, and the sheriff injures his leg in the process. Lisa takes him to her house to heal, and they have sex.

Meanwhile, Wicker and Mary Jane have gotten very drunk. Price is sent to watch over them until they can be evacuated. However, the beast gets past Price and kills Mary Jane in the basement. Her screams wake Wicker, and the beast rips his head off when he investigates. Cinder arrives afterwards, and Jamie suggests electrocuting the beast with a high-voltage coil from the local power plant. Price, thinking back to his success with the electrical trap, supports this course of action, and the sheriff drives out to the power plant with his men. There, Drago assaults Ruth and Cinder, but is stopped when Jamie shoots him with a shotgun.

Cinder and his crew return to Wicker's house and begin setting up their trap, laying metal wire between the trees and connecting it to the coil, which will discharge when they throw the circuit breakers. The beast takes them by surprise, and Jamie must hold onto the wire to keep it inside the trap. They throw the breakers, and the surge makes the beast explode, and takes Jamie with it as well. The camera pans up to the stars overhead and the film ends.

'''Act I'''

It is a Tuesday afternoon in summer 1946 on the Frake family farm in Brunswick, Iowa, as the family prepares to leave for the Iowa State Fair. The family patriarch, Abel, is hoping that his prized boar, Blue Boy, will win the livestock sweepstakes. Abel's wife, Melissa, has her heart set on ribbons for her mincemeat and sour pickles, while their son, Wayne, is practicing throwing hoops, hoping to win prizes from the midway games (“Opening (Our State Fair)”). Wayne is suddenly saddened when he learns that his girlfriend, Eleanor, was accepted to college, and she cannot go to the fair with him.

Local shopkeeper Dave Miller is skeptical about the family's hopes. He makes a $5 bet that something is bound to go wrong for Blue Boy or the family. Abel accepts. Meanwhile, The Frakes' daughter, Margy, is feeling down and doesn't understand why (“It Might as Well Be Spring”). Her boyfriend, Harry, arrives at the farm and presses her for an answer to his marriage proposal; she agrees to give him an answer when she returns home. That night, the family leaves for the fair, awaiting the surprises that lie ahead (“Driving at Night/Our State Fair”).

After arriving at the fair on Wednesday morning, Wayne heads straight for the midway, where he is hustled by a carnie at a ring-throwing game. A beautiful mysterious woman defends on Wayne's behalf, and he falls head over heels in love before he even knows her name (“That’s for Me”). Later that afternoon, Abel and his farmer buddies are at the beer tent and trading stories about their prized pigs (“More Than Just a Friend”). Meanwhile, Pat Gilbert, a former World War II reporter, arrives with Charlie, a photographer, to cover the fair for the Des Moines Register. He runs into Margy, whom he repeatedly tries to court, and she remains forbidding until he begins to win her over (“Isn’t It Kinda Fun?”). That night, Wayne heads to the Starlight Dance Meadow in time to catch a show. The performer is a singer named Emily Arden, who happens to be the woman he met earlier in the day (“You Never Had it So Good”). She buys him a drink, and tells Wayne that her dream is to become a Broadway star. He charmingly asks her out. She agrees, but only on the bounds that their relationship only lasts for the rest of the fair.

Thursday morning arrives and Margy complains to Melissa about Harry (“It Might as Well Be Spring (Reprise)”). Abel walks in, overjoyed at the promise of victory and winning, and he proposes an evening of fun and dancing with his family (“When I Go Out Walking With My Baby”). At the Exhibit Hall that afternoon, the pickles and mincemeat are being judged. Unknowingly, Abel spiked Melissa's with a full bottle of brandy by Abel, sending the judges into a drunken fit of giggles and tipsiness. Melissa wins the blue ribbon and a special plaque. Pat and Charlie capture the euphoric moment. From a quiet hillside, Wayne and Emily watch the midway below. He wants to further continue their relationship, telling her that they have so many more memories to make, but she remains unsettled (“So Far”). At the Starlight Dance Meadow that night, fairgoers gather for a dreamy waltz. Abel and Melissa dance romantically, Wayne and Emily arrive with a distinctive glow, and Pat and Margy share a passionate kiss when, to Margy's shock, Harry arrives at the fair (“A Grand Night for Singing”).

'''Act II'''

It is now Friday, the last day of the fair. Despite Harry's presence, Pat and Margy are growing closer and more in love. While walking the midway alone, Pat runs into Jeanne and Vivian, two dancers whom he formerly shared intimate relationships with. They both try to flirt with him, but they notice that Pat has changed, as he admits that he has finally found real love (“The Man I Used to Be”). Blue Boy is declared the winner of the livestock sweepstakes, and the livestock tent turns into a celebration led by Abel (“All I Owe Ioway”). Afterwards, Charlie tells Pat that he has landed a job interview with the Chicago Tribune, but it would mean catching the first train out of Iowa (“The Man I Used to Be (Reprise)”). Reluctant to leave Margy in the high point, he leaves just as she arrives for their night out (“Isn’t it Kinda Fun? (Reprise)”).

The scene shifts to the Starlight Dance Meadow for the closing performance of the fair, headlined by Emily (“That’s the Way It Happens”). Wayne proclaims his love for Emily that night, but she breaks it off, revealing that she is married and was abandoned by her husband, making her scared to fall in love again. Back at the campsite, Abel and Melissa are watching the stars together. Melissa is concerned about the children growing up too fast, but Abel assures her that they raised Wayne and Margy well, and that when the children do move out, the couple will always be there for each other (“Boys and Girls Like You and Me”). On the darkened midway, the fair is over, and being dismantled. Margy is waiting for Pat, remembering that he said he wouldn't break it off, he just wouldn't be around (“The Next Time it Happens”). Harry enters, pleading to Margy for her hand in marriage. Though her refusal finally leads him to realize that she simply just doesn't love him.

Upon returning to the family farm on Saturday morning, there is a full spread in the local newspaper detailing their experience at the Fair word-by-word, with extra emphasis on Margy, secretly written by Pat. Dave Miller returns, Abel pleads for him to cough up the money, but Dave reminds Abel that the bet was not about victory, but happiness. He emphasizes to Abel that he won't pay up until he is certain that everyone enjoyed themselves at the fair. Wayne and Eleanor have become engaged. Margy, however, has come in moping, saying that she has outgrown the fair. Shockingly, Pat has arrives at the Frake house, apologizing to Margy about leaving early, he reveals that he has been hired for the job in Chicago and he wants Margy to come with him. He gets down on one knee and proposes, Margy accepts. Dave Miller begrudgingly hands a $5 bill to Abel, and the two men shake hands and walk inside the house together ("Finale Ultimo").

In a secluded area, away from civilization, James Hoyt and Kristen McKay arrive at night to James' childhood summer home, returning from a friend's wedding. Tension abounds between the couple, as Kristen rejected James' marriage proposal to her after the reception. James calls his friend Mike and asks him to pick him up in the morning. Shortly after 4:00 a.m., there is a loud knock at the door. A young blonde woman, whose face is obstructed by poor lighting, asks the couple "Is Tamara here?" but is turned away by James. James goes for a drive to purchase a pack of cigarettes for Kristen; before he departs, he starts a fire in the hearth. While waiting for him to return, Kristen hears another knock on the door, but doesn't open it. Upon asking who it is, she learns it is the same girl from earlier, asking for Tamara; Kristen reminds her that she already came by and locks the door as the mysterious girl walks away. Kristen realizes the chimney flue is closed, and attempts to open it; smoke emanating from the fire triggers a smoke alarm. Kristen attempts to disarm the alarm when she is startled by another knock at the door and drops the alarm on the floor, unnerved. She calls James' cellphone from the landline, but their call is cut short. Kristen returns to the kitchen, where, unbeknownst to her, an intruder watches her, lingering in the adjacent hallway.

Kristen notices the smoke alarm she left on the floor is now sitting on a chair, and realizes someone has been in the house. Upon going to retrieve her cell phone from the charger, she finds it is missing and begins to panic. When she hears a noise from the backyard, she arms herself with a knife, and opens the curtains to find the masked man staring at her. Screaming, she stumbles into the hallway and watches as the front door is forced ajar. When she goes to push the door closed, the blonde woman, now in a doll-like mask, peers inside. After locking the door, Kristen retreats to the bedroom, where she hears a loud crash, before James returns. After she explains what has happened, he goes outside to the car to obtain his phone, whereupon he finds the car ransacked and vandalized, and sees the masked blonde woman watching him from afar. The couple attempt to leave in James' car but another masked brunette woman rear-ends them in a pickup truck, forcing them to flee.

Back inside the house, Kristen and James find a shotgun and wait for the thugs in a bedroom. Mike arrives and realizes something is wrong after seeing James' vandalized car. He enters the house, and James, mistaking him for one of the intruders, shoots him dead. Devastated, James remembers an old radio transmitter in a barn on the property. He leaves and encounters the brunette woman, searching the backyard with a flashlight. When James tries to shoot her, the masked man ambushes him and knocks him unconscious, inadvertently discharging the rifle. Kristen hears the shot and runs to the barn. She finds the radio, but the brunette woman smashes it with an axe. Kristen rushes back to the house where she encounters the blonde woman, who taunts her with a knife. She tries to escape but is incapacitated by the masked man. At dawn, the couple awaken to find themselves tied to chairs in the living room with the thugs standing before them. Kristen attempts to reason with the thugs, before demanding an explanation, to which the blonde woman replies, "Because you were home."

The offenders unmask themselves to Kristen and James before taking turns stabbing them in the chest and abdomen. Afterwards, the thugs drive away in their truck and come across two young boys on bicycles distributing religious tracts. The blonde woman steps out of the truck and asks if she can have one of their tract cards. One of the boys asks her, "Are you a sinner?" to which she responds, "Sometimes." The boy gives her one, and the strangers drive away as the brunette woman states, "It'll be easier next time." The two boys come upon the house, where they discover the bloodied bodies of Kristen, James, and Mike inside. One of the boys approaches Kristen's body and attempts to touch it. As he reaches out to her, Kristen, still alive, startles him by grabbing his hand and screaming.

The film is divided into 36 chapters. In the fictional Irish town of Tyrellin, near the border of Northern Ireland in the late 1970s, cartoon robins narrate as Patrick Braden's mother, Eily Bergin, abandons her baby on the doorstep of the local parochial house, where Patrick's father, Father Liam, lives. Patrick is then placed with an unloving foster mother. Assigned male at birth, young Patrick is later shown donning a dress and lipstick, which angers her foster family. Patrick is accepted by her close friends, Charlie, Irwin, and Lawrence, as well as by Lawrence's father, who tells Patrick that Eily looked like blonde American movie star Mitzi Gaynor.

The story moves to Patrick's late teen years. Patrick gets into trouble in school by writing explicit fiction imagining how she was conceived by her parents and by inquiring about where to get a sex change. Patrick comes out as transgender, renames herself Kitten, also using the name Patricia, and approaches Father Liam in confession, asking about Eily, but is rebuffed. Kitten soon runs away from home, catching a ride with a glam rock band, Billy Hatchet and the Mohawks, and striking up a flirtation with leader Billy. Billy installs the lovestruck, homeless Kitten in a trailer home where she discovers he's hiding guns smuggled for the Irish Republican Army. Meanwhile, Irwin has begun to work with the IRA, much to the dismay of his now-girlfriend Charlie. Kitten dismisses Irwin's politics as "serious, serious, serious," but after Lawrence is killed by police detonating a suspected IRA car bomb, she tosses the IRA gun cache into a lake. Billy abandons Kitten to flee the IRA, forcing Kitten to stand up to the "serious, serious, serious," men alone. Her lack of connection to their politics saves her from being murdered.

Kitten next journeys to London to search for Eily, but initial inquiries prove fruitless. Penniless, she finds shelter in a tiny cottage in a park, only to find that it's a children's entertainment park for The Wombles. Kitten gets a job as a singing, dancing Womble, but immediately loses it when her sponsor and co-worker punches their boss. Forced into prostitution, she is violently attacked by her first client, saving herself from strangulation by spraying him in the eyes with Chanel No. 5 perfume.

At a diner, magician Bertie Vaughan asks her what she is writing in her notebook. She explains that it's the story of "The Phantom Lady" who was "swallowed up" by the big city, then reveals it's about the mother she is seeking. Bertie hires her to be his magician's assistant, turning her life story in to a hypnosis act. The two take a romantic day trip, but Kitten explains that she is transgender when Bertie tries to kiss her. Bertie says that he already knew this. Soon, Charlie finds Bertie's show and takes Kitten away.

Kitten goes to a club frequented by British soldiers and dances with a soldier, only to be injured when the club is bombed by the IRA. When police discover that Kitten is transgender and Irish, she is arrested as a suspected terrorist. Beaten and prevented from sleeping, she writes a hyperbolic statement, shown in a fantasy spy film spoof sequence. The police's attitude soften, realising she is innocent, and they release her. With no place to go, Kitten begs to stay in the police station, but is tossed to the street.

Kitten is again forced to turn tricks, but is saved by one of the cops who interrogated her. He brings her to a peep show where she transforms herself into a blonde. Her repentant father finds her and in a scene that mirrors their confessional scene, professes his love and tells Kitten where to find Eily. She goes to her house posing as a telephone company market researcher and discovers a younger half-brother whose name is also Patrick. She faints upon meeting Eily, but after reviving does not reveal her identity.

When Irwin is killed by the IRA, Kitten goes home to tend to a pregnant Charlie and reconcile with her priest father. The town reacts against the unwed mother and her transgender friend living with the priest by firebombing the parish house. Kitten and Charlie flee to London. In the final scene, they run into pregnant Eily and little Patrick at the doctor's office, where Charlie is getting post-natal care. Kitten is friendly, but still doesn't reveal who she is.

Inspired by the "superhero movie within the movie" finale of the movie, ''Chicken Little: Ace in Action'' features Ace, the superhero alter ego of Chicken Little, and the Hollywood versions of his misfit band of friends: Runt, Abby and Fish-Out-of-Water. The crew of the intergalactic Battle Barn faces off against Foxy Loxy and her evil Amazonian sidekick, Goosey Loosey, who have an evil plan to take over Earth. Battle evil alien robots through multiple levels across the solar system and combat your foes in one of three distinct game play modes: Ace on foot as a soldier, Runt as the driver of an armored tank, or Abby as the pilot of a spaceship. The original Chicken Little and his friends Abby, Runt and Fish we know from the film are featured in cut scenes throughout the game.

In Salthill-on-Hudson, a New York City suburb for the wealthy and middle-aged, Adam Berendt, a charismatic sculptor, drowns in a river as he tries to rescue children on a Fourth of July cookout.

Before his cremation, we learn that Marina Troy, owner of a small book store, was infatuated with him. Over the years he had bought many books from her shop to support her financially, and lately he had bequeathed to her a house of his in the mountains. Roger Cavanagh, Adam's lawyer, forges his will and Marina agrees to sign it, hence making it legal. Camille Hoffmann, married to Lionel, had an affair with Adam. She is described as an innocent girl, rescued by Lionel from a frat rape years back. At Adam's cremation, she breaks down, and back at their house it is clear that their marriage is rocky. After eerily dreaming of Adam, his dog Apollo crops up in their kitchen.

At the same time, Abigail Des Pres, another suburban, stalks her teenaged son Jared Tierney, then invites him for dinner in her hotel room. Jared, an angry teenager, appears to be worried about Apollo. It is learnt that her ex-husband, Harry Tierney, is a fiercely mean man. Abigail and her son get into a car accident as she drives him back to his campus. Simultaneously, Roger Cavanagh attends his teenaged daughter Robin's hockey match after running late. Abigail then summons him because of the accident; Jared is spiteful. Roger and Abigail flirt, only to be interrupted by Apollo. Then Roger has dinner with his aggressive daughter; they spend the night at a motel. The next day she taunts him, pretending to be pregnant and confessing that was in jest. A few days later, Roger calls Abigail and finds out that she is away for the summer.

A little later, Augusta Cutler, another suburban, goes to the rescued child's house and makes a fuss as she, too, was in love with Adam. She decides to leave her husband Owen, since he never seems to pay attention to her.

During this time, Marina Troy leaves for Demascus County, to live in her inherited house - she lives there on her own, without even a telephone line. She has arranged for her house to be let, and for Molly Ivers, a dynamic librarian, to take charge of the book shop while she is away. Marina, however, isn't totally alone as Beverly Hogan, a pushy estate agent, starts to pester her with impromptu visits. Marina is also acquainted with Rick Pryde, a petrol station owner, maimed in the Persian Gulf War of 1991, who does snow-ploughing in winter as well. Next Marina goes to a mall and rescues a girl from an abusive boyfriend in the carpark. The girl concisely says her name is Lorene; they stop at a diner and the girl eventually leaves with her boyfriend. That night Marina dreams of Adam's unfinished sculptures that she has been tampering with, and realizes she is deluded.

Then there is a shift to the Hoffmanns, and we learn of Lionel's mistress, Siri Joio, an Asian massage artist. Meanwhile, Camille rescues a maimed stray dog and gets him operated, although that would seem like a folly. Then Lionel leaves Camille to live with Siri, and Camille sinks into depression; their grown children are angry with their father. A little later, Beatrice Archer, a neighbour, visits Camille. At the same time, Roger Cavanagh tells Lionel Hoffmann he will soon be a father for the second time.

Camille somehow ends up with three more dogs (one of which belongs to a rich neighbour, Mrs Ferris, and another to a relative of Beatrice Archer's). Lionel then calls to say he is coming home. Meanwhile, Abigail Des Pres finds herself stalking an Asian-American girl with a 'red beret'. After a girlish meal, Abigail attends a dinner party for the Historic Society, and there an architect, Gerhardt Ault, hits on her, then calls her again the next day. Abigail prefers to call her ex-husband and ask about her son, who has refused to talk to her since the accident. She then has dinner with Gerhardt, but ends up walking out in sobs and eventually ignoring his calls. A little later she gets her book signed by Pulitzer-winner poet Donegal Croom. After a brief visit to Marina's bookshop, she attends a social event when Donegal reads aloud some of his poetry. After breaking down, he and Abigail spend the night together, talking - she talks about Adam, he confesses to having had prostate cancer and thereby being impotent. Back home, Abigail hears a message from Gerhardt on her answerphone, asking her to marry him. She promptly dismisses it, but then sees him with the girl in a 'red beret'...

At the same time, Roger Cavanagh is in a car with feminist paralegal Noami Volpe. They visit lawyer Reginald "Boomer" Spires over Death Row client Elroy Jackson Jr, and upbraid him for his lack of professionalism, as they believe his client to be only a victim of the court system. Later, Noami Volpe admits she is pregnant, needs a holiday, and Roger pays for it. When she is back, over dinner she agrees to let him have the child if he will pay good money. Simultaneously, Abigail is said to be soon to marry Gerhardt Ault, and Owen Cutler goes to Florida to identify his wife's corpse - coming to the conclusion it is not hers. As it is, Augusta Cutler has left to delve into Adam's past, after finding out that he was formerly named Francis Xavier Brady. While on her quest, she spots the private detective that her husband has hired to find her, Elias West; after becoming intimate, they scheme her supposed death while she leaves for the north. Under the self-styled name of Elizabeth Eastman, she learns that young Adam had nearly killed his foster father; that he'd been a dyslexic; that he'd lived on a campsite with his family, that his father had left home, and that one night drunk Adam had mistakenly set the mobile home on fire, leaving his mother and sister to die inside the house.

A little later, Marina Troy is back in Salthill-on-Hudson to sell her art pieces; she meets Roger Cavanagh with his baby and they quickly have an affair... At the same time in the Hoffmanns household, Lionel finds out he has AIDS, Camille has now seven dogs, and Lionel, due to his allergy, has to sleep in the guesthouse, until he gets bitten to death by them. Ironically enough, Camille has inherited $3 million from her rich neighbour for taking care of her dog. Meanwhile, Abigail goes to a ballet in New York City with Tamar, Gerhardt's Asian-American adopted daughter, and they get mugged. Finally, Augusta Cutler comes home, and Owen finds himself to be very considerate after all.

Anthony Fallon, the Terran deposed as king of the Krishnan island of Zamba in the earlier novel ''The Queen of Zamba'', has fallen on hard times, having failed to regain his throne and lost his second wife Julnar as well. Currently he resides in Zanid, capital of the kingdom of Balhib, where he makes a precarious living as a city guardsman and spy for the nomad realm of Qaath.

Fallon's life is made more complicated when Terran consul Percy Mjipa enlists him to help archaeologist Julian Fredro study the Safq, an ancient snail-shaped tower forbidden to all but members of the native Yeshite cult. Fallon is also to look into recent disappearances of Terran scientists in the region. Mjipa, introduced in this novel as a secondary character, would go on to appear in three other Krishna novels; the chronologically earlier ''The Hostage of Zir'' and ''The Prisoner of Zhamanak'' (the latter as the protagonist), and the chronologically later ''The Swords of Zinjaban''.

Balancing Fallon's mutually exclusive allegiances while continuing to work toward recovering his kingdom is a difficult undertaking, which he realizes could prove fatal–particularly when the Safq turns out to be hosting a secret project to reproduce Terran weaponry as a secret weapon for the war with Qaath. Then in the climactic battle the Qaathians unleash their own secret weapon, designed and built by the captive scientists. In the ensuing chaos Fallon figures the best thing to do is cut and run with the proceeds of his espionage, only to be undone by the fallout of a rare good deed, his earlier rescue of missionary Welcome Wagner.

Anthony Fallon would reappear, reformed, in the later Krishna novel ''The Swords of Zinjaban'' as a Terran official.

The plot focuses on wisecracking cynic Mary and infuriatingly-sensible Bob, who have recently divorced and have not seen each other in nine months. They meet at his apartment in hopes that they can avert an audit by the Internal Revenue Service, and a snowstorm forces Mary to spend the night. The next morning, mutual friend and lawyer Oscar, Hollywood-heartthrob neighbor Dirk Winston, and Bob's considerably-younger fiancée Tiffany arrive on the scene. The comedy's humor is derived from discussions about income taxes, marriage, alimony, divorce, remarriage, extramarital affairs, weight-loss programs, exercise, and sex.

The story is based on an American Revolutionary War incident in September 1776 when Mary Lindley Murray, under orders from General George Washington, detained General William Howe and his British troops by serving them cake, wine and conversation in her Kips Bay, Manhattan home long enough for some 4,000 American soldiers, fleeing their loss in the Battle of Brooklyn, to reassemble in Washington Heights and join reinforcements to make a successful counterattack.

Patriot Mary Murray (of the Murray Hill Murrays) and her young ladies are working to sew uniforms for American soldiers, but they are sad at the absence of their young men. Mary's flirty daughter Jane leads British General Tryon's son Harry to her house; she finds him charming. His commander, General Howe, and some British officers commandeer Mary's house as their temporary headquarters. Mary instructs the houseful of beautiful young ladies to discourage the British soldiers, but the girls are eager to engage the enemy in more than just conversation. George Washington sends word to Mary asking her to try to detain Howe and his officers overnight. Mary's feisty, feminist Irish niece Betsy Burke comes home wearing only a barrel after a dog steals her clothes while she is swimming. British Captain Sir John Copeland has gallantly supplied the barrel. Though divided by nationality and Copeland's sexism, they fall in love ("Here In My Arms").

Mary gives a ball for the British officers, promising to show them some of the beauties of the local countryside. The British soldiers are happy to spend time consuming refreshment and indulging in music, dancing and flirtation at the Murray mansion. Betsy and Sir John dream of being together when the war is over as Jane and Harry also fall in love ("Bye and Bye"). Mary's messenger is captured, and Betsy volunteers to take an update to General Washington. She is told to return to Mary's house and, when the coast is clear for the American soldiers to move, to light a lantern then put it out. Upon her return, Sir John and she acknowledge their love for each other. When Sir John falls asleep, Betsy lights the signal. The American soldiers march North safely. Sir John is captured but, in the post-war epilogue, he is freed and reunited with Betsy.

The series takes place in 2107,See award montage after Aoi's racing victory, episode 1 where small wars take place all over the globe. A team of four people; Aoi Hidaka, Kurara Tachibana, Sakuya Kamon, Johnny Bernet, are chosen to be the pilots of the mysterious large robot that "protects the weak" and stops these small-scale wars, the Dancouga Nova. Like its predecessor, Dancouga Nova is a combining robot type of Super Robot, which have four separate units with each unit having its own pilot; the Nova Eagle, Nova Rhino, Nova Liger, and Nova Elephant, that form the Super Robot Dancouga Nova. The pilots are gathered by a secret organization that maintains the Dancouga Nova and dispatches its pilots on assigned missions from the organization's base of operations, the Dragon's Hive.

A cyclist trains on a wheel connected to a butter churn on his dairy farm. He is in love with the daughter of a professional cyclist. He is urged to enter a six-day race by questionable cycling promoter. Various gamblers try to cause him to lose, but he wins the race and the girl.

Billy Jack goes to court facing an involuntary manslaughter charge stemming from events in the earlier film. He is found guilty and sentenced to a prison term. Meanwhile, the kids at the Freedom School—an experimental school for runaways and troubled youth on a Native American reservation in Arizona—vow to rebuild the school. They raise funds and acquire a new building, eventually starting their own newspaper and television station.

Inspired by Nader's Raiders, they begin using the newspaper and TV station to conduct investigative reporting, angering several politicians and townspeople in the process with their exposés.

The school's activities range from having their own search and rescue team to artistic endeavors such as a marching band and belly dancing. The school hosts a large marching-band contest and arts festival, called "1984 Is Closer Than You Think," to raise money for the school.

Billy Jack is released from prison and, trying to reconnect with his spiritual beliefs, begins a series of lengthy vision quests. He becomes involved in a radical group on the reservation that opposes the federal effort to cease recognition of their tribe and the surrender of their tribal lands to local developers. When one of the tribal members is arrested for poaching deer on what was formerly tribal land, the school comes to his defense.

The school begins to hold hearings on the rights of the native people and child abuse. The school defies a court order to return a boy to his father who had abused the boy and cut off his hand. The FBI begins visiting the school and taps their phones.

As tensions mount between the school and the people in the nearby town, a mysterious explosion at the school knocks their television station off the air. The governor calls a state of emergency and mobilizes the National Guard, and a curfew is established in town. The students respond by holding a parade in the town in violation of the curfew. On the way back to the school, their bus breaks down and local townspeople confront the students and threaten to set their bus on fire.

Billy Jack appears during the incident to protect the students and then comes to the attempted rescue of a tribal member who is being harassed and beaten to death at a local dance in town. Billy managed to use his Karate on Posner, who gets killed by the kick to the throat. However, the National Guard is stationed around the school and is ordered to open fire on the students, killing four and wounding hundreds more.

The entire story is told through flashbacks by teacher Jean Roberts from her hospital bed after the shooting. During Billy's trial, he mentions the 1968 My Lai massacre and recalls, in a flashback scene, witnessing a similar incident while serving in Vietnam.

In 1792, shortly before the Reign of Terror, vengeful French mobs are outraged when aristocrats are saved from death by a secret society of 20 English noblemen known as the "Band of the Scarlet Pimpernel." The Scarlet Pimpernel, their mysterious leader, is Sir Percy Blakeney, a wealthy English baronet and friend of the Prince of Wales. Sir Percy cultivates the image of a fop to conceal his identity. Not even his wife Marguerite, a former noted French actress, suspects the truth.

Citizen Chauvelin, the newly appointed French ambassador to England, discovers that Armand St. Just, Marguerite's brother, is one of the Scarlet Pimpernel's agents. Chauvelin orders Armand's arrest and uses the threat of his execution to force Marguerite into helping him discover the identity of the Pimpernel. He has discovered that his quarry will be at a forthcoming ball. At the ball, Marguerite intercepts a message stating that the Pimpernel will be in the library at midnight. She passes the information along to Chauvelin, who goes to the library to find Blakeney, apparently asleep. While waiting, Chauvelin falls asleep; when he wakes up, he finds a message from the Pimpernel mocking him.

The next morning, the Blakeneys travel to their house in the country. Marguerite breaks down and tells her husband of Armand's arrest and her deal with Chauvelin. Sir Percy, though still deeply in love with his wife, had cooled to her because he learned that she had denounced a French marquis, which had led to the executions of the marquis and his family. She reveals that the marquis had had her imprisoned for consorting with his son. After being freed by the French Revolution, she told her friend Chauvelin, who was the one who denounced them. Promising to help, Percy leaves for London. Afterward, Marguerite notices a detail on a portrait of the 1st baronet – a ring decorated with a pimpernel. Realising that she has betrayed her own husband, she rushes out of the room, only to be presented a letter from Chauvelin announcing that he has discovered the Pimpernel's true identity as well. Racing back to London, she warns Ffoulkes that Percy's life is in danger. Ffoulkes mobilises the band to warn Percy.

To lure Percy into his trap, Chauvelin has both Armand and the Count de Tournay transferred to Boulogne-sur-Mer. Despite the vigilance of Chauvelin's men, the Pimpernel frees the two men through bribery. However, one of the prison guards tells Chauvelin that the Pimpernel will be at a certain tavern that evening. Marguerite rushes there to warn Percy, only to be arrested by Chauvelin. Percy arrives at the appointed time and is met by a gloating Chauvelin. Percy distracts him long enough for Armand and the count to board the ship, but when Chauvelin informs him that he has Marguerite in custody, Percy surrenders on the condition that she be freed. He is taken away to be shot by a firing squad. Chauvelin exults at the sound of gunfire, but Percy returns to the tavern very much alive; the soldiers are in fact his men. After securing Chauvelin, Percy and his wife sail away to England.

''The Smurfette''

Gargamel wants to take revenge against the Smurfs for his humiliating defeat at their hands. He decides that the most horrible plan to destroy them would be to send them a female Smurf, who shall seduce them and lead them to their doom. He thus fashions her out of clay and dips her in a potion, creating Smurfette.

Smurfette is sent to the Smurf village, and the others befriend her, despite that she later proves to be annoying, albeit good-meaning. She is very talkative, a bit bossy, overly friendly, and hysterical. At first, Smurfette looks like a male Smurf with scraggly black hair, a large nose, and rather surly eyes, the only thing separating her from the rest being her white dress; not exactly the attractive temptress that Gargamel tried to create.

Some of the Smurfs become sick of her, so they decide to play a trick: they make her think she has become overweight (by rigging a scale, setting in a misshaping mirror, making her listen to some nasty talk...). Becoming depressed, she realizes that she is not pretty and Papa Smurf decides to help her: he operates ''plastic smurfery'' on her for days and nights, and Smurfette comes out with blonde hair, more delicate features, longer eyelashes, walking and acting much more gracefully.

All the Smurfs instantly fall in love with her and soon after, they all try to seduce her through different means. The competition and jealousy eventually bring chaos and violence among the Smurfs, who are ready for anything to please her, even painting the dam of the river pink.

The last straw is when Smurfette forces Poet Smurf to open the dam for her, just so she could see the water spurting. The dam gets stuck open and the village is flooded. Even after the dam is sealed back up, the village is in a disastrous state. When Papa Smurf discovers that Smurfette is indirectly responsible, he tells her that she has only brought trouble. Furious, Smurfette tells them all that she shall then go back to Gargamel. After hearing this, Papa Smurf orders her arrested and places her on trial.

The trial proves to be quite biased, most of the Smurfs supporting Smurfette's innocence. Jokey Smurf (who is Smurfette's attorney) reminds them that she has been able to seduce the Smurfs because of Papa Smurf, who made her attractive. Smurfette is eventually declared not guilty.

Smurfette cannot stand the Smurfs fighting each other for her anymore, so she leaves the village indefinitely, leaving a message saying that she will be back one day (which she eventually does).

Although they are saddened by the event, Papa Smurf cheers them up by telling that they should get revenge on Gargamel and give him a taste of his own medicine: they create a fat ugly human woman out of clay (as Gargamel did with Smurfette) and send her to his house, where she desperately asks him for shelter, speaking in Smurf talk. The story ends with Gargamel running away from her, grumbling that he shall take vengeance.

''The Hunger of the Smurfs''

Winter is near and the Smurfs are gathering food. But days after the winter comes, the food storage is destroyed in a fire. To survive, they are forced to leave the village and find a place where they can feed themselves. After long days journeying in the cold wilderness, they find a human castle where its lord is living alone after losing all his fortune. Trying to find remaining food, they stumble on a secret room of jewels. They share their discovery with the lord, who can then buy food for them. The Smurfs are then able to go back to the village.

Arriving in New Mexico via a MAT-TRANS jump, Ryan Cawdor, Krysty Wroth, J. B. Dix, Dr. Theophilus Tanner, and Mildred Wyeth are met by Jak Lauren, who informs them that Ryan's son Dean was ambushed and kidnapped by slavers while he was left in Jak's care. Jak's wife, Christina, was able to capture a mortally wounded slaver and under torture extract information about the group he belongs to. All are surprised to learn that the group is not regional, but instead makes use of the MAT-TRANS chambers and their "last destination" setting to capture slaves from throughout the Deathlands. What is most troubling for Ryan, however, is the name of the group's leader: Major-Commandant Gregori Zimyanin, a man Ryan has encountered two times previously.

After taking a day to rest at the Lauren ranch and construct a plan, Ryan and Jak set out alone to rescue Dean, not taking the entire group so as to better function covertly. Though they anticipate a cold destination based on various clues and statements from the captured slaver, both are only minimally prepared when the MAT-TRANS jump takes them to a brutally cold redoubt. As they make their way through the facility they come across three "cuddlies", small, furred, foot-long animals reputed to be both highly friendly and cute. This turns out to be only half true, which Jak and Ryan both discover when the seemingly benign cuddlies turn vicious once they get close to the pair. After a struggle, both are able to kill the surprisingly lethal animals. Ryan narrowly avoids injury, but Jak is wounded in a few places, the worst being a long cut on his jaw which refuses to stop bleeding. Though not lethal if treated, the wound is severe enough that it will likely become infected and gangrenous in the bitter cold. Both Jak and Ryan agree there is no other choice, and Jak returns to New Mexico through the MAT-TRANS.

Ryan reaches the exit of the redoubt and immediately spots the slavers' base: a large sulfur mine, well-guarded and operated by slave labor, surrounded on all sides by barren, mountainous terrain. He decides to wait until nightfall to make his approach, and ventures further into the redoubt to find a place to rest. While exploring an abandoned testing office Ryan inadvertently activates a set of five prototype "sec hunters": androids programmed to identify a target by their DNA and then hunt them ceaselessly. Ryan only becomes aware of this several hours later, when the first 'droid appears and tries to kill him. The sec hunter proves all but impervious to gunfire, but with some difficulty Ryan manages to destroy the 'droid by pushing it off the edge of a cliff. His victory is short-lived, as a few hours later the second sec hunter attacks, nearly killing him while he sleeps. After defeating the second hunter, Ryan heads to the test chamber to meet the third as it activates; eventually it does, but malfunctions spectacularly, attacking and destroying itself. The fourth and fifth sec hunters do not activate, and Ryan cautiously departs with the hope that the onslaught is over.

Ryan makes his way down the treacherous mountain path and is eventually forced to seek shelter from a harsh blizzard. He finds the entrance to an abandoned mine tunnel, occupied by Kate Webb and her elderly grandfather Cody, two slaves who have escaped from the mine but have discovered they have nowhere to flee to. Cody is abruptly killed soon after when the fourth sec hunter emerges from the blizzard, following Ryan and killing Cody because he was in the way. Kate and Ryan flee deeper into the mine, eventually losing the 'droid by jumping over a large chasm blocking the tunnel. Venturing deeper they discover a fast-moving underground river, which unexpectedly swells and draws them into it. They are briefly stopped by a net strung across the river by "trackies" - hostile mutants - and after nearly being killed by a large group of them Kate and Ryan take their chances in the river again. When they finally find themselves outside again and on land Ryan narrowly manages to get both of them to the shelter of a small cave and start a fire before they succumb to the cold. Grateful for him saving her life, Kate seduces Ryan into having sex with her.

Back in New Mexico Jak has returned safely home. During breakfast one morning he mentions that Christina has been ill recently; at Doc Tanner's questioning he confirms that his wife has been sick only in the mornings, but fails to understand the significance. Sometime later the companions notice a large dust cloud moving in their direction. Christina, equipped with binoculars, can make out a slow-moving group of horses and people at its center, but cannot tell if they are simply another peaceful oxen train or something else. Preparations begin for either eventuality.

The next morning Ryan and Kate sneak into the sulphur mine, slipping unnoticed into a work crew and passing themselves off as other slaves. From there Ryan and Kate attempt to locate Dean, carefully moving from crew to crew over the next several days. Meanwhile, Dean is doing his best to avoid the attention of Zimyanin, who has met the boy a few times over the past days and finds him unsettlingly familiar, but cannot place why. The Major-Commandant only realizes the connection several days later, conveniently when Dean is recovering from a near-fatal mine collapse in the infirmary and Ryan himself has been detained in chains for disobeying sec men while attempting to rescue his son. Zimyanin arrives at Ryan's jail just minutes too late; Kate has managed to kill the jail's guards and free Ryan, and both are gone by the time Zimyanin arrives. The Major-Commandant posts extra guards on Dean, but Ryan stages a mass escape, forcing most of Zimyanin's sec men to round up escaped slaves. Ryan and Kate rescue Dean in the confusion and flee to a disused mining equipment warehouse. Fearing the possibility of a revolt, Gregori orders all remaining slaves executed.

Zimyanin has his sec men surround the warehouse, then proceeds in alone. The game of cat-and-mouse between him and Ryan is interrupted when the fourth sec hunter makes itself known by decapitating Kate. Dean and Ryan flee from the 'droid along elevated metal catwalks with Zimyanin in pursuit; the three of them wind up trapped between a fallen section of catwalk and the advancing sec hunter. Ryan negotiates a brief truce with the Major-Commandant, carefully leaving out that the sec hunter is primarily interested him alone. Zimyanin attempts to confront the 'droid head-on, which ends with the robot breaking his right arm. The brief confrontation causes the catwalk to shift and drop slightly, which the robot has difficulty coping with; noticing this, the three deliberately rock the catwalk violently, eventually causing one end of a section to break free and drop. Zimyanin blocks a last-ditch effort by the sec hunter to attack Ryan and forcibly throws it from the catwalk to its destruction, but ends up hanging one-handed from a severed support cable. Despite the risks (and against the oft-repeated advice of the Trader) Ryan moves to help Gregori back onto the catwalk. However, Dean refuses to let him live, taking aim with his pistol at the Major-Commandant. Rather than force the young boy to kill him, Zimyanin deliberately lets go, falling to his death. Ryan and his son make their way down from the catwalk and escape to the redoubt under the cover of a snowstorm.

The MAT-TRANS takes Ryan and Dean back to New Mexico without incident. As they exit the ruins of the redoubt Ryan spots a large column of smoke in the distance, coming from the direction of the Lauren ranch.

The show starred Charles King, Flora Le Breton, Joyce Barbour and Busby Berkeley. A man from Brooklyn is serving as a buck private in Pearl Harbor. He flirts with an English Peer's daughter; however, she is being pursued by a German, who raises pineapples in Hawaii. The Brooklynite pretends to be a Captain in order to make an impression, but he is found out, booted out, and loses out on the girl, until he proves himself in a shipwreck.

"Hell-Fire" is an extremely short story, and deals with a journalist, Alvin Horner, who speaks with Joseph Vincenzo, a scientist at Los Alamos, at the first exhibition of a film with super-slow-motion footage of a nuclear explosion, with the footage "divided into billionth-second snaps." Vincenzo is sure that nuclear bombs are hell-fire, and tells the journalist they shall ultimately destroy mankind.

After the scientist's observations, the film starts. For a brief moment, before initiating the full reaction into the infamous nuclear toadstool, the atomic blast resembles a specific shape: the face of the Devil.

Alvin Purple is unable to hold down a job because of his appeal to women. He and his friend Spike help a team of women cricketers win a match by playing in drag, and decide to spend their share of the prize money in a casino. Alvin discovers he is identical in appearance to gangster Balls McGee. When Balls is killed, Alvin is forced to take his place.

At the beginning of the story, Ahab (John Barrymore) and his half brother Derek (George O'Hara) compete for the affections of a winsome minister's daughter, Esther Wiscasset (Dolores Costello). Meanwhile, an albino whale has been eluding harpooners, and bears the scars of many failed attacks against him. The animal's fame has reached epic proportions. One day, Ahab and Derek are on the same whaler as the whale heaves into view. Ahab raises his harpoon to kill the beast, but at that moment, Derek pushes him overboard and Ahab loses his right leg to the whale. Not long after this incident, the shallow Esther rebuffs Ahab as her suitor once she catches sight of his peg leg. Heartbroken at this turn of events, Ahab blames neither Esther nor his brother; instead he transfers blame and an undying hatred onto the whale. The following saga of Ahab's pursuit of the whale takes on the aura of a super-human quest, far beyond the proportions of its first motivation.

The film opens with a short scene at a terrorist training camp. The main instructor, Katsumoto (Yuki Shimoda) tells the graduating class that all of their actions and whereabouts will be known and that if they do anything to expose or harm the group, they and their families will be killed.

The film then cuts to an assassination of a diplomat by members of the group. One of the terrorists is shot by a bodyguard while the others escape.

We then meet Scott James (Chuck Norris), a retired karate champion, who is at a dance performance. After the performance, he meets one of the dancers named Nancy (Kim Lankford). He takes her out to dinner because he is interested in how she incorporated the martial arts into her routine. She seems distant during the dinner and is more concerned about a recent assassination that took place abroad. She wonders if "an American was killed".

Scott takes Nancy home, and he senses that someone is there. The lights do not work as they enter, and then they are attacked by a group of ninja. Scott fights them off, but they end up killing Nancy. After he restores power to the house, he finds that the entire family has been killed.

The next day, Scott goes to see an old mercenary friend named McCarn (Lee Van Cleef). Scott asks him if he knows about any ninja activity. However, McCarn tells him, "If you are seeing ninja, you are seeing ghosts." McCarn tries to recruit Scott to join his cause in eliminating terrorists, but Scott declines.

On his way back from McCarn's place, Scott encounters a rich lady named Justine (Karen Carlson), who managed to get her car stuck on the side of the road. She asks Scott for help, and after he helps her, she takes his keys, forcing him to take a taxi back to her place to get them.

Scott goes back to Justine's house to get his keys, and she pretends to find them in her purse. She offers to drive him back since "It would be the only decent thing to do." Scott agrees, only on the condition that this time, he drives.

On their way back, Scott and Justine are chased by two cars. Scott and Justine manage to evade their pursuers. After Scott gets back to his car, Justine identifies one of the cars as being "her bodyguards." Scott then asks her out to dinner since she has now become "an object of concern".

Before their date, Scott goes back to McCarn's and notices that the car that was chasing them belonged to McCarn. He confronts Justine, and she confesses that she hired McCarn to be her bodyguard because McCarn told her that Scott would not accept her offer of employment. She also wants him to kill a man named Seikura (Tadashi Yamashita). She confesses that her father was killed by terrorists and that she has since been on a crusade to eliminate them. She has managed to help "retire" two of the three main terrorist leaders, but Seikura remains. Scott is insulted by her actions, and he promptly declines her offer and leaves.

Scott's friend, A.J. (Art Hindle) is a karate champion and feels frustrated by the recent terrorist attacks that have taken place both abroad and on Nancy. He decides to start going after terrorists himself. He tries to find a German terrorist, but that terrorist is killed by McCarn's men before A.J. can catch him. McCarn then fills A.J. in on just who he is and his relationship to Scott. He also tells A.J. that it was Nancy's brother who was killed in the terrorist attack abroad and that she was killed in retaliation. A. J. decides to join McCarn's cause.

We see a flashback where Scott remembers training with his half brother Seikura. He and his brother are seen running through an obstacle course to obtain a sword. Scott stumbles at the end but still manages to get the sword. However, his enraged brother grabs the sword and declares it to be his. Scott's adoptive father (John Fujioka), then berates Seikura and disowns him. He tells Scott that Seikura is now his enemy for life.

The movie cuts to a scene at the Octagon training camp where a new group of recruits has graduated. One recruit, Aura (Carol Bagdasarian) has reservations about what she is doing but leaves the camp to report to a terrorist dispatcher named "Doggo" (Kurt Grayson).

Scott realizes that A.J. and McCarn are right, so he signs up and attends a mercenary recruiting camp in an attempt to be recruited so he can get to Seikura. He gets interviewed at Doggo's camp, but Doggo knows his true identity, and he refuses his services. Scott then has to fight his way out of Doggo's facility, defeating "Longlegs" (Richard Norton) and "Hatband" (Aaron Norris) and returns to his hotel.

Later that day, Aura grabs Scott's file and defects from Doggo's camp. Meanwhile, Justine manages to recruit A.J. to find Seikura. As Scott goes back to his room, he encounters Aura, and she tells him that she regrets what she has done and that she can lead him to Seikura's camp. Justine then comes by to try once more to get Scott to help her, but she gives up after seeing Aura and decides to get Seikura herself. As she goes out of the hotel with A.J., she is hit with a poisoned dart from one of Doggo's men and dies. A.J. then leaves to find Seikura's place while McCarn stays behind to watch Scott. A few hours later, several ninja are seen scaling the hotel. They attack Scott and Aura but are defeated—the last shot by one of McCarn's men as he is descending the hotel. A firefight then erupts between McCarn's men and Doggo's men, and all of Doggo's men are killed. Scott and Aura then depart to Mexico for Seikura's terrorist camp. Realizing they may not survive, they have sex in a motel room before going in.

A.J. is then shown finding Seikura's place (located in Mexico or an unnamed Central American nation) the hard way, and he is eventually captured and taken prisoner. Aura gets Scott to the compound, and Scott infiltrates the camp. He is eventually discovered and led to an area known as "The Octagon" (a building filled with treacherous paths and enemies). Scott fights his way through and ends up fighting Seikura's "enforcer" named "Kyo" (again, played by Richard Norton). Scott defeats Kyo, and as a result, Seikura kills A.J. by slitting his throat. Scott and Seikura fight, but Seikura escapes the compound. Meanwhile, Aura infiltrates the compound and recruits several of her fellow former trainees to fight back and burn the compound to the ground. They end up destroying the entire camp. Aura then goes after Scott and Seikura. As the sun is coming up, she sees Seikura attack Scott from behind. However, Scott stabs Seikura with his sword and the movie ends with Scott standing over Seikura's body.

The novel is described from the point of view of vice-president of Golden State Power and Light, Nimrod "Nim" Goldman, who, despite being married, tends to be somewhat of a Lothario and has many extramarital affairs. The geographic area of service of the fictional electric utility, Golden State Power and Light, matches the actual Northern California footprint of the real-life Pacific Gas and Electric Company.

Golden State Power and Light is a public utility, supplying two-thirds of California's electric power. During a hot summer, GSP&L as it is called, loses a major part of its capacity to supply power due to a terrorist attack on its largest "oil burner" (an oil-fired power plant), called Big Lil. There is a board meeting about the incident. The chairman of GSP&L, Eric Humphrey, leaves the matter in the hands of Nim Goldman, one of the utility's many vice-presidents, and head of security Ray Paulsen. After the explosion at Big Lil, which killed chief engineer Walter Talbot, Nim visits Ardythe, Walter's widow, and Wally, his son. After some time, Nim and Ardythe make love.

As a result of Nim noticing how some customers were marked for emergency restoration (because they depend on electric power for survival, such as iron lung users and certain disabled persons), utility billing supervisor Teresa Van Buren convinces Nim go visit one of these emergency restoration customers, Karen Sloan, a quadriplegic who uses a portable respirator on her wheelchair, whom he instantly befriends, angering Ruth, his wife and his children Leah and Benjamin. Later, Nim and Harry London, property protection president, go to Brookside, to catch power thieves. And surprisingly, they catch many. Nim later learns that the terrorist attacks were by a group called "''Friends of Freedom''". Later the leader of the group, Georgos Archambault, mails letter bombs and kills five people including utility president Fraser Fenton. Because of this, Nim forms a think group with utility General Counsel Oscar O'Brien, Teresa Van Buren and Harry London.

Laura Bo Carmichael, chairman of environmental group Sequoia Clubs (a thinly veiled reference to the real-life Sierra Club) meets with Nim to protest the building of three coal-fired plants at Tunipah, Fincastle valley and Devil's Gate, fearing the environmental damage to near-extinct species. Not having much experience with coal, Nim decides to take a trip to Colorado and visit a power plant operated by Public Service Company of Colorado (now known as Xcel Energy). Noticing that a worker on the furnace feed conveyor was in danger, Nim instinctively runs down to the plant floor and saves the man from otherwise certain death. A comely young lady who is part of the group saw what happened and decides she wants to invite herself into Nim's bed and offer him sex as a thank you for what he did. When Nim is back in his bedroom a woman slips in, and he discovers it's not the lady who propositioned him, it's the wife of one of the executives of the Colorado electric company where he is staying, who asks Nim to impregnate her so she can have a child (the other executive had privately admitted to Nim that he is "shooting blanks", i.e. infertile and unable to get his wife pregnant.) Then, later, the lady who originally wanted to bed Nim arrives, and is able to get Nim to have sex with her as well.

Returning to California after his trip, Nim decides the benefits of coal power outweigh the environmental risks, but also decides to continue the startup of other power plants, as a result a geothermal plant at Fincastle and a hydro at Devil's Gate are launched. At Devil's Gate, Nim and the press end up seeing a gruesome electrocution of a plant employee after he tries to save a technician's child (similar to the successful effort of Nim in saving a worker at the Colorado coal plant). A California Examiner (the local newspaper for San Francisco) reporter, Nancy Molineaux, reports Nim to be selfish when she sees him arrive in a utility-owned helicopter. David Birdsong, leader of Power and Light for People, and the Sequoia Club, hold a trial against GSP&L. Birdsong and Georgos later plan to destroy the power workers, including Nim Goldman who would meet for a conference at a hotel. Unknown to Georgos, Yvette, his mistress, knows of his plans and betrays him to Nancy Molineaux, who reports it to the police thirty-six minutes before the bombs go off. In an attempt to secure the last remaining bomb, Art Romeo, London's assistant, is blown to pieces when the bomb goes off.

The think group, using coded incoming mail, finally arrest David Birdsong and expose Georgos. Georgos attempts to bomb Big Lil, but he is killed by the pump's turbine blades. The plant manager, noticing that someone had gotten into the reservoir, realizes that if the plant is bombed while it is operating, the damage would put the plant out of operation for months, but a bomb when the plant is shut down would only cause minor damage, chooses to shut the plant down, causing a major power shortage. Georgio's corpse floats up after the turbines stop, essentially confirming the manager's concern. This shut down, however, causes a major blackout throughout the region. Karen Sloan dies after her respirator fails due to this power outage. Nim discovers his wife is dying of cancer, and the novel ends as Nim finally befriends Nancy Molineaux and visits her at her house as she offers Nim a one-time opportunity to be her lover.

The comedy-drama tells the story of Emilia (Graciana Chironi) an 84-year-old grandmother who lives in the Buenos Aires suburbs and receives a phone call inviting her to be the matron of honour at her niece's wedding in Misiones, the village of her birth.

The Province of Misiones, where the village is located, is over 1000 kilometres away, on the Brazilian border in the farthest north-east part of Argentina.

Nevertheless, the large family decides to embark on a weekend long trip to take their grandmother to the wedding in a beat-up motor-home.

While the members have feuds, intrigues and love affairs on the journey, they, mostly, have to accept each other's quirks and faults, and give each other a lot of space along the way as they encounter a few problems on their long road-trip.

The film ends with Emilia in an introspective moment. She drinks her mate and appears to contemplate her family and life.

In the late 1980s–1990s Gibson ran an exclusive "escort service" based in Hollywood, California, U.S.A., under the name "Sasha from the Valley", while also leading a double life on radio and television as a minor actress and recording artist. The book describes Gibson's life during this period. She was subsequently tried and convicted of pimping and conspiracy in a high media profile trial and sent to prison. Gibson claimed in the book that public figures used her business. Included in the text is court data from her "Black Book", which was introduced as evidence at the trial.

The Strategic Air Command is about to introduce the B-52 Stratofortress bomber as its primary manned strategic weapon. Stationed at Castle Air Force Base, California, with the 329th Bomb Squadron, 20-year United States Air Force (USAF) veteran MSgt. Chuck Brennan dislikes his commanding officer, the "hotshot" Lt. Col. Jim Herlihy. Brennan has not trusted Herlihy since an incident in the Korean War. This career-long problem interferes with flight operations and aircraft support. When Herlihy starts dating Brennan's daughter Lois, tensions grow. Brennan demands his daughter break off the relationship.

Brennan, Herlihy, and others try to solve all the technical problems that plague the introduction of the B-52. On one top-secret test flight to Africa, after being refueled in mid-air, a control panel short-circuits, causing a fire. Herlihy orders everyone to bail out and ejects Brennan when he refuses to leave the bomber. After safely landing the burning aircraft at Castle AFB, Herlihy sends out search parties, who manage to recover all of the crew successfully, except for Brennan. Following a hunch, Herlihy eventually finds his chief aircraft mechanic, who is severely injured, and airlifts him by helicopter from remote back country to the base hospital.

While recovering, Brennan realizes that he was wrong about Herlihy, who risked his life to bring him home. He accepts that his daughter and his commanding officer should now reunite. Eventually, Brennan also has to choose between a high-paying civilian job and his US Air Force career. When told that his discharge papers are ready to sign, he decides to continue the career he loves in the USAF.

The plot features a series of interlocking stories. Each vignette is introduced with a character that had sex with someone in the previous segment. The movie opens with a seventeen-year-old prostitute, Lolita (Hilary Swank), who hangs around outside movie premiere with another teen prostitute in the hopes of getting a picture of her idol, movie star Peter Blaine (Peter Dobson). After her friend is forcibly dragged off by a jealous boyfriend, Lolita wanders around by herself in the streets of Los Angeles. Then she ends up performing a sexual favor for a man who ends up knocking her unconscious.

The man, a young African American named Angel, is engaged in questionable criminal activities. He later ends up trying to flee Los Angeles after he makes a major mistake during a drug deal. He takes Julie, a young waitress (Meta Golding), with him. After they have sex in a stolen car while driving through a car wash, Julie rethinks her plans to escape with Angel. After she notices that a car filled with men has been shadowing them, she runs out of the car. Angel is killed by the men.

Sometime later, Julie is working in an upscale restaurant as a waitress. She waits on Richard (Chad Lowe) who ends up sexually assaulting her in the men's room. In the next vignette, Richard has a tryst with Kathy (Natasha Gregson Wagner), his boss's wife. Kathy has a non-exclusive relationship with her husband, Bobby (Bill Cusack), who has a girlfriend on the side. Bobby is sexually propositioned by Patrick (Stephen Mailer), a sexually aggressive and drug addicted gay man, who is the closeted Blaine's boyfriend. The last vignette features a grief-stricken Blaine seeking sexual favors and companionship from Lolita, who is still sporting a bruise from her encounter with Angel.

''Seventeenth Summer'' is a book about a 17-year-old girl named Angeline "Angie" Morrow. It takes place in the early 1940s in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Angie gets asked out on her first date by local high school basketball star, Jack Duluth. They fall in love, knowing that Angie has to leave for college in Chicago in the fall and Jack is moving with his family to Oklahoma to help his uncle with the bakery business. Jack falls in love with Angie, but Angie never says that she loves him back, so the question is, does she? Although Jack spontaneously proposes to Angie at an end-of-summer party, they both know they are too young. The novel ends with a heartfelt goodbye at the train station: Jack gives Angie his class ring and Angie goes away to school, knowing she will never forget Jack or her seventeenth summer.

''Skyward Sword'' takes place at the beginning of the ''Zelda'' continuity: according to legend, three ancient Goddesses bestowed a great wish-granting power: the Triforce. The Demon King Demise, a deity who had conquered time itself, laid waste to much of the land seeking to take the Triforce. The Goddess Hylia gathered the survivors and sent them into the sky, allowing her to launch a full-scale offensive against Demise. She was victorious, but the land was severely damaged. Uncounted years later, the outcrop is known as Skyloft, and its people believe the surface below is a myth.'''Fi''': This is a tale you humans have passed down through uncounted generations... It tells of a war of unmatched scale and ferocity, the likes of which would never be seen again. One dark, fateful day, the earth cracked wide and malevolent forces rushed forth from the fissure. They mounted a brutal assault upon the surface people, driving the land into deep despair... They burnt forest to ash, choked the land’s sweet springs, and murdered without hesitation. They did all this in their lust to take the ultimate power protected by Her Grace, the goddess. The power she guarded was without equal. Handed down by gods of old, this power gave its holder the means to make any desire a reality. Such was the might of the ultimate power that the old ones placed in the care of the goddess. To prevent this great power from falling into the hands of the evil swarming the lands... The goddess gathered the surviving humans on an outcropping of earth. She sent it skyward, beyond the reach of the demonic hordes. Beyond even the clouds. With the humans safe, the goddess joined forces with the land dwellers and fought the evil forces, sealing them away. At last, peace was restored to the surface. This is a tale that you humans have told for many ages, generation to generation... But there are other legends, long hidden away from memory, that are intertwined with this tale. Now, a new legend bound to this great story stands ready to be revealed. A legend that will be forged by your own hand.

In the present, knight-in-training Link passes his final exam despite attempted interference by his class rival Groose, who considers himself a romantic rival for Link's childhood friend Zelda. After passing the exam and on a celebratory flight together, Zelda is whisked away below the clouds by a dark tornado. After recovering back on Skyloft, Link is led into the island's statue of Hylia to the Goddess Sword by Fi, the spirit of the sword who resides within it. Link draws the sword, showing himself to be the prophesied hero who will finally destroy Demise. Opening a way through the clouds to the surface, Link is guided by Fi to the Sealed Temple, where he meets an old woman who tells him to track Zelda: this leads Link across the regions of Faron Woods, Eldin Volcano, and the Lanayru Desert. While he catches up with Zelda, he is prevented from returning her to Skyloft by Impa, a young woman guarding and guiding Zelda. Link also encounters Ghirahim, a self-proclaimed Demon Lord working towards freeing Demise. At the Temple of Time in the Lanayru Desert, Link defends Zelda and Impa from Ghirahim, buying the two enough time to depart through a Gate of Time into the past, which Impa destroys as they pass through.

Returning to the Sealed Temple, Link is followed by Groose and the two end up on the surface together. Link then has to defeat the Imprisoned, a monstrous form of Demise attempting to reach the Sealed Temple, after the old woman shows him a second, albeit dormant, Gate of Time. With the Imprisoned defeated, Link sets out to strengthen the Goddess Sword by passing trials set by the ancient Goddesses and using their gifts to find Sacred Flames to purify and strengthen the blade so the Time Gate can be awakened. Returning to find the Imprisoned attempting to break free, Link reseals it with help from Groose. Activating the Gate of Time and traveling to the past, he finds Zelda and learns that she is the mortal reincarnation of Hylia; Hylia could not kill Demise and was too weakened from their battle to fend him off again, so she created the Goddess Sword and reincarnated as a mortal to find someone who would fulfill her duty by using the Triforce to wish Demise's destruction, as only mortals can use the artifact. Zelda then seals herself inside a crystal to strengthen Demise's seal, granting her power to the Goddess Sword and upgrading it into the Master Sword.'''Zelda''': The old gods created a supreme power that gave anyone who possessed it the ability to shape reality and fulfill any desire. They called it: The Triforce. In his thirst to make the world his own, Demise readied a massive army of monsters for war. He sought to take the Triforce for himself by force. [...] After a long and fierce battle, the goddess, Hylia, succeeded in sealing away Demise. However, soon after the demon king was imprisoned, it became clear that the seal would not hold long against his fearsome power. Hylia had suffered grave injuries in her battle with the demon king. She knew that if he broke free again, there would be no stopping him. And if the demon king were to free himself, it would mean the end of the world for all beings of this land. To put an end to the demon king, Hylia devised two separate plans and set them both into motion. First, she created Fi. She made the spirit that resides in your sword to serve a single purpose: to assist her chosen hero on his mission. Her second plan... was to abandon her divine form and transfer her soul to the body of a mortal. ...She made this sacrifice, as you have likely guessed so that the supreme power created by the old gods could one day be used. For while the supreme power of the Triforce was created by the gods, all of its power can never be wielded by one. Knowing this power was her last and only hope, the goddess gave up her divine powers and her immortal form. You've probably figured it out by now, haven't you, Link? You are the chosen hero, and I, Zelda... I am the goddess reborn as a mortal. We must stop [Demise] from freeing himself from the seal that imprisons him. At any cost... That is why I intend to remain here in this time and place... To sustain the seal as best as I can. As long as I continue this vigil, we may be able to prevent the demon king from fully reviving himself in our own time.

Link locates the Triforce on Skyloft and uses it to destroy Demise. With Demise dead, Zelda is freed, but Ghirahim arrives and kidnaps Zelda: though Demise is dead in the present, Ghirahim intends to use Zelda as a sacrifice to resurrect him in the past.'''Ghirahim''': My master may have perished in this age, but in the past, he lives yet! I'm taking the girl back through that gate to help me revive the demon king! Link pursues Ghirahim into the past and fights through his army. He then defeats Ghirahim, who turns out to be the spirit of Demise's sword but is unable to prevent Zelda from being used to reincarnate Demise's humanoid form. Groose guards Zelda's body while Link challenges Demise: Link triumphs and absorbs Demise's essence into the sword, but not before Demise curses Link and Zelda's bloodlines to be haunted by his reincarnated rage. '''Demise''': Extraordinary. You stand as a paragon of your kind, human. You fight like no man or demon I have ever known. Though this is not the end. My hate... never perishes. It is born anew in a cycle with no end! I will rise again! Those like you... Those who share the blood of the goddess and the spirit of the hero... They are eternally bound to this curse. An incarnation of my hatred shall ever follow your kind, dooming them to wander a blood-soaked sea of darkness for all time! To complete the sword's seal, Link drives it into a pedestal in the Sealed Temple, with Fi accepting eternal slumber as a result. Groose, Link and Zelda return to their time while Impa remains behind and destroys the Gate of Time, as she is a person of that time and must watch over the Master Sword.'''Impa''': Zelda, Your Grace, you possess the memories of the goddess. You must understand why that is not possible. I am a being of this age. My place is here. / '''Zelda''': I... I know that, but... / '''Impa''': You must return to your own time. I will take care of the gate once you have passed through. / '''Zelda''': I... can't do that. You and I have been through so much together. I don't want to leave you alone. Please, Impa. Come back with us. / '''Impa''': Zelda, at the command of the goddess, I passed through the Gate of Time, I did so to protect you and aid the fight to prevent the world's destruction. The last remnants of Demise are decaying slowly within the sword. Someone must stay behind to watch over this blade. His spirit must not reawaken. He must never be allowed to threaten the world again. In the present, the old woman greets them one last time before she dies and vanishes, revealing that she was Impa. The game ends with the surface now freely accessible to the residents of Skyloft, while Zelda decides to remain there to watch over the Triforce; she and Link together establish the kingdom of Hyrule.'''Zelda''': Look around us! As a child, I always dreamed of a world below. I wanted to see the surface with my own eyes and feel the land’s warm breeze on my skin. I... I think I want to live here. I always want to feel solid ground beneath my feet, see the clouds above my head, and watch over the Triforce. What about you, Link? What will you do now?

Act One begins with a chance encounter: Lil is a regular at Bluefish Cove, fishing on the coast. Eva is a fairly naïve housewife who has just left her husband, and has rented a cottage at Bluefish Cove on a whim. Lil feels an immediate attraction for Eva, but she misunderstands Lil’s flirting as friendliness, and Lil fails to realize that Eva is straight, inviting her to a party later that night. Bluefish Cove has become somewhat of a lesbian colony, a haven for Lil and her friends. Lil is mortified upon realizing Eva is not a lesbian, but Eva doesn’t take any hints and shows up at the party.

To soften the blow, Lil convinces her friends to pretend they are all straight, at least for the party. When Eva arrives, she and Kitty – who is terrified of being outed – stumble through awkward dialogue until Donna and Sue arrive. Not aware that they are supposed to be pretending to be straight, Donna and Sue exclaim that they are lesbians - and that everyone at the cove is a lesbian. Eva realizes her misunderstanding to everyone’s extreme embarrassment and leaves. Later, she returns to Lil and their attraction is actualized – they begin an affair, but Lil conceals her cancer from Eva.

Act Two jumps to midsummer. Lil’s cancer has significantly progressed, and she collapses in agonizing pain. Refusing to undergo any further treatment or have any more organs removed, Lil has accepted that this summer at Bluefish Cove will be her last. It is a crushing realization to Lil that this coincides with her first real love, Eva. Still, Eva refuses to be pushed away by Lil’s tough exterior and promises to spend the rest of Lil’s time by her side.

The last scene shows Lil’s friends mourning her recent death. A number of commitments have been made in her honor – Kitty decides to reopen her OBGYN practice, Eva considers renting Lil’s cabin next summer…all of the friends feel Lil’s loss, but resolve to maintain their connection to Bluefish Cove, Lil’s favorite place.

Set in the 1930s, Saucy Marianne Madison, bored with her routine life, falls for dashing con artist Valentine Corliss, who has come to her small town looking for fresh marks to swindle. She has many suitors including the desirable Dr. Lindley and the portly Mr. Trumbull. In a chance encounter she meets Valentine Corliss while out on a date with Dr. Lindley and feigns to know Valentine and leaves her date to head home with Valentine.

Corliss soon charms her into faking her well-respected father's name on a letter of endorsement which he presents to a small group of local merchants, who willingly give him money. Corliss then prepares his escape, but not before conning Marianne to come away with him with the promise of marriage.

Her sister Laura is sweet and unassuming and in love with Dr. Lindley who does not return her affections. Her younger brother secrets her personal diary professing her feelings to Dr. Lindley when he visits the house to look after her father who has collapsed after being berated by Marianne for not supporting Valentine without verifying him. Dr. Lindley is flustered and excuses himself, Laura burns her diary and with it her hopes of marrying him.

Meanwhile, after spending a night together in his Columbus hotel, Valentine abandons Marianne.

Angry, ashamed, no longer a maiden—and unmarried—she returns home and announces to her jilted fiancé Dr. Lindley that she will now marry him. But she has toyed with him enough, and he informs her that he has fallen in love with her shy younger sister Laura and no longer returns her affections.

But all is not lost. After confessing to her father and the duped investors, Marianne accepts wealthy but portly Wade Trumbull's marriage proposal. Trumbull bails her father completely out of his debt and during their first year of marriage Marianne comes to be genuinely fond of him.

The novel is set in the fictional Massachusetts town of Durham shortly after World War I. The Pentland family is rich and part of the upper class, but their world is rapidly changing. The old Congregational church the Pentlands long favored has disbanded as more and more WASPs have left Durham, replaced by immigrant Roman Catholics with very different religious customs. The Pentlands once ruled upper-class society in Durham, and still do. But even upper-class society is changing: Many of the "old line" families have either died off or moved away, while many ''nouveaux riches'' have moved into the area who do not share the same old-fashioned values and observe the same old-fashioned norms of behavior that the Pentlands do.

The patriarch of the family is old John Pentland. He lives in Pentland Manor, a large and old-fashioned manor house, with his sister, Cassie. Cassie is a fussy, moralistic, snobbish old maid who sticks her nose into everybody's business and who is firmly determined to see that the Pentlands uphold the "old ways." Her companion is Miss Peavey, who lacks intelligence but in all other ways is as moralistic and disapproving as Aunt Cassie. John's son and heir, Anson, married the wealthy but low-status Scotch-Irish girl Olivia. The couple have a son, John (nicknamed "Jack") and a daughter, Sybil. The Pentlands say that they can trace their family heritage back to the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Anson is writing a book about the family. John Pentland's niece, Sabine, is the black sheep of the family. Her parents died, and her home was lost to creditors. She became Aunt Cassie's ward. But twenty years ago, she married a poor, low-born man named Callender and fled with him to Europe. John Pentland acts as if he is widowed, but about a quarter of the way through the novel the reader realizes that his wife is not dead. For the past two or three decades, Pentland's wife Agnes has been insane, and now lives in an upstairs room in a far wing of the house. She is cared for by a nurse, Miss Egan. Every morning, John Pentland visits her and speaks with her despite her insanity. Afterward, he visits Mrs. Soames, a long-time friend of his wife's, and plays cards. His attention to the widowed Mrs. Soames is unseemly (so Aunt Cassie says), but no one can openly criticize him for it as John Pentland is the patriarch of the family.

The novel is set during the early autumn. Olivia is almost 40 years old, and she increasingly feels trapped and stifled by her life. She and her husband have a loveless marriage (they have not shared rooms for years), and their son Jack is constantly ill. The novel opens as Olivia's daughter, Sybil, returns home from a boarding school in Paris. Sabine Callender and her daughter, Therese, have also returned to Durham and are spending the summer at Pentland Manor. Therese is a débutante, and is being "introduced" to Durham upper-class society. Aunt Cassie and Miss Peavey repeatedly criticize Sabine for being a flapper and for the scandal she brought down on the family. Also visiting Durham that fall is Jean, the son of a Frenchman who married an American woman and who Sybil met in Paris. Sybil is in love with Jean, and creates scandal by pursuing him relentlessly.

Also newly arrived in Durham is Michael O'Hara, an Irish immigrant who has achieved wealth and political prominence in Boston. He bought Sabine's former home and is refurbishing it. Aunt Cassie and Miss Peavey are horrified by the ''arriviste'' and constantly snub him. Anson is upset by the attentions O'Hara lavishes on his wife and daughter. O'Hara soon tells Sabine that he has fallen in love with Olivia, and Olivia reciprocates. O'Hara says he is willing to sacrifice everything just to love her. Anson Pentland, meanwhile, refuses to give Olivia a divorce for fear it will ruin his career and the family's good name.

Several events happen in quick succession: Jack dies, but only Olivia is there to comfort him at the end. Olivia discovers the Pentland groom is having a secret affair with someone in the house. (The reader realizes it is the nurse, Miss Egan.) The night Jack dies, Olivia runs into a momentarily-lucid Mrs. Pentland, who tells her that there is a secret in the attic which could not only destroy but also free the family. (She is quickly hushed by Miss Egan, and soon falls back into muddled incomprehensibility.) Sybil marries Jean, and Olivia is convinced her daughter will find the happiness that she has never had.

Several secrets are revealed by the end of the novel, which mark the Pentlands as hypocrites. Olivia learns that John Pentland loves Mrs. Soames (whether he has consummated his affair with her is unclear), and has not divorced his insane wife out of duty. His daily visits with his wife are not performed out of love (as everyone assumes) but out of a desire to divert attention from his affair with Mrs. Soames. Olivia comes to believe that Mrs. Pentland's ravings about a secret in the attic were not madness. She soon discovers a packet of letters that reveals that the Pentland family's ancestor was a bastard child who stole the name from an aristocratic family that had died shortly after arriving in the New World. She suspects Anson knows the truth, and is lying about the family in his book.

John Pentland, broken-hearted at the death of his grandson, changes his will and leaves all his money to Olivia. He commits suicide by riding his horse into a deep ravine and falling to his death. Olivia rejects Michael O'Hara's love, realizing that she is the only person strong enough to hold the Pentland family together through the coming years of immense change. John Pentland has given her the chance, through her control of the family fortune, to force the Pentlands to adapt rather than die off like so many other upper-class families have. By leaving with Michael, Olivia believes that she would be taking the easy way out and actually cheapening herself.

Salud (Bud Spencer) and Plata (Terence Hill) eke out a living as bush pilots in South America. Beside carrying a few passengers and a small amount of cargo, their most lucrative activity is in faking aircraft crashes, on behalf of Salud's brother (Alexander Allerson), who will be able to collect the insurance money.

Flying over the Andes on another flight, the two pilots crash for real in the middle of the piranha-infested jungle. In a native village, they meet Matto (Cyril Cusack), an old man who takes Salud to see a mountain and tells him the story of three friends who killed themselves. There, the duo find an emerald mining operation run by the unscrupulous Mr. Ears (Reinhard Kolldehoff). Ears dictates prices on the black market, uses thugs to keep out competitors, and keeps his workers as slave labor.

Plata and Salud decide they will confront Ears, using aircraft to deliver their goods, and offering the natives a much better life. Wanting to fly Matto to Salvador, where he would live in a modern city, Plata and Salud take the old man and his dog along with them, but he passes away on the flight. Plata finds a large emerald tied to a cord that Matto wore.

In Salvador, the two inept crooks try to cash in on their find, but end up in jail. After a successful breakout, the pair find themselves pitted against the ruthless Ears, but in the end, right prevails.

Skeeter is a 14-year-old orphan who lives with his uncle Jesse in a one-room shack in the swamps of the Pascagoula River in Mississippi. He has heard the sound of a strange animal in the swamp near their shack, and one summer evening he convinces his uncle to help him go out and find it. When they do, they see it is a small animal with short red and white fur that makes a chuckling yodel sound and cleans itself like a cat. Jesse is unsure what the animal is, but Skeeter is convinced it is a dog.

The next day, Jesse's friend Alpheus "Cash" Evans, owner of the general store in the nearby village of Lystra, comes to help Skeeter and Jesse track down the animal. With Evans is his tracking dog Gabe and two vicious hog dogs named Bark and Bellow whom he keeps leashed. Evans releases Gabe at the spot where Skeeter and Jesse saw the animal, and Gabe eventually picks up its scent and starts tracking it. As they listen to Gabe tracking the animal it becomes clear that it is outrunning Gabe. It bursts into the clearing, and Evans releases Bark and Bellow. When the animal stands its ground and fights back against the hog dogs, Evans calls them off and allows it to escape. He acknowledges that Skeeter was right - the animal is a dog.

The following day, Skeeter sets out to tame the dog. He is able to locate it, and it proves to be a friendly female who allows him to leash her and bring her with him to the shack. Jesse convinces Skeeter to let her off her leash, and she remains with them. Skeeter decides to name the dog Lady.

Skeeter and Jesse take Lady out with them, and when Lady flushes a covey of quail Skeeter becomes determined to train her as a bird dog. However, Lady's behavior makes it clear that she is someone else's dog, and Skeeter fears that Evans will discover who her real owner is.

Skeeter is horrified when Lady chases and kills a water rat, something no true bird dog will stoop to. He ties the half-eaten rat around her neck, and brings her back to the shack. There, he find Evans visiting with an English Setter he has just purchased. Evans had planned to give his new dog to Jesse and Skeeter to train (for which he intended to pay them three dollars a week), but seeing Lady with her rat causes him to change his mind. When Skeeter apologizes afterwards, Jesse shrugs it off and tells him to concentrate on training Lady.

Within a few months, Skeeter has trained Lady to cast and point like a proper bird dog. A visiting Evans sees Lady pointing at a clump of sage fifty yards away and refuses to believe she has detected birds from so far away. Jesse wagers the cost of a sawblade Evans had given him on credit that Lady is indeed pointing birds. Skeeter is privately dubious, but Jesse wins his bet when a covey of quail break from the sage.

Evans is impressed, and he spreads the word about Skeeter's remarkable dog. In time, Evans hears from a traveling salesman out of Mobile, Alabama that a kennel in Connecticut lost a Basenji near Pascagoula. The description of the lost dog, named Isis of the Blue Nile, matches Lady. A sorrowful Evans tells Jesse, who passes the word on to Skeeter. When Lady responds to the name Isis, Skeeter knows he has the lost Basenji, and decides to return her to her rightful owner. A wire is sent to the kennel, and a man named Walden Grover flies down from Connecticut to take possession of Lady.

Skeeter himself must put Lady in the crate in Grover's pickup truck, then watch as Grover drives off with her. Evans then asks Skeeter to finish training his English Setter, and the boy accepts. With the $100 reward Grover gave him, the boy buys his toothless uncle a set of false teeth, and puts a down payment on a 20 gauge shotgun for himself.

The episode begins with Eddie staggering drunkenly into the flat at 1:30am. He went out four and a half hours earlier with £1.75 to buy two fish suppers for himself and Richie, but instead of going to the fish and chip shop, he went to the chemist and spent the money on cheap Old Spice, which he drank. While trying to find alcohol around the flat, Eddie drinks a bottle of bleach, and passes out. Richie cannot revive him, and so attaches a noose to his leg and hoists him upstairs to bed. Richie goes to his bedroom to masturbate.

A few seconds later, Richie hears a window smashing; coming out of his bedroom he hear more objects breaking downstairs. Richie wakes Eddie up and says that the burglars might be looking for drugs, so Eddie suggests throwing Lemsip down the stairs for them. Eddie goes back into his bedroom and brings a service revolver back out with him, and goes to shoot the lock off the hatch into the attic, until Richie asks why don't they just use the key and tells Eddie that the burglars will hear him shooting his gun. There is no ladder because the police have confiscated it when the nurses moved in next door earlier, so Richie has to climb on Eddie's back to reach. Richie falls off Eddie's back, and down the stairs, landing on the burglar (played by Paul Bradley).

Richie and Eddie tie the burglar to a chair using Sellotape, and try to interrogate him. Unfortunately, due to a lack of training on interrogation, Richie calls the police instead, but puts the phone down halfway through when Eddie finds the burglar's bag, which is full of silverware. Richie tries ending the phone call by claiming that he has been sleep-telephoning again. They plan to sell the silver and make a new life in the Bahamas, and are walking out of the flat when they realise that something must be done with the burglar. Richie sends Eddie onto the roof to get some poisoned pigeon pellets. While outside, he didn't notice that a second burglar is on the outer wall of the flat. Eddie falls through the glass roof but gets some pellets, which Eddie puts into one of the cups of tea he is making. They take the tea to the burglar but Eddie cannot remember which cup contains the poison, so, after Richie punishes Eddie by shoving a pencil up his nose, they force the burglar to drink all of them. The burglar promptly vomits. The police knock on the door.

Richie answers the door to the police while Eddie tries to hide the burglar. Richie claims that he telephoned the police in his sleep, and tries to close the door, but the police officers force their way past Richie into the flat. The police are suspicious about the state of the flat, but Richie says that he caused the mess by "sleep-vomiting". One of the officers approaches Eddie and points out that his paper is upside down and Eddie then says "So are my eyes". The officers find the shattered glass and Richie says they have been "sleep-glazing" again. Richie then throws insults to the officers and says that he has just been "sleep-slanging" again. The officers leave, after hitting Richie on the head with a truncheon for wasting police time. Eddie reveals that he had hidden the burglar by Sellotaping him to the ceiling. While they are attempting to get the burglar down by hitting him with a broom, the second burglar comes in through the window, and knocks Richie and Eddie unconscious with a club.

When Richie and Eddie wake up, they are stripped to their underwear. The room has been stripped bare except for two chairs that the pair are tied to. They have mouse traps positioned in front of their genitalia, and Eddie has a note attached to his knee. The episode ends when Eddie reads the note, which says "Sue Carpenter". This drops their guard, causing the mousetraps to trigger.

In 1860, Victor Frankenstein after creating the monster together with his partner Zuckel, the monster attacks the assistant and falls from a cliff. Assuming the monster is dead, Victor returns to his wife Elizabeth and daughter Emily. A police inspector named Bellbeau investigates some mysterious mutilations killings, and Victor is blackmailed by his former assistant, who lost an eye in his fight with the monster.

Victor grows more and more paranoid, having terrifying nightmares about his creature, believing him to be pure evil. The monster survived his fall, and stole clothes and food from the villagers, whom he killed in his confusion, including Zuckel. Victor's daughter, Emily, spends time with her grandfather, a wise blind man who warned his son Victor about his experiments. When the monster finds his way to the grandfather's cabin, he becomes good friends with Emily and the old man, because they can see that he only wants to be loved, and they give him the name Franken.

Victor wanted to rid himself of all the evidence of his experiments, so he decided to hunt the monster down and shoot him. From Emily, the monster learns about God. When a fire breaks out in the woods, Emily's mother is killed, and Franken can only rescue Emily's grandfather. When Philip tries to shoot Franken, he is accidentally killed by the monster.

Emily thinks Franken did it on purpose and shoots his hand, and Franken is once again alone. He seeks refuge in a church, where gazes upon the crucifix, and notices that both Christ and himself has a hole though their hands, he breaks into tears, and begs god for forgiveness. Victor believes that his creation killed his wife, he finds him the church, but Franken escapes.

The grandfather tells Emily that it was not Franken's fault that her mother died, and she sets out to find him. At the mountains, Inspector Bellbeau and his police force open fire on the monster. Emily comes to his rescue, and for the first time, Franken speaks her name. Tired of a life he never wanted, the monster commits suicide by throwing himself off of a cliff. Victor, driven mad by all the terror he caused, shoots himself in the chest. Inspector Bellbeau visits Franken's grave, as the red scarf Emily gave the monster blows away in the wind while Emily now lives with her grandfather.

The play, based on true events, is set in 1960 London. In his declining years, Orson Welles is directing a production of Eugène Ionesco's ''Rhinoceros'', starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Plowright. Olivier is fresh from his triumphant theatrical portrayal of vaudevillian Archie Rice and is about to reprise the role in the film adaptation of John Osborne's ''The Entertainer''. He and Plowright are in the early stages of a romantic liaison; Olivier's tumultuous marriage to Vivien Leigh is all but ended. Critic Kenneth Tynan also figures in the plot, which debates the merits of stage versus screen, the internal struggle that theatrical performers endure when contemplating a leap to films, and the ways that the studio system frustrated the careers of individual artists.

It is a study of theatrical egos, each of the protagonists living more on the stage than in real life, each one feeling insecure while jockeying for power.

Bobby and Scott, two young men in their late-twenties living in New York City, are struggling to make careers out of their artistic dreams. Bobby is a struggling writer and Scott is a struggling musician. Despite being close friends, their competitiveness with each other gets in the way. Neither of them are productive because they don't believe in themselves and both share incredibly high standards for their work. Bobby casually dates a New York University student, but struggles to look past their age difference.

Bobby meets an old lover, Deirdre, who is headed to Los Angeles, and begs Bobby to take care of her dog while she's away. Bobby agrees but only in exchange for a sexual favor upon her return. Bobby soon loses Deirdre's dog and has a chance encounter with a cashier at a clothing store.

Later, when Bobby makes the mistake of sharing an idea for the opening of his new screenplay with Scott, Scott tells their mutual friend, Hart, a playwright. Hart steals the idea, incorporating it in his new play "Death of a Banker," a campy morality tale starring Anthony Rapp about the September 11 attacks, which is set to be performed off-Broadway later that month.

Shy loner Evie (Taylor) hears musician Drumstrings Casey (Pearce) on the radio one night and becomes infatuated with him. She pursues him, carving his name (sadly, backwards) in her forehead with broken glass, and eventually they meet and then marry. They both still struggle to make something of their lives.

Jessie Holden is invited by her boyfriend, Kevin, and two friends, Freddy and Marie, to spend one Halloween night at Santa Mira Hospital, abandoned years ago due to a fire. Their friend, Emmett, is preparing the props to scare Jessie when he and his dog, Dutchess, are attacked by a ghost. Meanwhile, Allan is searching for his sister, Meg, who went missing with her friend, Caitlin, in the hospital a few days ago. His father's old friend, former actor-turned-cop Arlo Ray Baines, initially refuses his plea to accompany him to the hospital, but changes his mind and trails him anyway. Allan finds Dutchess horribly mutilated, but she suddenly rises up and attacks him until he shoots and blows her to bits. Upon entering the third floor, he reunites with Meg, who says that she got separated from Caitlin.

Arriving at the hospital, the four friends begin searching for Emmett. When they are alone, Kevin cheats on Jessie by having sex with Marie. Meanwhile, Jessie, who is revealed to be spiritually aware, tells Freddy the story of her late mother, who died due to disease years ago but is still calling her every Halloween. The two stumble upon a terrified Emmett in the locker room. When the five meet up, Emmett suddenly begins attacking them. Allan and Meg arrive in time and Meg uses Allan's gun to shoot Emmett to bits. She tells the group that everyone who die in the hospital are reanimated; Emmett and Dutchess are among them. A paranoid Kevin, suspecting that Marie is becoming a ghost, grabs Allan's gun and shoots her dead.

Since Meg refuses to use the elevator, the group split up, with Jessie, Kevin, and Freddy taking Marie's body to the elevator and Allan and Meg using the stairs. The former three are transported to the third floor, where Jessie has a series of premonitions involving a child murderer named Jacob. Jacob was committed to the hospital's third floor that was specifically reserved for mental patients. Despite this, he managed to murder a little girl in the hospital's premises anyway. When he tried to run away by burning the hospital as distraction, Nurse Russell threw away the door keys, trapping both of them in the fire. Jacob has been killing and reanimating people in the hospital so he can possess them, but all have failed so far. While inspecting the floor, Kevin goes missing.

Jessie and Freddy reunite with Allan, Meg, and Arlo, who has killed a reanimated Caitlin and decided to save them all. They find Kevin trapped by the little girl's spirit and manage to free him, but in the process, Freddy is revealed to have died and was reanimated, forcing Arlo to shoot him. The rest try to escape through the stairs, however, Jessie eventually realizes that until they are able to beat Jacob, he will never allow them to leave. To do it, she impersonates Nurse Russell, intending to scare him from the living world. The plan works. Nevertheless, Jacob uses a reanimated Marie to kill Kevin. Kevin is reanimated, but shows no symptom of a normal ghost. It is revealed that he is directly possessed by Jacob, who finds Kevin, a sociopath, to be a perfect vessel. At the same time, Meg shows herself to be a reanimation; she had died alongside Caitlin back then. However, she is possessed by Russell and retains her control. Russell tells the group to leave while she confronts and successfully subdues Jacob.

Jessie, Allan, and Arlo leave the premises safely, finding out that it is already the noon of All Saint's Day outside. Back at the hospital, Jacob vows to escape, but Russell casually states that he will have to get through her first before turning off the lights.

Set in puritan Kent in 1657, the story focuses on the intrigues of Sir Marmaduke de Chevasse "as stiff a Roundhead as ever upheld my Lord Protector and his Puritanic government", who is determined to secure the vast fortunes of his lovely ward, Lady Sue, for himself.

Sue presents a girlish figure; she is young, alert and vigorous. The charm of her own youth and freshness even means she looks dainty and graceful in clothes that disfigure her elders. She enjoys the adulation which her appearance guarantees, laughing and chattering with the women and teasing the men.

She does of course have plenty of admirers, including young Richard Lambert who worships her with protective reverence.

Sir Marmaduke who has plans to woo and win Lady Sue disguised as the exiled French Prince of Orléans, resents this faithful espionage and lays a plot to lure young Lambert to a gaming-house in London. Richard knows that gambling is an illicit pastime and that he is breaking the law, but is compelled to take his seat at the table by his employer.

Richard is then duped into taking part in a brawl and is summarily arrested leaving the way open for Marmaduke to carry out his cowardly deception and he soon tricks Sue into marrying him.

Sir Marmaduke persuades his widowed sister-in-law to abet him in this plot, in which she unwittingly disgraces one of her long lost sons and finds the other murdered by the villain.

Though set in a completely different kind of background, the plot has some resemblance with the Sherlock Holmes story "A Case of Identity".

Mr. Artur Sammler, Holocaust survivor, intellectual, and occasional lecturer at Columbia University in 1960s New York City, is a "registrar of madness," a refined and civilized being caught among people crazy with the promises of the future (moon landings, endless possibilities). "Sorry for all and sore at heart," he observes how greater luxury and leisure have only led to more human suffering.

To Mr. Sammler—who by the end of the novel has found the compassionate consciousness necessary to bridge the gap between himself and his fellow beings—a good life is one in which a person does what is "required of him". To know and to meet the "terms of the contract" was as true a life as one could live.

Crystal, the only daughter of the old, long-exiled haughty royalist, the Comte de Cambray, is on the eve of betrothal to de Marmont, (secretly an ardent Bonapartist).

Bobby Clyffurde, the Englishman, who is in love with Crystal, confronts Victor de Marmont about why he is pretending to be a royalist. De Marmont replies that he has never led the Comte to suppose anything, the Comte has merely taken de Marmont’s political convictions for granted.

As if two potential suitors weren’t enough, Crystal has yet another admirer, Maurice de St. Genis, whose impecunious state (her father sees him as a penniless, out-at-elbows, good for nothing) has precluded him from obtaining her hand in marriage.

However at the moment of Crystal’s betrothal to de Marmont, Maurice finally gets his revenge upon his rival. Once the guests have assembled for the ceremony, there is a disturbance from the end of the corridor and St. Genis enters the room, his rough clothes and muddy boots providing a contrast to the immaculate get-up of the Comte’s guests. Looking flushed and clutching his cane he announces that he has only come to avert the awful catastrophe that is about to fall on the Comte and his family.

At the young man’s ominous words, M. le Comte goes pale and demands to know what catastrophe could be worse than twenty years of exile?

"''An alliance with a traitor, M. le Comte''" he replies.

St. Genis goes on to accuse his rival of pinning Napoleon’s proclamation on the walls of Grenoble. Yet, rather than deny the accusation de Marmont defends his actions with fervor, pulling a copy of the declaration from his pocket and waving it at the assembled group while shouting “Vive l’Empereur”.

Despite the sudden rupture of her engagement, Crystal‘s heart is by no means broken, but it is not St. Genis who in the end wins her love, for we are left with the understanding that it is Clyffurde, the English merchant who eventually overrides the prejudices of the old French count.

Clyffurde laughingly asks Crystal’s aunt, Mme. la Duchesse “''Do you think that if I promise never to buy or sell gloves again, but in future to try and live like a gentleman-he will consent?”''

A village in rural Thailand is celebrating Loy Krathong, when the festivities are disrupted by the descent of a spaceship. Ray beams are fired from the craft and all the village's women find they are suddenly pregnant. Only a few hours later the women give birth. The alien offspring have the power to kill by just staring and they have an insatiable appetite for raw meat.

The book tells the story of Skafloc, elven-fosterling and originally son of Orm the Strong. The story begins with the marriage of Orm the Strong and Aelfrida of the English. Orm kills a witch's family on the land and later half-converts to Christianity, but quarrels with the local priest and sends him off the land. Meanwhile, an elf named Imric, with the help of the witch, seeks to capture the newly born son of Orm. In his place, Imric leaves a changeling called Valgard. The real son of Orm is taken away to elven lands and named Skafloc by the elves who raise him. As the story continues, both Skafloc and Valgard have significant roles in the war between the trolls and the elves.

The film traces the progress of three Marines on shore leave in San Francisco during World War II. One of the men, Nico (Jeffrey Hunter), is a seasoned, decorated platoon sergeant; the second, Frankie (Robert Wagner), is a perennial goof-off, who drinks too much; and the third, Alan (Bradford Dillman), is an intellectual from a wealthy family. He has joined the Marines, despite his father's protests.

Nico proposes and marries his pregnant girlfriend Andrea (Hope Lange). A drunken Frankie fights with Charlie Stanton (Murvyn Vye), his hateful stepfather, who thinks him a coward. The wealthy Alan catches his fiancée, Sue (Dana Wynter), with another man.

Lorraine (Sheree North), who is in love with Frankie, has joined the military as a WAVE. She introduces his friend Alan to her roommate Kalai (France Nuyen), a nurse of Hawaiian-French heritage. They all go to Lorraine's apartment, where Frankie first passes out, then wakes up screaming at the thought of returning to the war. Lorraine decides to leave him. Kalai professes her love for Alan.

The three men return to the Pacific front. Frankie initially shows cowardice and Nico slaps some sense into him. Later, Frankie saves Alan and is honored for his heroism. Alan becomes ill with dengue fever and when a wounded Japanese soldier calls out to him for help, he tries to give the Japanese soldier some water but Nico shoots the wounded soldier and reveals to Alan and the other marines that a grenade was hidden under the wounded soldier as a trap. Alan then begins to question the futility of the war. When an advancing enemy tank threatens the platoon, Nico singlehandedly blows up the tank, but dies from his wounds.

Back home, Kalai visits Sue in the hospital after she tries to commit suicide. Suffering from alcohol withdrawal, Sue dies during the visit.

The war ends and Alan returns to Kalai and becomes a professor at the local university. Frankie, now promoted to sergeant, brings Nico's last love letter home to Andrea, who has given birth to their child. Andrea tells Frankie, who has decided to stay in the Marines that she would like to see him again.

Background

In the mythology of the series, Earth is one of countless worlds in the multiverse, created from the primordial Storytime by the dreaming of a being known as Lux, the First Dreamer. Earth, or "Stark" as it is known in the game, is a world of science existing in Balance with its "Twin World" of magic, Arcadia, split off and separated from it by the impassable Divide twelve millennia ago. The game takes place in 2220 CE by Stark's reckoning, and its chief antagonist is Brian Westhouse, a Starkian trapped in Arcadia, who plans to return home by forcibly reuniting the Twin Worlds with the power of the Undreaming, the destructive counterpart to Lux. To strengthen the Undreaming with dream energy, Westhouse, as "the Prophet", had conspired with the corrupt officials of the Azadi Empire in Arcadia and an ambitious Starkian scientist Helena Chang to build a giant dream-storing Engine in the recently conquered Arcadian city-state of Marcuria and to imbue it with the dream energy stolen from Stark by Chang's lucid dream-inducing invention, the "Dreamachines". Chang had also secretly planned to instead use the stolen dream energy to reshape reality itself with the help of her genetically engineered "Dreamers", i.e. humans with powers equal to Lux. She had deemed her first artificial Dreamer a failure, however, and the girl was instead raised by Chang's partner Gabriel Castillo as his own daughter, Zoë.

In ''Dreamfall'', a 20-year-old Zoë had learned that Chang's sponsors, the Japan-based megacorporation WatiCorp, planned to brainwash Dreamachine users in a bid for world domination, but after failing to stop them, she was put into a coma by Chang. At the same time in Arcadia, an elite Azadi operative Kian Alvane investigated the corruption in Marcuria but was charged with high treason and imprisoned. In ''Chapters'', their stories finally converge in Book Five, where they also tie in with the arc of the third playable character, Saga, which, until then, is mainly told in the Interludes.

Synopsis

After putting Zoë in a coma, Chang brought her body to a secret lab in Mumbai, while her consciousness became trapped in Storytime along with millions of Dreamachine addicts'. As Zoë attempts to wake herself up, she instead creates a secondary physical body for herself in Stark, which has no memories of her adventures and travels to Europolis to start a new life. While both Wati and Chang's agents shadow her every move, Zoë becomes an activist for the upcoming elections, but soon discovers that Wati has bought off most parties, including her own. They then tarnish the only uncorrupted party by manipulating one of its activists and Zoë's friend Nela into a suicide bombing. The blast injures Zoë but also brings back some of her memories. When Zoë attempts to use a Dreamachine to recover the rest, her secondary body disappears from Stark and appears in Arcadia. There, she reunites with her talking bird sidekick Crow and embarks on a journey to find the dreaming Lux. After merging with and gaining Lux's powers, Zoë's real body wakes up in Mumbai, where she reunites with her biological parents. However, Chang manages to sedate her, still intending to exploit her abilities.

At the same time in Arcadia, one of the Azadi empresses arrives to Marcuria with General Hami and Mother Utana, Kian's mentor and stepmother, respectively. Afraid of Kian's confessions, the Prophet's accomplices attempt to execute him without a trial, but the anti-Azadi rebels break him out to recruit him to their cause. On one of Kian's missions for the rebels, he bonds with a young Dolmari urchin named Bip, who helps him uncover an imminent raid on the magical ghetto. The rebels are unable to prevent it, however, and Bip, along with many other magicals, is deported to a remote death camp. Kian mounts a rescue mission and witnesses his country's atrocities against the magical peoples, using this evidence to convince Hami to bring down the Marcurian officials before they activate the Engine. Upon return, they rally the surviving rebels and a few of Hami's own men to attack it. Crow, back from his journey with Zoë, shows Kian a secret passage to the Engine control room, but before he can sabotage it, Mother Utana reveals herself as another agent of the Prophet and fatally wounds him. The Prophet then murders Crow and activates the Engine.

The third storyline begins in the prologue, where April Ryan, who had perished in ''Dreamfall'', is reincarnated as Saga in the House of All Worlds, a mystical location between all worlds and timelines of the multiverse. Saga's mother disappears soon after her birth, and despite her father's best efforts to suppress her inherited world-traveling powers, Saga runs away from home at the age of 14 to wander the multiverse and, like April, grows up to become a habitual fulfiller of various prophecies. Acting on one such prophecy, she travels to Arcadia just in time to heal Kian with an alchemical concoction after Utana and the Prophet leave him to bleed out. Zoë, in the meantime, finds herself in Storytime again, where Crow's ghost helps her to piece together the Prophet's plan and leaves for the afterlife together with April's spirit. Now fully in control of her and Lux's powers, Zoë awakens in the Mumbai lab just in time to see Saga open a portal to the Engine control room. Zoë passes her discoveries on to Kian, then guides a repentant Azadi engineer through sabotaging the Engine, while Kian kills the Prophet's henchman Roper Klacks to unleash the Undreaming, which the Prophet had trapped within his body. As it possesses the Prophet and flings him to Stark, Zoë reunites it with Lux and thus restores the Balance between creation and destruction, before passing out from exhaustion. In Marcuria, the corrupt Azadi officials are killed by the rebels, but Utana escapes with the empress. Saga finds Crow's body and carries it off to another world.

A week later, Kian leaves Marcuria to pursue Utana, but is intercepted by Saga who, acting on another prophecy, demands to join him and also that he adopts her, foreshadowing the major role they both will play in the War of the Balance that is to precede the looming reunification of the Twin Worlds. Zoë, meanwhile, awakens in a hospital and reconciles with Gabriel. Five years later, Kian and Saga look over the Azadi capital, ready to face their destiny, while Zoë enjoys a peaceful life in Casablanca, pregnant with a baby. In the epilogue, many years after the Twin Worlds were reunited, an elderly Saga, now Lady Alvane, reminisces about her travels and chats with the reincarnated Crow, before settling down in her armchair in the House of All Worlds to greet April Ryan, mirroring the same scene that occurred in the original ''The Longest Journey''.

Themes

The subtitle "Chapters" refers to the theme of the game, which Tørnquist describes as "chapters of life" and "life in chapters", such as birth, life, death. The game's plot covers roughly a year of the protagonists' lives, beginning in spring and ending in winter. The narration is divided into thirteen chapters (like the previous games) or five "books", themed around a particular phase of life, e.g. birth (or rebirth) in the first book. Originally, three books, corresponding to summer, autumn, and winter, were planned, but this number grew to accommodate the expanded story.

Another topic of the game is the stories as such and how they become reality. In the game, the realm of "Storytime" is "the place where every story begins, and where dreams come to life", and the developers cite the Australian Aboriginal mythology as inspiration. The character Helena Chang outright identifies Storytime with the Aboriginal Dreamtime in the in-game dialogue, while another, Saga, explains her world-traveling powers with the use of songlines, another concept from Aboriginal beliefs.

''The Longest Journey'' series as a whole is rooted in a predeterministic philosophy, which compares life to a journey with a set destination: a person may choose their course freely but will ultimately arrive to a "predestined place". In ''Dreamfall Chapters'', this philosophy is expressed in the player characters' ability to make story-altering decisions, which, however, have no effect upon the ending.

The megacity of Europolis is presented as "Europe [...] finally paying the price for hundreds of years of imperialism, reactionary politics, wasteful spending and industrialisation". In an interview, Ragnar Tørnquist said that "there's definitely a political element to ''Dreamfall Chapters'', as there was to ''Dreamfall'' as well."

Daigoro is a monster who was orphaned after the military used intercontinental missiles to kill his mother while she tried to protect him. Only one man stood against that decision. He pitied the infant, and took it as his own and raised him in Japan. But Daigoro grew too large and too expensive to feed. The man made Daigoro an icon for a business. Elsewhere Goliath, a monster who had been trapped in an asteroid for a long time, went to Earth and battled Daigoro. Goliath eventually defeated Daigoro by striking him with lightning from his horn. Goliath then left to pillage the world, leaving Daigoro to die. Daigoro recovered and practiced daily for his next battle against Goliath. After an intense fight, Daigoro breathed his fire ray and managed to defeat Goliath. The humans then grabbed Goliath while he was still weak and strapped him to a rocket and launched him into space.

In 1939, Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer leaves behind his pregnant wife to join Peter Aufschnaiter in a team attempting to summit Nanga Parbat in British-ruled India (now part of Pakistan). When World War II begins in 1939, they are arrested by the British authorities for being enemy aliens. They are imprisoned in a prisoner-of-war camp in Dehradun in the Himalayan foothills, in the present-day Indian state of Uttarakhand. Harrer's wife, Ingrid, who has given birth to a son he has not seen, sends him divorce papers from Austria, by then annexed by Nazi Germany.

In 1944, Harrer and Aufschnaiter escape the prison and cross into Tibet. After being initially rejected by the isolated nation, they manage to travel in disguise to the Tibetan capital city of Lhasa. There, they become the house guests of Tibetan diplomat Kungo Tsarong. The Tibetan senior official Ngawang Jigme also extends friendship to the two foreigners with gifts of custom-made Western suits. Aufschnaiter falls in love with the tailor, Pema Lhaki, and marries her. Harrer opts to remain single, both to focus on his new job of surveying the land and not wishing to experience another failed relationship.

In 1945, Harrer plans to return to Austria upon hearing of the war's end. However, he receives a cold letter from his son, Rolf, rejecting Harrer as his father, and this deters him from leaving Tibet. Soon afterwards, Harrer is invited to the Potala Palace and becomes the 14th Dalai Lama's tutor in world geography, science, and Western culture. Harrer and Dalai Lama end up befriending each other.

Meanwhile, political relations with China sour as they make plans to invade Tibet. Ngawang Jigme leads the Tibetan army at the border town of Chamdo to halt the advancing People's Liberation Army. However, he ends up surrendering and blows up the Tibetan ammunition dump after the one-sided Battle of Chamdo.

During the treaty signing, Kungo Tsarong tells Harrer that if Jigme had not destroyed the weapons supply, the Tibetan guerrillas could have held the mountain passes for months or even years; long enough to appeal to other nations for help. He also states that, for Tibetans, capitulation is like a death sentence. As the Chinese occupy Tibet, Harrer condemns Ngawang Jigme for betraying his country, declaring their friendship over. Out of anger, Harrer further humiliates the senior official by returning the jacket that Ngawang Jigme gave him as a present, a grave insult in Tibetan culture; as well as by throwing him onto the ground before storming off.

Harrer tries to convince the Dalai Lama to flee, but he refuses; not wanting to abandon his people. The Dalai Lama encourages Harrer to return to Austria and be a father to his son. After the enthronement ceremony, in which the Dalai Lama is formally enthroned as the spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet, Harrer returns to Austria in 1951.

Harrer's son, Rolf, refuses to meet him at first, but Harrer leaves a music box that the Dalai Lama gave him and this piques the boy's interest. Years later, Harrer and Rolf (now a teenager) are seen mountain-climbing together, suggesting that they have mended their relationship.

A millionaire businessman falls in love with his Galician maid, and decides to marry her despite her daughter's opposition. She mistreats her and even makes her look like a thief, until the real motives are discovered.

Ángel Magaña and Elisa Galvé play a constantly bickering young couple who draw up a suicide pact and prepare to kill themselves. However they are constantly interrupted by surprises, particularly the timely arrival of a dying gangster, who gives them $30,000 worth of ill goods.

A man returns to his village after a long time and meets his ex-girlfriend, now married to a husband in desperate economic situation.

In San Diego, California, a mysterious criminal called Taipan uses a mind controlling, performance enhancement device to manipulate an old man into robbing a store, only for it to cause the latter to die from a heart attack. The next morning, college dropout and professional skater Tony Valdez saves his cousin Reuban from a gang before entering a skating competition with help from Sammi, an old friend of the family's. After winning the first round, Tony encounters a woman named Valeria, and they flirt with each other. While meeting with his parents, his mother gives him a condor amulet. Later that night, Tony is led to believe his parents are criminals when he overhears them discussing an error in their research with their business partner, Nigel Harrington. His parents attempt to explain themselves the next day, but Tony storms off. During the competition's second round, a mysterious man sabotages his board, causing him to lose. Tony's parents try to go to the police, only to be suddenly ambushed by mind-controlled skaters who cause them to crash. Tony hears of the accident and finds his parents dead before being ambushed and paralyzed by the same skaters.

While in recovery, Tony is sent to therapy under former surfer Dogg. Meanwhile, Sammi starts going out with Tony's rival Z-Man and gives Tony enhanced boots. Using them, Tony becomes the Condor to fight crime and figure out what his parents were involved in. While on a date with Valeria, he learns his parents were unearthed and falls into a trap set up by Taipan. During the fight, Tony discovers Nigel hired Taipan to kill his parents for trying to report the error. Severely wounded, Tony manages to escape and goes to Sammi for help, apologizing for his behavior and realizing his feelings for her. However, Reuban interrupts, revealing he sabotaged Tony's board because he was ungrateful. Tony gets a call from Valeria, so he leaves to check on her while Sammi discovers the error in question. Upon reaching Valeria's house, Tony learns she is Taipan and gets into a fight with her. Valeria leaves him for dead and attempts to use a selfish Reuban to kill Sammi.

Surviving the attack, Tony receives help from Z-Man and befriends him as they save Sammi and Dogg from a fire Reuban and Valeria started. Elsewhere, Nigel holds an auction, only to be betrayed and murdered by Valeria, who takes control. However, Tony arrives and foils her plans. Amidst their ensuing fight, the building is set ablaze, trapping Valeria. Tony tries to save her, but she attempts to kill him, falling into the fire.

Sometime later, Tony has entered a relationship with Sammi and entered a new competition with Z-Man. Unbeknownst to them, a mysterious clan retrieves Valeria's body and her mind control device so they can use it for their own plans.

The story begins in 1995 as Santiago Díaz Herrera is hurt while fencing with his best friend Marcos Lombardo. Marcos wants to bring Santiago back to Buenos Aires but his father, Alberto, commands him to leave Santiago in a Moroccan jail, and Santiago is declared dead. Eleven years pass, and in 2006 Santiago returns to Buenos Aires seeking revenge on the Lombardos for their crimes to himself, his father and other people who have stood in their way over the decades.

At the train station in Mayport, Florida, Paymaster Blair Kimball (Boise De Legge) arrives a day early. Dr. A. G. Maynard (Sam Jordan), the local dentist and Constable Jed Splivins (Lions Daniels) greet him, as pilot Finley Tucker (Harold Platts) looks on.

Kimball is carrying $25,000 for the railroad payroll. Waiting with station master Thomas Sawtelle (George Colvin) in his office, Sawtelle's daughter Ruth (Kathryn Boyd) comes with her father's lunch. When she sees Finley, she asks for a ride in his new aircraft. After the flight, he proposes for the 100th time, but Ruth says she is not certain she loves him.

Captain Billy Stokes (Laurence Criner), a World War I fighter pilot, known as "The Flying Ace" because of his downing of seven enemy aircraft in France, returns home to resume his former job as a railroad detective. General manager Howard MacAndrews (R.L. Brown) assigns Stokes to find Kimball, who has gone missing along with the $25,000 company payroll, and apprehend a gang of railroad thieves.

Stokes suspects that Finley is to blame, which is confirmed when he finds Kimball alive and hidden in the tail of Finley's plane. With the help of Peg (Steve Reynolds), Stokes identifies Constable Splivins as a member of Finley's gang, and arrests him. A desperate and crazed Finley flies off with Ruth, whom he has drugged. Stokes chases Finley in his own aircraft but is afraid for Ruth's safety. Shaking his captive and reviving her, Finley says Ruth has to kiss him, or "get out and walk on a cloud."

Suddenly, Finley's aircraft catches fire but Stokes is nearby, dropping a rope ladder to Ruth, who climbs into Stokes' aircraft. Failing to put out the fire, Finley dons a parachute and jumps safely, only to be arrested on the ground. After her ordeal, Stokes comforts Ruth, and makes his feelings about her known.

In February 1945, the demoralized Imperial Japanese Army on Leyte is in desperate straits, cut off from support and supplies by the Allies, who are in the process of liberating the Philippine island. Private Tamura has tuberculosis and is seen as a useless burden to his company, even though it has been reduced to little more than a platoon in strength. He is ordered to commit suicide if he is unable to get admitted to a field hospital. A sympathetic soldier gives him several yams from the unit's meager supplies.

On his way, he notices a mysterious fire on the ground. When he reaches the crowded hospital, he is judged not sick enough to treat. He joins a group of other rejectees outside. When the Allies start shelling the area, the medical staff abandon the patients and run away. The hospital is hit and destroyed. Tamura flees as well; looking back, he sees many bodies strewn around, but chooses not to go to the aid of any who may still be alive.

Traveling alone, Tamura discovers a deserted village on the coast, where he finds a pile of dead Japanese soldiers. As he searches for food, a young Filipino couple arrive by canoe and run to a hut to retrieve a cache of precious salt hidden under a floorboard. When Tamura enters the hut, the girl begins to scream. Tamura tries to placate them by lowering his rifle, but she continues to scream. He shoots her. The young man escapes in his canoe. Tamura takes the salt and leaves.

He next encounters three Japanese soldiers. They sight another fire. Tamura believes they are signal fires, but one of the others tells him that farmers are just burning corn husks. The squad leader mentions that the army has been ordered to go to Palompon for evacuation to Cebu. Tamura asks to accompany them. When one soldier notices Tamura's full bag, he shares his salt.

They soon join a stream of ragged, malnourished, dejected soldiers heading to Palompon. Among them are Nagamatsu and Yasuda, familiar men from Tamura's company. Yasuda, wounded in the leg, has Nagamatsu try to trade tobacco for food. When the soldiers come to a heavily traveled road, they decide to wait for night before trying to cross, but they are ambushed by the waiting Americans. The few survivors flee back the way they came.

Later, an American jeep arrives. Tamura prepares to surrender, but gives up the idea when he sees a Filipino woman gun down a fellow Japanese trying the same thing. The accompanying American soldiers are too late to stop her.

Tamura wanders aimlessly. He comes across a crazed, exhausted soldier, who tells Tamura he can eat his body after he is dead. Tamura hastily departs.

He comes across Nagamatsu and Yasuda again. They claim to have survived on "monkey meat" and are living in the forest. Later, Nagamatsu goes out to hunt more "monkeys". When Tamura mentions he has a grenade (given to him to commit suicide), Yasuda steals it. Tamura leaves to find Nagamatsu. When Nagamatsu almost shoots him, he realizes what monkey meat really is. Nagamatsu tells Tamura they would be dead if they did not resort to cannibalism.

They head back to camp, but when Tamura mentions that Yasuda has his grenade, Nagamatsu says they will have to kill him, or he will do them in with the grenade. However, Yasuda is too wary. A standoff ensues. Nagamatsu stakes out the only source of water in the area. After several days, Yasuda tries to bargain, to no avail. Finally, he makes his way to the water and is shot. Nagamatsu begins butchering the body for meat. Tamura becomes disgusted and shoots Nagamatsu.

Tamura then heads towards the "fires on the plains", desperate to find someone "who is leading a normal life." He slowly walks forward, even as the Filipinos shoot at him. The film ends as a bullet hits Tamura and he collapses lifeless to the ground.

Roger is an Atlanta stoner who dreams of opening up a weed delivery business but was recently fired from his fast food job. He lives in his mother's basement with his ride share driver cousin Calvin, who moonlights as a weed dealer. While Atlanta is in the midst of a weed shortage, the pair find a "Weed Bible" in their basement which shows them how to grow a special new kind of weed. They then set off to start a weed delivery business but their stash and weed bible is stolen. With the help of Roger's childhood friend Alicia, they set off on a mission across the city to track down their stash while fending off rival drug dealers, the Russian mob, college co-eds & frat guys and a pharmaceutical corporation.

The Banshee of myth is based, as most legends are, on real events. Centuries ago, an alien race known as the Lamia arrived on Earth. Amoral scientists, they viewed humanity as nothing more than experimental subjects. The literal translation of their name for humans is ''lab rats''.

They were named Banshee because of the sound their spacecraft made. When hovering they emit a low throbbing sound akin to '' '', and when they take off they emit a sound like a whooshing ''sheeeeee''. Hence the name Baaan-sheee.

The Lamia has a defensive/attack ability which involves them emitting ultra-high-frequency sound from their throats, a wail which disorients and pains any humans who hear it, allowing the victims to be taken on board the ships for experimentation without resistance. It is for this reason that the 'wail of the Banshee' was associated with death, as whenever it was heard, death followed for someone nearby.

The novel is set in 1915, when the first motorized vehicle was driven into Native American territory. It concerns a boy named Laughing Boy who seeks to become an adult who can be respected among his Navajo tribe. They live in a place known as ''T'o Tlakai.'' He has been initiated into tribal ways, is an accomplished jeweler, and can compete favorably at events such as racing wild horses, which he has either caught or capably traded at market.

At a tribal event, Laughing Boy encounters a beautiful, mysterious young woman known as Slim Girl, and the two are soon attracted to each other. Complications arise immediately from her past experiences in the Indian Schools, boarding schools run under the auspices of the federal government for education and assimilation of Native Americans. Native American children were sent to these schools from numerous tribes, where they were forced to abandon their individual languages and cultures and instead adopt the English language and Western cultural standards.

These complications affect both his family's view of the relationship, and the relationship itself in ways that slowly unfold and intertwine as the novel progresses. It offers a rare glimpse into the Navajo lifestyle and territory.

The novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was published as an Armed Services Edition during WWII.

''Kiss of the Fur Queen'' begins with the champion dog-sled racer Abraham Okimasis and the story of his two sons, Champion and Ooneemeetoo Okimasis from Eemanipiteepitat, Manitoba. Both brothers are taken from their families and sent to a residential school where they are unable to speak their language, forced to cut their hair, and renamed to Jeremiah and Gabriel. In their residential school experience, both brothers are physically and sexually abused at the hands of the priests which leads to Jeremiah's celibacy and Gabriel's inability to form successful relationships. The residential school is also the time that Gabriel meets the Fur Queen or better known as the trickster who watches over them throughout their lives.

When he returns from residential school, Jeremiah moves to Winnipeg to pursue his interests in music which acts as a coping strategy for his earlier abuse. He immerses himself fully in his musical pursuits which results in his further isolation and feelings of loneliness due to his lack of meaningful relationships and family connections. Gabriel decides to join his brother in Winnipeg to continue his passion for dance. He embraces his homosexuality at a time when it was not safe to do so publicly, and self-medicates with drugs and alcohol. He turns to prostitution and endures vivid flashbacks of the abuse he suffered at the hands of the priests. Both brothers have troubles reconciling their two identities and this leads them to reject their Native identity and embrace the dominant culture.

As the day begins, Betty frantically tries to keep Daniel focused on work, but it appears that he is more preoccupied with sleeping with women and has reverted to his old hard-partying ways. Betty also notices author Quincy Combs (Leslie Jordan) in Daniel's office, looking to dig up dirt about the Meade family. Betty tells Quincy that he is wasting his time but Quincy isn't buying Betty's threats.

Christina thinks Betty is too focused on Daniel, so she shares with her an invitation Wihelmina gave her to a new night club. At the club, Betty tries to loosen up but it's not working. She later sees Daniel and Becks partying and flirting with a young model, Petra, and her sister, Lena. She also thinks she sees Quincy stalking Daniel and tries to warn him by taking a microphone from the DJ booth. Quincy turns out to not be there and Daniel, upset over being embarrassed by Betty, starts berating her in front of everyone. Later, she learns from Christina about her "deal" with Wilhelmina and how she got the invitation, which results in Betty ending her friendship with the only person she ever trusted at ''MODE''.

Meanwhile, Quincy stalks the Meades and Alexis schemes to get her hands on the diaries. Wilhelmina also hunts for them, as Quincy claims that the last six months of her life were detailed in the hidden set. Alexis tries to use the diaries to manipulate Bradford, but Wilhemina beats her to it. She gave Quincy pictures of Alexis in exchange for information on how to seduce Bradford. She succeeds in winning Bradford over and stops him from receiving Alexis's calls.

Meanwhile, Ignacio feels the heat when Constance pressures him to make their relationship a romantic one. He is not attracted to her, but knows that her demands stands in the way of him obtaining a green card. So despite warnings by Hilda not to go, Ignacio believes it's the only way he can see the lawyer that Constance hired for him. When he arrives to Constance's apartment, he discovers that Constance tricked him; she never called the lawyer and used this evening to lure him into marrying him.

Hours later, Hilda is visited by Ignacio's real caseworker. Hilda learns from him that Constance was fired two months earlier, prompting Hilda to go to Constance's place after she warns Ignacio. As she arrives and prepares to confront her, Ignacio tells Hilda that Constance isn't a bad person; she had her heart broken, so he decides not to turn her in and forgives her.

Back at Daniel's apartment, Daniel is having sex with Petra. But Lena comes in to drop a bombshell: Petra is actually 16 and her "sister" Lena is actually her mother. She extorts him into putting her daughter on the cover of ''MODE'' and he finds himself wondering what he should do to get himself out of this situation. He calls Betty, who, still upset over Daniel's actions at the club towards her, tells Ignacio to give him a message: she just "punched out".

In the wake of Claire Meade's arrest, the Suarezes find themselves dealing with the press coverage. The episode opens with a news reporter seeking to get a comment from Betty who, while trying to get away from the news cameras, runs directly into the wall of a bus shelter. Justin amuses himself by watching the footage repeatedly, which distinctly annoys Betty, who later expresses her guilt over Claire's arrest to Hilda.

At ''MODE'', the now released Bradford and Alexis finally face off, with Bradford firing his daughter. Later on, Bradford goes to see Claire to see how she is doing. Claire insists that she has been better while he tells her that he is here for her. Daniel later comes in and Claire informs them that she wants them to be a family again, including Alexis. Bradford is extremely uncomfortable with the idea until Claire tells her husband that he can't fire Alexis, since he does not own ''MODE''. She reminds him that while he is the owner of Meade Publications, she owns the rights to ''MODE'' and therefore Alexis stays.

Meanwhile, Marc's mother — to whom he has never disclosed his homosexuality — visits the office; she brings along her cat, Lady Buttons of Camelot. Amanda learns that after three years of willingly pretending to be Marc's girlfriend during such visits, she has been "dumped" ''in absentia'' because Marc wanted to escape his mother's pressure to move on to marriage. Amanda gets angry and storms off, yelling to Marc that she will be the best 'pretend girlfriend' he has ever had.

Hours later, Betty tells Daniel that it may be a good thing that he and Alexis work side by side, but Daniel informs her that it was never easy working directly beside Alex, because he always had to come out on top. Daniel and Alexis later meet with Wilhelmina to inform her that they are both Editors-in-Chief at ''MODE'' and inform Wilhelmina that she is still the creative director. When he begins to claim what duties he will handle, Alexis interrupts and insists that she does not want anything to do with the business. After Daniel leaves the room, Wilhelmina rushes over to Alexis and tells her that she has to take what belongs to her and that she cannot leave ''MODE'', then volunteers her office. Marc then panics when Wilhelmina drags him down to their new office and tells him it is only temporary—just long enough for Alexis and Daniel to push each other out.

Marc gets a text message on his cell phone informing him that his mother is in the building. Marc's mother, Jean, stops at the desk to see Amanda and tells her that she cannot believe how she broke her little boy's heart with all of her drug and sex addictions. An incensed Amanda then notices Betty walking down the hall, pulls her over to the desk and vengefully tells Jean that Betty is Marc's new girlfriend. Betty laughs, but before she is able to mention that Marc is gay, Marc cuts Betty off in mid-sentence by kissing her on the lips (with Amanda in the background pretending to vomit). Marc then rushes to the bathroom and washes out his mouth in disgust. Betty is stunned by Marc's deceit, but when he begs her to help him, she agrees to play along. Back at the desk Amanda notices Betty's cell phone is ringing, and when she sees it is Ignacio on the phone, Amanda cruelly tells Mrs. Wiener that she should answer and initiate a chat about Betty and Marc's relationship. Moments later Amanda joyfully rushes over to tell Marc and Betty the news that they have dinner plans with Betty's family. Marc then tells Betty that if she helps him, he will tell her important information that will help save Daniel's job.

Betty later rushes to see Daniel and tells him Alexis is planning to take over the company and push him out, prompting Daniel to go see Alexis, who then tells him they should try working together. Daniel insists he is not just her kid brother anymore and she cannot push him around, but Alexis tells him they are in this 50/50. So Daniel agrees and instructs her to have her "letter from the editor" ready by noon tomorrow, so they can print them side by side. When he leaves, she calls in her new assistant, Nick, and orders him to cancel his plans for tonight because they have to get their work completed by midnight, informing him Daniel is crazy if he thinks she is going to share anything with him. Alexis has a major photo shoot and sends her pictures in to be on the next cover of ''MODE''. Wilhelmina is pleased with this scheme, saying this is too easy. Alexis tells them Daniel is not going to know what hit him and rushes out the door.

In another corner of the building, Marc and Betty are working hard at memorizing personal information about each other, until Betty gets distracted by Henry, who comes over to drop off the mail. After Henry mumbles the answers to the personal questions concerning Betty — all of which Marc had failed — Henry leaves. Betty goes to see Daniel and tells him his "letter from the editor" needs to be his own statement about the Meade family instead of about shoes, then rushes home to fix dinner.

Marc, Jean and Buttons the cat — demoted from royalty after finishing poorly in a show that afternoon — arrive at the Suarez household for dinner. Hilda jokingly insists to Marc that she "wouldn’t have missed this evening for the world." As everyone struggles to make conversation during the dinner, Betty focuses the conversation on Jean and her cats. Jean then brings up Marc's old roommate and friend, Chuck; while Jean is shown to be oblivious to clues that Chuck had actually been Marc's boyfriend, Marc quickly insists that they were not that close. Hilda and Ignacio make numerous comments hinting to homosexuality and giggle at the situation. Things get a little too intense and Betty excuses them to her room, informing Marc that he is a grown man and needs to tell his mother the truth. Marc insists that if tells her the truth now it will ruin things, but Betty assures him that it is the right thing to do, and that it will make their relationship better. Justin arrives and complains to everyone that his father took him out for fast food when he is trying his best to watch points for swim suit season, before showing off his "Free Claire Meade" T-shirt, saying that he will not rest until Claire is free. When Buttons notices the door open and runs out, Ignacio runs after her and sets the alarm off on his ankle tag. Jean sits in shock at all that is going on around her. The doorbell then rings and Daniel enters the room, and when Jean asks who he is, Justin tells her that Daniel is Betty's ex-boyfriend.

Around the same time, Wilhelmina goes to see Claire in the hospital and tells her she is worried about the business because Daniel and Alexis are going to kill each other. She suggests she get her attorney to draw up a power of attorney so she can keep things running smoothly. But Claire informs Wilhelmina that only a Meade will run the company from now on. Wilhelmina then holds a bottle of liquor in front of Claire's face, which Claire stoically resists. Wilhelmina puts a glass of liquor right on the table in front of Claire, who is handcuffed to the bed. When she leaves, Claire tries to reach it, but fails.

Daniel has come to see Betty at her home to tell her he has finished the editor's letter and wants her to proof it, to see her look at him with pride. She informs him that she is proud of him and that she will submit it in time for the printers. After Daniel leaves, Marc walks in to see what is keeping Betty so long, then informs her that she need not worry about the letter since Alexis has already sent the issue to print. In shock, Betty tells Marc she must notify Daniel immediately. She slams the door leaving Marc all alone there with his mother and her family. Betty catches up to Daniel and they rush off to stop the press.

As Marc and Jean gather their things to leave Betty's house, he informs her he is breaking up with Betty. She is thrilled to hear this and starts criticizing all the Suarez family until Justin runs by, saying in a sing-song voice "Golden Girls marathon." Jean tells Marc she does not even know what "that" is, that Justin is so "swishy." Marc becomes furious and tells his mother to shut up. This momentarily silences her, and Marc informs her that these people have done a really nice thing for him tonight and informs her that she is practically calling her own son "swishy" when she talks that way about Justin. She warns him not to say any more but Marc tells her to open her eyes and see him for what he really is. Jean says she'd better leave, but Marc blocks the door, saying he may never be this brave again. He tells her that he loves her, but if she wants to get to know the real him, she'll have to get to know him as he is. Jean looks at her son and tells him that if this is the lifestyle he has chosen, and if this is the real him, then she does not want to know him. She opens the door and leaves the Suarez house and sarcastically instructs him to thank them for a "lovely" evening.

Alexis sees Daniel and Betty running down the street to the printers and as they sprint side by side toward the entrance, Alexis wins in the end. Daniel later runs into Betty at a bar and tells her that if Alexis wants the company, then she can have it and he will be only too glad to return to his old lifestyle of partying and unemployment. Meanwhile, Wilhelmina sits in her office and thinks of a plan, so she reaches down and scratches out her own last name on her stationery and writes Meade in its place, then dolls up and heads over to see Bradford, where she offers him a little dinner and some company.

Betty arrives back home and finds Marc sitting alone on her front porch. He tells her that his mother left when he told her the truth. Betty tells him she has learned that it is not always family that loves you the most, but that sometimes it is the family we make for ourselves. Marc tells her fondly that she will always be his "Little Chimichanga" and then leaves to go home while Betty sits alone to read the letter that Daniel wrote, in which he talks about how happy he is to have Alexis back with him and that his family is finally coming together. Betty then goes inside and spends time with her family.

Colonel Miltiades "Milt" Vaiden, a decorated Civil War Confederate officer and former overseer of Crowninshield plantation, is the central figure in this and the third novel of the trilogy. As an overseer he was in a position between the wealthy planters and poor whites; his father was a blacksmith. Struggling to gain a place after the war, he became head of the newly founded local Ku Klux Klan (KKK), made up of veterans determined to defend white supremacy. A character described by critic J. Donald Adams in the ''New York Times'' as "forceful" and "unscrupulous", Col. Milt Vaiden slowly works his way into business leadership in the town of Florence by the late 1880s, in the post-Reconstruction era.

Stribling explores the personal and economic trials and tribulations of Col. Milt and others during the post-Reconstruction era, when the labor force of freedmen has been converted mostly to sharecroppers and tenant farmers. White men work to exploit the changing conditions. The title, "The Store", is symbolic of Col. Milt's ethical and economic transition from post-war poverty to economic independence, set against the "old plantation" culture. The novel describes in blunt language, the cultural and social stress as the old plantation society and freedmen adjust to the post-war reconstruction.

The narration of ''Greyfriars Bobby'' is most unusual. The book is written from the point of view of the dog, which makes every-day events very strange. The main story of the book is directly adapted from the supposedly true Scottish story of Greyfriars Bobby.

Bobby spends much time with his master and unofficial owner, "Auld Jock" (Scots for "Old John"), creating a very strong emotional connection. They have an intense connection and Jock cares for Bobby very well—though Jock never bought Bobby. This creates problems later, because of Jock's having, in the eyes of the law, "stolen" an unlicensed dog. Eventually, Auld Jock dies. Bobby is in great distress; but a loyal dog will never leave its owner's side, even after death.

After his owner dies, Bobby is lost; he can barely function without his companion. Though his owner's body was identified by the man's given name, John Gray, and not as "Auld Jock", his nickname, people still tell Bobby to look for "Jock", which just worsens Bobby's pain. He is lost for a while, and a large reward is offered for his return. Eventually, Bobby finds Auld Jock's grave and guards it day and night. The pair are inseparable.

The story opens with the family of Ivan Shtchevbakoff; a generally harmonious family that does rather well for itself. They were on good terms with their neighbors, the family of Gabriel Chormoi, until one day when a hen that belonged to the Shtchevbakoff family flew into the yard of the Chormoi family and laid several eggs. Later that day, Ivan's daughter-in-law went to retrieve the eggs, but grandmother Chormoi takes offense at being accused of stealing. A huge uproar ensues that embroils every member of each family.

Against the advice of the family elders to seek quick reconciliation, the families bring cases against each other in court, and they blame each other for every little mishap that happens to befall them. Every accusation makes the enmity grow, the children learn from the example of their parents, and the feud goes on for six years.

The elders urge for the families to forget their differences, but the feud continues. A drunken Gabriel strikes one of Ivan's daughters-in-law, and Ivan eventually sees to it that he is sentenced to flogging. Gabriel is shocked, and he curses his neighbor. The magistrate urges the two to reconcile, but Gabriel refuses.

Ivan eventually begins to feel sorry for Gabriel, but he refuses to see his own wrongdoing in the quarrel. Ivan's father urges him to reconcile, and to stop wasting his time and money going to court, and to stop setting a bad example for his family. Ivan still refuses to reconcile.

Eventually Gabriel sets Ivan's house on fire. No neighbors will help Ivan save his belongings, and eventually the fire overtakes Gabriel's house as well. Ivan's father is burned in the fire, and, on his deathbed, Ivan's father asks his son whose fault the fire was. Ivan finally realizes that it was his fault, and asks forgiveness from his father and from God. His father urges Ivan never to tell that it was Gabriel that had set the fire, and Ivan agrees.

Gabriel and Ivan again became good friends, and their families lived together as their houses were rebuilt. The families then go on to become more prosperous than ever, all for following the elders' advice: to quench a spark before it becomes a fire.

In the opening section of the story, Clay Calvert is a hand on the sheep ranch of Preston Shiveley, his stepfather's father. Without really intending to, Clay helps his stepbrother, Wade Shiveley, escape from jail, and becomes a fugitive himself. He and a Tunne Indian boy flee into the wilderness where Clay joins up with a horse-trader who has a beautiful young daughter, Luce.

In the second section of the story, Clay and Luce are married and living in the sparsely populated coastal regions. There they meet with a group of settlers who are planning a trip to eastern Oregon where they can put down stakes. On the trip east, they meet again with Wade Shiveley, who is accusing Clay of stealing his horse. Wade Shiveley is eventually hanged for a crime he did not commit, and Clay is free to move on. Shortly after, Luce falls ill and Clay goes for help. When he returns Luce is gone, apparently with her father.

In the final section of the story, Clay decides not to pursue Luce, but follows the wheat harvest, and eventually ends up as a hand on a scow on the Columbia River. Clay goes back to the Eastern plains to harvest grass for hay where he once again meets the Tunne Indian boy. He later discovers the Indian boy dead and suspects that he was killed by Luce's father. He decides then to rejoin the settlers who had moved from the Coast and stays with them until a harsh winter drives them off of their homesteads. On the way back west Clay once again unites with Luce.

The series begins as 13-year-old Kendra, and 11-year-old Seth Sorenson are traveling to their Grandpa and Grandma Sorenson's house while their parents are away on a 17-day cruise. When they get there, they also meet Dale, the groundskeeper, and Lena, the housekeeper. Grandma Sorenson is "mysteriously" missing. Grandpa Sorenson does not tell Kendra and Seth about Fablehaven being a secret preserve for magical creatures at first, but instead sets up a rather complex puzzle involving six keys and a locked journal for Kendra to solve. Once Kendra unlocks the mostly blank journal, she discovers the words "Drink the milk". She and Seth drink the magical milk opening their eyes to a whole new, mystical world full of the magical beings of Fablehaven. Then Kendra and Seth must face challenges such as defeating an evil witch and a powerful demon, defending the preserve from an evil society, stopping a plague that changes creatures of light into creatures of darkness, and ultimately, protecting the world from a horde of imprisoned demons.

In the tale and in Shirley's retelling, Death and Cupid accidentally exchange their arrows and cause chaos as a result. Cupid shoots potential lovers and inadvertently kills them. Death shoots at elderly people whose time of passing has come, and strikes them ardent instead; he shoots duellists about to fight, and they drop their swords to embrace and dance and sing. The "serious" portion of the masque features the kind of personifications standard in the masque form: Nature, Folly, Madness, and Despair. As usual in masques of Shirley's era, the work contains a comic anti-masque, with a tavern Host and a Chamberlain, and a dance of "Satyrs and Apes." (The poor Chamberlain is struck by Death with Cupid's arrow, and falls in love with an ape.) The god Mercury eventually intervenes to set things right; Cupid is banished from the courts of princes to common people's cottages (a suitably sober moral for the Puritan regime then in power). The slain lovers are shown rejoicing in Elysium.

"''Cupid and Death'' resembles Caroline masque in its use of staging, music, dance, singing and dialogue. Yet it differs in that the masquers take part in the action and they do not dance with the audience at the end...The balance between spoken prose dialogue, recitative and song carries the performance away from masque and towards opera, a form Davenant planned to introduce to the London stage as early as 1639."

''Cupid and Death'' was performed at Rutland Boughton's Glastonbury Festival in 1919, by the Consorte of Musicke (notably Anthony Rooley and Emma Kirkby) in 1985, and by the Halastó Kórus (directed by Göttinger Pál) in Budapest in 2008.

Attorney Wayne Fletcher (Chaney, Jr.) intends to divorce his wife and marry his secretary (Joyce), who comes from a wealthy family. When the wife is found suffocated to death, he naturally becomes the suspect. As others are killed in the same manner and a phony medium (Bromberg) also claims Fletcher is guilty, Fletcher begins to imagine his dead wife is communicating with him, making it even more difficult for him to prove his innocence.

A respected neurologist, Dr. Mark Steele (Lon Chaney, Jr.) treats his patients successfully with hypnosis, but has troubles of his own from a marriage falling apart, that he cannot treat himself in the same way. His wife Maria (Ramsay Ames) is cheating on him on a regular basis, which is something Mark is well aware of. When Maria returns home one night in the early morning hours after a rendez-vous with her lover, Mark finally tells her that he has had enough and that he wants a divorce. Maria, who is leading a very comfortable life as a doctor's wife, refuses her consent to a divorce, and laughs at him as she does so. That night Mark has a dream about strangling his wife to death.

When Maria goes away for the weekend, Mark decides to leave and gets into his car and drives off. Come Monday morning he wakes up in his office only to learn that he is suffering a mental blackout and that the memories of the weekend is missing. He is informed by the police that his wife has been murdered, and that her face was disfigured by some kind of acid. Mark begins to worry about not remembering the slightest thing about his own actions during the weekend.

His worries increase after finding a button from his own jacket near where his wife's body was found. He starts suspecting that he himself has done away with her. His nurse, Stella Madden (Patricia Morison) tells him not to air his suspicions to the police until he knows more. The police go on to arrest Maria's lover, an architect named Robert Duval (David Bruce), for the murder. Inspector Gregg (J. Carroll Naish), one of the detectives on the case still believes that Mark is the murderer. Duval's disabled wife (Fay Helm) pays Mark a visit, trying to convince him to help her prove that her husband is innocent.

Duval is eventually convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to death. In a moment of guilt Mark gets the idea to hypnotize himself to find out if he really is the real murderer. The hypnosis, however, is not completed because inspector Gregg arrives and interrupts. Nurse Stella does make an audio recording of the session though, and on the audio Mark talks about meeting up with his wife at a cabin in the mountains. He also tells of having a quarrel with her and leaving the cabin just as Duval arrives, going straight to his office and sedating himself into deep sleep. Gregg listens to the recording, but still seems to suspect Mark of being the real murderer.

Curious and craving for information Mark visits the incarcerated Duval and finds out that he borrowed $10,000 from Maria in order to pay off some gambling debts. After the visit Mark hears that Duval's request for pardoning has been denied by the governor. He talks to nurse Stella, who faints right in front of him in the office. Mark assumes that the nurse is beat from too much work. He suggests hiring another nurse as a secretary to handle the bills for the time being, and drives Stella to visit her family.

Upon his return to the office Mark gets a visit from inspector Gregg. Mark is confronted with the fact that there's a connection between Mark's private clinic and the acid used on the face of his murdered wife. Mark realizes there might be more at stake than he first thought and decides to hypnotize Stella to see if she knows more than she is letting him believe. On the night of Duval's scheduled execution, with very little time left, Mark gets to hypnotize Stella. She tells him the truth about her plan together with Duval to get the $10,000 and that she killed Maria when Duval tried to give the money back. She also admits having tried to burn down the medical office, destroying numerous records, to cover the fact that she had been embezzling from him. Gregg overhears this and arrests Stella, explaining to Mark that he had never really suspected him but needed to gather evidence against Stella.

Jeff Carter (Lon Chaney, Jr.) is testing a vaccine for influenza. He is working for tycoon, Roger Graham (J. Carrol Naish), who takes the credit and the profit for Jeff's discovery. Roger cares more about profits than safety. Jeff resigns and is blacklisted by his boss.

Jeff heads to South America to perfect the formula. Graham has used this opportunity to release the drug and romance Jeff's attractive wife, Mary (Brenda Joyce). When Jeff hears that his son has died, he takes revenge.

Magician Montag the Magnificent delivers hectoring speeches about the nature of reality to his audience and then performs mutilation tricks on female "volunteers". The women appear unharmed immediately afterward but later collapse, dead, in public or at home—mutilated in the same grisly fashion suggested by Montag's stage tricks (cut in half with a chainsaw, drilled through with a punch press, etc.). Audience member Sherry Carson, a local TV talk show hostess, and her boyfriend Jack begin to suspect that Montag is somehow involved in the murders. Jack and fellow reporter Greg attempt to research the case but are unable to come up with any solid evidence.

Montag agrees to appear on Sherry's show to perform a fire trick; when the cameras roll, he hypnotizes not only everyone in the studio, but also the viewing audience at home. With a wave of his hand, Montag starts a blaze and is guiding Sherry and two plainclothes cops toward it when Jack intervenes and pushes Montag into the fire instead. Screaming, the magician dies.

Back at home, Sherry and Jack have a drink as they discuss their strange experience. Suddenly, Jack laughs and begins peeling his own skin from his face to reveal that he is actually Montag. "What makes you think you know what reality is?" he asks Sherry before disemboweling her with his bare hands. But Sherry, still alive and laughing maniacally, tells the baffled Montag that none of what has happened was real—and that even he is part of her illusion. "You are no longer even here," she informs Montag. "You'll have to start your little charade all over again."

"But I...I am Montag!" the magician stammers helplessly. Then he is back onstage, dazed, reciting the same speech that he delivered to his audience at the beginning of the film: "What is real? How do you know that at this second you aren't asleep in your beds, dreaming that you are here in this theater?" And in the audience an unimpressed Sherry turns to Jack, muttering, "You know what I think? I think he's a phony."

The book is narrated in the first person. It is a coming-of-age story, or ''Bildungsroman''. The protagonist is Omon Krivomazov, who was born in Moscow post-World War II. The plot traces his life from early childhood. In his teenage years, the realization strikes him that he must break free of Earth's gravity to free himself of the demands of the Soviet society and the rigid ideological confines of the state. After finishing high school, he immediately enrolls in a military academy. Omon soon finds that the academy does not, in fact, create future pilots, but instead exposes cadets to a series of treacherous trials, beginning with the amputation of both of their feet. The goal of the trials is to manifest Soviet heroism in the cadets. These amputations come as a reference to a famous Soviet ace-pilot Alexey Maresyev, who, despite being badly injured in a plane crash after a dogfight, managed to return to Soviet-controlled territory on his own. During his 18-day-long journey, his injuries deteriorated so badly that both of his legs had to be amputated below the knee. Desperate to return to his fighter pilot career, he subjected himself to nearly a year of physical therapy and exercise to master control of his prosthetic devices. He succeeded and returned to flying in June 1943.

Before any intentional amputation can occur, Omon and his friend are whisked out of the academy into a top-secret installation, located under KGB headquarters in Moscow. There, they start preparing for a supposedly uncrewed mission to the Moon. Omon is told that to substitute for researching, building and launching an automated probe, the Party prefers to use people, trained for "heroism", to fulfill the tasks nominally performed by machines, such as rocket stage separation, space vehicle course correction and so on.

Soon Omon indeed seems to be launched to the Moon, strapped into a seat inside a Lunokhod, which he is meant to drive like a bicycle on the lunar surface. He is the final piece in a multi-stage mission to deliver a radio beacon to a specific point on the Moon and activate it. This he does, even though once he leaves the confines of the hermetically sealed Lunokhod, his protection against the vacuum and the interstellar cold consists of a cotton-filled overcoat and "special hydrocompensatory tampons" stuffed up his nose. However, when the time comes for Omon to shoot himself after he places the beacon, according to his orders, the gun he was given for the purpose misfires. Omon finds himself not on the Moon at all, but in an abandoned subway tunnel, where he had been driving his Lunokhod all along, ignoring all signs which might have given him a clue as to his real whereabouts. He tries to escape and is chased and shot at, but he manages to find his way into the "normal" world again, coming up into one of the stations of the Moscow Metro.

One of Omon's "teachers" explains the idea behind the charade: even if the fact that the Soviet Union is a champion of peaceful space exploration holds true only inside a person's head (namely, the hero's; no one knows of him or his mission apart from its organizers), this is not any different from it being the reality. The reality, when it concerns subjects not capable of being experienced, is in fact only a perception formed in people's consciousness, and can be manipulated to the extent that the question of "true" version of events becomes meaningless.

A frail and love-starved young woman, Johnny (Jane Birkin), works in a truckstop café in the middle of nowhere. One day enter two gay truckers, manly and worldwise Krassky (Joe Dallesandro) and his lover Padovan (Hugues Quester), young and handsome, but immature and rather a handful.

Krassky, tired of taking care of Padovan who keeps getting into trouble, discovers in himself an attraction for this boyish girl, and she falls head over heels for him. They start a relationship; and even if at first Krassky's body hesitates before the meager feminine graces of curveless Johnny, he ends up being charmed by her naïve and unconditional love.

She is ready to accept anything out of love for him, including anal sex, though quite inexperienced at this, so that her screams of pain cause them to be thrown out of several motels. In the end, the back of Krassky's dirty garbage truck will be the theatre of their union.

Furiously jealous, Padovan tries to kill Johnny by suffocating her. Krassky intervenes and saves Johnny, but does it so idly that Johnny gets enraged and furiously insults him. Krassky then returns to his first love and leaves with him, abandoning Johnny in her café, brokenhearted and lonely again.

Young Buddhist monk Ananda, arrives at a temple in order to restore its paintings. These paintings depict Thelapaththa Jathakaya, a moral story where Lord Buddha said that a man with a big target in life must not be swayed by passion (Keles), the five senses and especially beautiful women. One day, Ananda picks up a hair pin belonging to a young woman. While attempting to return this object to its owner, his repressed feelings are awoken by the beauty and sensuality of the woman. The young monk's inner spiritual world is plunged into turmoil. Then one day the paintings are destroyed. While restoring them for the second time Ananda begins to realize that he is trapped in a web of his worldly desires and attachments and highlights the inner struggle of a young Buddhist monk who finds himself attracted to a pretty village girl.

American adventurer Harry Steele (Charlton Heston) earns a living as a tourist guide in Cusco, Peru but plans to make his fortune by finding the Sunburst, an Inca treasure. He possesses an ancient carved stone which gives the location of the Sunburst but has no means to travel there. He is also menaced by his dubious associate Ed Morgan (Thomas Mitchell) who wants the treasure for himself and tries to have Harry killed.

When Romanian defector Elena Antonescu (Nicole Maurey) arrives, Harry apparently agrees to help her travel to Mexico so she can then get to America, but in reality he uses her situation to his own advantage. Together with Elena, he steals a plane used by a Romanian official who is attempting to get Elena to return and uses it to fly to Machu Picchu.

There he discovers an archaeological expedition headed by Dr Stanley Moorehead (Robert Young), who is preparing to enter the tomb where the Sunburst is said to be located. Moorehead becomes infatuated with Elena, while Morgan arrives and coerces Harry into helping him find the treasure. While Morgan is asleep, Harry slips away and enters the tomb, locating the Sunburst hidden inside a hollow pillar.

Morgan then appears and grabs the Sunburst at gunpoint before shooting his way out of the temple while being pursued by Harry and a group of locals. Trapping Morgan on a cliff edge, Harry gets the Sunburst back while Morgan falls to his death. Rather than take it for himself, he gives the Sunburst back to the local Indians who believe it must be returned to the temple.

The novel is set in the later chapters of ''Pride and Prejudice''. After a series of unpleasant experiences while visiting Norwycke Castle (as depicted in the previous novel in the sequence) Fitzwilliam Darcy accompanies his cousin, Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam, to the home of their aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Although not looking forward to spending time with his self-impressed aunt, Darcy has resolved to use the time to forget what he views as his unacceptable desire for Elizabeth Bennet. Much to his surprise and chagrin, however, she is also in the area visiting her cousin, the pompous clergyman Mr Collins and his new wife (and her close friend) Charlotte, who are frequent visitors to Lady Catherine. Darcy is therefore thrown daily into Elizabeth's company, and finds himself unable to further resist her charms. Driven to jealousy by the developing friendship between Elizabeth and Colonel Fitzwilliam, Darcy finally accepts the strength of his love for her and, after weighing the consideration of her lowly social standing and its possible effect on his future status, decides to propose marriage to her.

Much to Darcy's shock and anger, however, his proposal is rejected; not only is Elizabeth greatly insulted by Darcy's high-handed manner of proposal, but she has also heard from Colonel Fitzwilliam of Darcy's role in persuading his friend Charles Bingley to break his ties with Jane Bennet, Elizabeth's sister, who is in love with Bingley. Furthermore, she has been poisoned towards him by slanderous lies spread by Darcy's nemesis, George Wickham, and is convinced that Darcy is "the last man in the world whom [she] could ever be prevailed upon to marry". Heartbroken by Elizabeth's refusal and stunned by the depth of her dislike towards him, Darcy decides to put Elizabeth behind him and leaves Rosings, but not before writing her a letter explaining the true history between himself, Wickham, and his sister Georgiana, and attempting to justify his actions regarding Bingley and Jane Bennet.

Upon his return to London, however, Darcy begins acting in an increasingly uncharacteristic and erratic fashion towards his friends and Georgiana, culminating in his unwise acceptance of an invitation to a party held by Lady Sylvanie Monmouth, who attempted to seduce him at Norwycke Castle. She holds Darcy responsible for the death of her mother during those events. He is rescued from calamity by his good friend Lord Dyfed Brougham, a seemingly foppish aristocrat who in actually is a government agent. Brougham is investigating Sylvanie, who has links to Irish revolutionaries and intends to drug Darcy and then blackmail him into funding their operations. No longer trusting his own judgement, Darcy proceeds to get drunk in a nearby tavern before confessing the entire matter and his relationship with Elizabeth to Brougham. Brougham sympathizes with him but nevertheless criticises Darcy's manner towards Elizabeth. The next morning, Darcy realizes the truth of Brougham's criticisms and is mortified by his own arrogance and pride, resolving to improve himself. He confesses the matter to Georgiana and begins to act in a less arrogant, aloof fashion to those around him.

Soon after, Darcy returns to his estate of Pemberley, and is astonished to find himself once more in the company of Elizabeth, who is on a tour of Derbyshire with her aunt and uncle, the Gardiners. After a chance encounter with Elizabeth, Darcy realises that her behaviour towards him is much warmer than their last meeting, while still guarded. Eager to show that he has taken her criticisms of his character on board and is mending his ways, Darcy makes a sincere effort to make her and her relatives feel comfortable and welcome. He soon finds that he genuinely likes Mr and Mrs Gardiner, and is delighted when, upon introducing Georgiana to Elizabeth, the two women take an instant liking to each other. Just as Darcy believes their relationship is thawing, however, Elizabeth receives news from home that her younger sister, Lydia, has eloped with none other than George Wickham, who is fleeing gambling debts accumulated with the other officers in his militia unit.

Determined to help Elizabeth in any possible way, Darcy returns to London and, unknown to either the Bennets or the Gardiners, uses Dyfed Brougham's contacts in the London demimonde to quickly find Wickham and Lydia. After failing to persuade Lydia to leave Wickham, Darcy proceeds to blackmail and bribe Wickham into marrying her, assuring Wickham's future good conduct by buying his many debts. This carries the implicit threat that Darcy will have Wickham sent to debtors' prison if he misbehaves. Darcy also purchases for him a commission in an obscure army regiment whose home barracks are in Newcastle upon Tyne, over two hundred miles from Lydia's family. Wickham is forced to agree, and after Darcy has approached the Gardiners with this plan (on the condition that his own role in the affair be kept secret), Wickham and Lydia are married.

Soon after, Bingley decides to return to his estate at Netherfield, to which he invites Darcy; upon seeing Jane Bennet and Bingley reunited, Darcy guiltily confesses his role in keeping the two separate. Bingley is angry, but quickly forgives Darcy; after straightening out the misunderstanding, Bingley and Jane are soon engaged. After hearing a false report that Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy are also to be married, an outraged Lady Catherine arrives at Darcy's London home having attempted to bully Elizabeth into promising to never enter into an engagement with Darcy. Darcy is elated when he learns that Elizabeth refused, realizing that her feelings towards him might have changed, and he returns to Netherfield. Once again, Darcy proposes to Elizabeth; this time she happily accepts, and the two are married.

Rose Garvey, and her husband Gerald, live next door to her sister Lana Butt, and her husband Harry, in the fictional Larkworthy Road, Muswell Hill, North London. Gerald is an underpaid junior executive, while Harry is a well-paid fitter. The slightly snobbish Gerald makes sure that he and Rose keep up a pretence of doing well even though they are not. Meanwhile, the Butts' relative wealth encourages Lana to put on airs and graces, although Harry remains down to earth.

Terry and June Fletcher are a middle-aged, middle-class couple who find themselves alone when their grown-up children, daughters Susan and Debbie, leave home. However, they are not alone for long as Aunt Lucy comes to live with them, along with her talking mynah bird.

Terry frequently hits upon an idea, which due to his foolhardy and obsessive manner he then continues with whatever the consequences, while June remains patient and tolerant.

Lonesome and medicament addict narcotics detective Herbert Strähl (Roeland Wiesnekker), who hardly can handle his own life, wants to clean up the Langstrasse area. Strähl often watches Berisha (Adem Kicai), the head of a drug trafficking ring, leaving his limousine and entering a dubious building, but he isn’t able to arrest him, due to the lacking of an evidence (Berisha never touches the drugs by himself).

Strähl, who hides his depression and craving for love behind rage, clamor and stimulant drugs, has arguments with his chief Brunner (Max Rüdlinger) and with his co-workers, e.g. with Ruedi Lautenschlager (Mike Müller), who is rather dull and often visits brothels. When Beat (Raphael Clamer), a former member of the Seepolizei (Police unit on lake), joins the team, Strähl thinks, the new blood was too calm and not tough enough.

During a house search, a junkie named René Wehrli (Manuel Löwensberg) falls out of the window. Strähl gets suspended from police service. Moreover, René and his girlfriend Carol “Caro” Hertig (Johanna Bantzer) blackmail Strähl for smart money. The drug addict couple buys a lot of articles in a kiosk, and Strähl has to pay for them (René also fills out a “Toto”-ticket (sports betting) there, and Strähl positively influences him doing it). Despite that, René doesn’t want to take back his inculpatory statement – René demands a huge amount of heroin from Strähl.

Strähl catches the dealer Beko (Nderim Hajrullahu), who is related to Berisha’s drug mafia, and presses him to cooperate. Beko shows a lot of hidden drugs to Strähl. Strähl uses a part of the drug depot's heroine to satisfy René. René, Caro and Strähl drive to the police station, where René wants to deny his statements to Strähl, while the others wait in the car. René stays in for a long time, and Strähl gets curious about what happened in the building. He goes in, too – and finds René dead in the restrooms.

Strähl and Caro smoke drugs on a foil at Strähl’s. Suddenly, the police enter the flat and find the heroin. The delinquents are escorted away in a car, but Strähl manages to open Caro’s door to let her escape (Her plastic-handcuffs can be cut off later).

Before René entered the police station he had given a roll of Smarties to Caro. It contained a 120'000 CHF winning “Toto”-ticket. Caro, on the run, now wants to encash the ticket as fast as possible. But the kiosk-woman isn’t allowed to pay out such a high amount of cash (the ticket has to be sent in). So Caro asks Beko, if he knew someone, who could exchange the ticket against cash within an hour. The mafia agrees (They offer 80’000 CHF) and the parties meet at a small park. The situation escalates and Caro throws a handgrenade (that René once took from a dead junkie). The grenade doesn’t go off.

Finally Strähl succeeds in arresting Berisha, thanks to a hint by new blood Beat – hiding a serious amount of confiscated drugs in Berisha’s trunk.

The fullest version of ''Yoshitsune'' consists of fifteen scenes in five acts. Though this was originally intended to be performed across the better part of a day, modes of performance have changed, and the full version would today take twice that long, due to the style and speed of current forms of acting.

For this reason and others, Kabuki plays are almost never performed in their entirety today, and ''Yoshitsune'' is no exception. The fullest standard version of any play is called ''tōshi kyōgen'', which in the case of ''Yoshitsune'' consists of nine of the full fifteen scenes. However, again as is the case with most plays, individual scenes or elements of ''Yoshitsune'' may be performed alone as part of a day's program of other such bits and pieces. The first, second, and fourth scenes of Act One are the most rarely performed today.

The fundamental structure of the play is very much in keeping with that of Japanese traditional drama forms as a whole. The philosophy of ''jo-ha-kyū'' is employed throughout, as actions, scenes, acts, and the play as a whole begin slow (''jo''), then get faster (''ha''), and end quickly (''kyu''). Also, ''Yoshitsune'' follows the traditional five-act structure and the themes traditionally associated with particular acts. Act One begins calmly and auspiciously, including scenes at the Imperial Palace. Act Two features combat. Act Three is something of a ''sewamono'' insertion into the ''jidaimono'' tale, turning away from the affairs of warriors and politics to focus on the lives of commoners. Act Four is a ''michiyuki'' journey, metaphorically associated with a journey through hell. Act Five wraps up the plot quickly and returns to themes of auspiciousness.

The following plot summary is based on the full fifteen-scene version.

Act One

The play opens at the Imperial Palace, where Yoshitsune and his faithful retainer, the warrior monk Benkei meet with , a court minister. They discuss the consequences of the battle of Yashima, and the fact that the bodies of several members of the Taira clan, who were supposed to have died in the battle, have not been found.

Tomokata also presents Yoshitsune with a drum, called "Hatsune", supposedly used several hundred years earlier by the Emperor Kanmu, and thus a precious, rare, and powerful object. The minister describes the symbolism of this imperial gift, explaining that the two drumheads represent Yoshitsune and his brother Yoritomo. The Emperor orders that Yoshitsune strike at his brother, as he would strike the head of the drum.

The following scene introduces Wakaba no Naishi, wife of Taira no Koremori, and her young son Rokudai. The pair are explained to be in hiding in a monastic hermitage near the town of Saga, and enter along with a nun who has been sheltering them in her home. A man comes to the house and is soon revealed to be Kokingo Takesato, a Taira retainer. He explains, to their surprise, that Koremori still lives, and that he has come to escort the pair to be reunited with him. Another man then arrives, this one an agent of the Court, seeking the wanted Naishi and Rokudai. Kokingo, in his disguise as a wandering hat seller, along with the nun, attempts to discourage him and turn him away; though the Imperial agent sees through the ruse, Kokingo strikes the man with a wooden pole and makes his escape, along with his two wards.

Scene three takes place at Yoshitsune's mansion in the capital, where his mistress, Shizuka dances for Yoshitsune's wife Kyō no Kimi and his closest retainers. She expresses her apologies on behalf of Benkei, who made some uncouth and inappropriate remarks to the Imperial agents at the presentation of the drum. Though Benkei is portrayed as cool, collected, eloquent, and quite clever in other plays, in this one he is loud, obnoxious, and violent, leaping to action without thinking. A guard enters and informs the group of an impending attack upon the mansion by forces belonging to Yoritomo, and Benkei immediately leaps to face them, but is held back by Shizuka.

Yoshitsune discusses with Kawagoe Tarō Shigeyori, advisor to his brother Yoritomo, the circumstances surrounding the falling-out which has occurred between him and the ''shōgun''. He explains that he reported to his brother that several Taira generals, actually still at large, had been killed, to help ensure peace and stability for the new shogunate; he also explains that though he has received the Emperor's drum, he has not struck it, and has thus symbolically not acknowledged any intention to attack his brother. This situation resolved, Kawagoe announces that he will call off the attack on Yoshitsune's mansion, but before he is able to do so, the impetuous Benkei has already leapt into action and killed one of the shogunal commanders.

The act ends with Benkei's realization that Yoshitsune and Shizuka have fled. He presumes they have gone to Yoshino, and chases after them.

Act Two

Act two opens at the Fushimi Inari Shrine, where Benkei catches up to Yoshitsune, Shizuka, and the four retainers. The group has fled the capital, seeking to escape retribution for Benkei's careless attack. The monk apologizes, and is forgiven by his lord, at the suggestion of Shizuka. However, Benkei then offers that since their journey will be long and dangerous, a lady such as her should not be subjected to such things and should be escorted back to the capital. She refuses, and in order to prevent her following them, or killing herself in grief, they tie her to a tree, along with the drum Hatsune, and leave her.

She is found by agents of the ''shōgun'', who cuts her free and tries to drag her away. Yoshitsune's retainer Tadanobu suddenly shows up and rescues her, in a flamboyant and vigorous swordfight. He is then commended by his lord, who bestows upon him his own (Yoshitsune's) suit of armor, and his name, Genkurō. The group then continue on their journey, leaving Tadanobu to escort Shizuka back to the capital.

The second scene takes place at the Tokaiya, a home near Daimotsu Bay where the commoner merchant Ginpei runs a shipping business, living with his wife Oryū and daughter Oyasu. Yoshitsune's party has made their lodgings here while they wait for good weather to continue their journey by boat. While talking to Oryū, Benkei steps over the sleeping Oyasu as he makes his way from the room; just at that moment, accompanied by dramatic drumming, he feels a pain in his leg.

Shortly after Benkei leaves, Sagami Gorō, a retainer of the shogunate, sent here to seek out and attack Yoshitsune, arrives. Not knowing that Yoshitsune is in that very home, Sagami demands of Oryū that he be provided a boat in order to pursue his quarry. She replies that their only boat is already promised to their other guests, and a small scuffle occurs between the two as the warrior accuses the woman of harboring Taira fugitives and seeks to enter the room where Yoshitsune and his retainers remain. Just then, the merchant Ginpei makes his first entrance, carrying an anchor over his shoulder, a strong symbolic reference to his true identity as the fugitive general Taira no Tomomori. He argues briefly with Sagami, and throws the warrior out of his house.

Ginpei is then introduced to his guests, who were taken in by Oryū while he was out, and immediately recognizes Yoshitsune. Introducing himself briefly, and expounding on his identity as a boatman and merchant, he then suggests that they set sail, despite the weather. As Yoshitsune and his retainers dress and prepare for the journey, Ginpei has an aside in which he dramatically reveals himself to the audience as the Taira general Tomomori.

Tomomori declares to the audience the story of faking his own death at Dan-no-ura and escaping with the young Emperor Antoku and his wet nurse Tsubone, living for the last several years as Ginpei, his daughter Oyasu and wife Oryū. He explains to Tsubone that he intends to kill Yoshitsune while out at sea, the rain and dark of night obscuring the battle. He heads out to the boat, as Tsubone and the Emperor change clothes, removing their disguises.

The battle is not seen on stage, but reflected through narration, the reactions of Tsubone, as she watches from the shore, and the report of Sagami Gorō, the shogunal officer who is revealed to have actually been in Tomomori's service. After some time, the clash is perceived to have ended with Tomomori's death. Tsubone takes the Emperor to the seashore, and prepares to have them both drown, sacrificing themselves. But they are pulled back by Yoshitsune as he returns to the shore, and assured of their safety; he has no intentions of capturing or killing the Emperor of Japan. Tomomori, not killed, returns just a few moments after Yoshitsune, and is appalled that his schemes have fallen apart so quickly and easily.

Tsubone kills herself, seeing that she cannot serve Tomomori any longer, and the general, recognizing the futility of his schemes, his failure to slay his enemies, and the doom wrought upon his entire clan by the evil actions of his father Taira no Kiyomori, throws himself into the sea, tied to an anchor.

Act Three

Act Three opens as Wakaba no Naishi, her retainer Kokingo and son Rokudai pause at a tea shop along their journey to find her husband, Taira no Koremori. They sit down to rest, and a young man in traveling clothes, by the name of Gonta, joins them soon afterwards. He talks to them briefly, helps them get nuts from the tree, and then leaves, taking Kokingo's travelling pack instead of his own. Kokingo notices a few moments later, and Gonta returns, apologizing for his mistake. The two go through the contents of the baskets, to make sure the other hasn't stolen anything, but Gonta then claims that there's twenty ''ryō'' missing from his basket.

Gonta, attempting to swindle the samurai, accuses him of being a thief, and a battle very nearly breaks out. Though aggressive with words, he is no match for the samurai in a fight, and hides behind a bench while Kokingo only grows more angry and brandishes his sword. Naishi attempts to calm him down, but Gonta only eggs him on until, finally, the samurai pays him twenty ''ryō'' and leaves, along with Naishi and Rokudai.

Gonta is thus left alone with Kosen, the proprietess of the teahouse, who it turns out is his wife. She scolds him for being a swindler and a gambler; in his response, he explains his life story. The son of Yazaemon of the Tsurube sushi shop, he became a swindler, thief and gambler in order to support himself and his love for Kosen. Disowned and kicked out of his house, he struggled to earn money to buy Kosen out of indenture. Though he describes his intent to rob his mother that night, he is talked out of it by Kosen, and they return home.

The next scene focuses on Kokingo, Rokudai and Naishi, pursued by Imperial officers. Already wounded, Kokingo fights off one of the officers, Inokuma Dainoshin, and then sinks to the ground, exhausted. As Naishi weeps over him, he claims he cannot go on, and implores Naishi and her son to forget about him, and to continue on to see Koremori. He promises to follow them after he regains his strength. The pair leave him then, and exit, continuing on their journey. The warrior then dies, just as a group of townsmen, including the sushi shop owner Yazaemon, come upon him. After saying a prayer for the dead, Yazaemon cuts off Kokingo's head and takes it with him, returning home.

Yazaemon's sushi shop is the setting for the third scene, which opens with his daughter Osato and his wife preparing and selling sushi to visitors while they talk. A young man named Yasuke has been living with them for some time, and is due to be married to Osato as soon as Yazaemon returns. Yasuke enters with some sushi tubs, and talks briefly with the two women as they work, before they are interrupted by the arrival of Gonta, Osato's brother.

Gonta explains to his mother that he is leaving for good, to turn himself around and make something of his life, but asks for some money, claiming that he was robbed on the road on his way there. She places several silver ''kanme'' coins in a sushi tub for him and sends him off. Just then, Yazaemon returns; fearing that he should learn that his wife stole from the shop to give to Gonta, they hide the sushi tub among the others. Yazaemon then comes in, calls out for his family, and hides the head of Kokingo, wrapped in his cloak, in one of the other tubs.

Meeting up with Yasuke, Yazaemon then reveals to the audience Yasuke's identity as the general Taira no Koremori, father of Rokudai and husband of Naishi, who he came across in Kumano and took into his home. He explains to Koremori that he just came across Kajiwara Kagetoki, an agent of the shogunate, who suspected him of harboring the general, and that for his safety he might flee the area.

As Osato and Yasuke (Koremori) lie on their wedding bed, preparing to consummate their relationship, he confesses to her not his true identity, but that he has a wife and child in another province, and asks that she release him from his pledge to marry her. By coincidence, the wandering Wakaba no Naishi then arrives at that same house, seeking lodging for the night. Koremori glances outside, realizes who they are, and welcomes them in. He attempts to explain his infidelity to his wife, his romance with Osato coming from a desire to repay Yazaemon for taking him in; Osato overhears, and bursts into sobs. She welcomes Rokudai and Naishi into her home, offering them the seats of honor, and explains her side of the story, asking for forgiveness from Naishi. She fell in love with this gentle man, she explains, whom her father brought home, not knowing that he was secretly a noble. Upset at Koremori's duplicity and at his leaving her, she weeps and is comforted by Naishi.

Word comes of the arrival of shogunal officers, and Koremori, his wife and child exit. Gonta arrives, then, declaring to Osato that he intends to turn over the three to the authorities in exchange for a reward. His sister begs him not to, and he grabs the sushi tub with the silver coins and flees after the three.

Soldiers then appear, along with Kajiwara, and surround Yazaemon. They accuse him of lying to them, and harboring Koremori; but thinking quickly, he tells them that he's already had a change of heart and killed Koremori himself. He brings the men inside, and reaches for the sushi tub with Kokingo's head in it, but is stopped by his wife, who is thinking of the money she stole from him to give to Gonta. A shout is heard from outside, as Gonta returns with a woman and child, tied up and being dragged behind him. He explains to the soldiers that he has captured Rokudai and Naishi, and shows them the tub containing Kokingo's head, claiming it to be Koremori's. Kajiwara offers to spare Yazaemon's life in exchange for this deed, but Gonta, hoping to gain from this himself, declares that he wants monetary compensation; Kajiwara therefore gives him his cloak, which previously belonged to Yoritomo, and which would be symbolic of the reward owed him by the government.

As Kajiwara leads the prisoners away, Yazaemon finds the opportunity to viciously stab his son, bitter at Gonta's betrayal. Yazaemon curses his son as he aggravates the wound, but as he dies, Gonta explains to his father that his deceptions were for good intentions all along. He claims that he intended to give the silver to Koremori for traveling expenses. Knowing that his father intended to play off Kokingo's head as Koremori's, and knowing that the head was no longer in the house, he returned in order to rescue his father's plan, and his family therefore. He then reveals that the woman and child turned over were not Naishi and Rokudai but his own wife and child, Kosen and Zenta, who willingly and voluntarily sacrificed themselves to save the nobles.

Koremori, Naishi, and Rokudai then return, alive and safe, disguised as tea merchants. Koremori finds a poem on Yoritomo's cloak which indicates that something is inside it; cutting it open, he finds a Buddhist monk's robe. Seemingly, Kajiwara intended all along to spare Koremori, and granted him in this indirect way a disguise with which to safely escape.

Koremori cuts off his topknot, becomes a lay monk, and separates himself from both his families for the final time. Yazaemon offers to accompany Rokudai and Naishi, and Osato stays with her mother, loyally maintaining the home and the shop in her father's absence.

The act ends with Gonta's death, one of the most famous examples in Japanese traditional drama of the interference of the affairs of nobles and samurai into the lives of common people, and the death and destruction it brings.

Act Four

The fourth act begins with a ''michiyuki'' dance scene, which follows Shizuka as she seeks to catch up with Yoshitsune and his party. The journey is narrated by an offstage narrator, in the bunraku style, and there is very little dialogue.

As she travels through the countryside, Shizuka decides to play the Hatsune Drum, in order to entice birds to follow her, not knowing the magical or metaphorical significance of the drum. As soon as she does so, a white fox emerges, romps across the stage and then disappears behind a low hill, from which emerges Tadanobu.

Placing the drum atop Yoshitsune's armor, granted Tadanobu in the second act, the two dance, their gestures and motions mimicking the actions of the narration. The narration indicates their desire to follow Yoshitsune to Yoshino, and then drifts into a retelling of the events of the battle of Dan-no-ura, ending with the pair's arrival at a Buddhist temple, the Zaō Hall in Yoshino.

After a very brief scene showing the pair's arrival, attention is shifted to Kawatsura Hōgen, head of the temple, who discusses with his fellow monks what stance they should take towards Yoshitsune. Several of the monks here are known to be enemies of Yoshitsune, and a letter has just arrived from the capital asking them to hunt him down. The monks discuss, and even those normally hostile to Yoshitsune decide that as monks it is their duty to aid people in need. Hōgen, however, even after admitting that he thinks Yoshitsune blameless, fires an arrow at a distant peak, smaller than its neighboring peak, and thus representing the younger brother (Yoshitsune). Thus he declares his stance alongside the shogunate, for the safety of the temple.

Hōgen encourages his monks to do what they think is right: to welcome Yoshitsune in and grant him asylum if he should arrive and request it. But he also assures them that he intends to kill the warrior should they do so. The monks interpret their master's words to mean that he is already harboring Yoshitsune, and that he intended to throw them off and prevent their interference; they decide to find and attack the warrior that night.

Hōgen returns to his mansion, where he is indeed harboring Yoshitsune, and declares to his wife that he has turned against his guest, and intends to stand with the shogunate. Yoshitsune speaks briefly with Hōgen, thanking him for his hospitality and aid, and is then informed that his retainer, Satō Tadanobu has arrived and wishes to speak with him. Tadanobu is asked by his lord about his stewardship of Shizuka and replies, confused, that he has been in his home province with his ailing mother since the end of the war, and has not seen Shizuka. Two of Yoshitsune's other retainers appear, pointing swords at Tadanobu and demanding an explanation when the temple's gatekeeper announces that Satō Tadanobu has arrived with Lady Shizuka.

Shizuka is reunited with her lord, but the Tadanobu who had been escorting her seems to vanish. The first Tadanobu explains to Shizuka that he has not been escorting her and has not seen her in some time; the other retainers confirm that this second Tadanobu is nowhere to be found in the building. She then notices that this Tadanobu is wearing somewhat different clothing, and comes upon the idea of beating the Hatsune Drum to summon her escort. She explains that the drum always attracted her escort, and made him behave strangely. The scene ends as she bangs the drum, and Tadanobu is taken away by Yoshitsune's retainers.

The final scene thus begins with Shizuka beating the drum, and a fox rushes into the room, becoming Tadanobu, who bows before her. Shizuka then suddenly pulls a sword and slashes at Tadanobu, who dodges the attack. Mesmerized by the drum, Tadanobu still manages to avoid continued attacks as Shizuka demands that he reveal his identity.

He then tells his story, revealing in the process that he is a kitsune, a fox spirit. The drum was made hundreds of years earlier from the skins of his parents, powerful kitsune whose magic was employed to bring rain. A costume quick-change transforms Tadanobu into his kitsune form, who explains that though he has lived a very long time and gained magical powers, he has been unable to ever care for his parents. Failing to fulfill acts of filial piety prevents him from gaining respect or status among the kitsune, and so for centuries he has sought out this drum. He was unable to get at the drum when it was kept in the imperial palace, he explains, since the palace is guarded against spirits by many gods (kami), but once it was removed from the palace and given to Yoshitsune, he saw his chance.

Shizuka and Yoshitsune speak to the fox for a time, and decide to grant him the drum. Thus released, he exits in grand style. Originally this would have been done through a particular style of dance called ''kitsune roppo'' (fox six-steps) along the ''hanamichi'' (the pathway that cuts through the audience from stage to the rear of the theatre). However, more recently it has become the practice, encouraged by Ichikawa Ennosuke III who often plays the fox Genkurō to exit by flying out over the audience, in a technique known as ''chūnori'' (riding the sky).

The real Tadanobu then offers to take his lord's place in facing the doom that awaits him at the hands of the monks. The kitsune's magic hampers the monk's schemes, and Kakuhan, the one monk who most strongly opposed the samurai lord, is revealed to be Taira no Noritsune, the third surviving Taira general, in disguise. Noritsune and Yoshitsune clash swords several times before Emperor Antoku appears from the next room. Noritsune, of course, bows low to his Emperor, and both explain how they survived their supposed deaths at the battle of Yashima, and came to be at this monastery. Noritsune then begins weeping, announcing his failure to his clan and to his Emperor.

Hōgen and two of Yoshitsune's retainers come in with bloody blades and holding the severed heads of the other monks who followed Noritsune. They seek to fight, but their hearts are calmed by the fox's magic, and Noritsune announces that he shall once again become Yokawa no Kakuhan, a loyal servant to the Emperor.

Act Five

As is quite standard for Japanese traditional dramas, the final act is short, swift, and serves to wrap up any major loose plot threads. Here, it opens on a mountaintop, with Tadanobu, dressed as Yoshitsune, calling out a challenge to those who side with Yoritomo and the shogunate.

A number of warriors come at him, and he cuts them down. Noritsune then appears, as the monk Kakuhan, who claims to have foregone all his old grudges, and his warrior ways. Tadanobu declares his true identity to his foe, and the two clash in a complex choreographed fight scene. Finally, Noritsune pins his opponent to the ground, but a second Tadanobu rushes in and stabs the Taira general, the body below him disappearing and leaving only a suit of armor. Yoshitsune explains that they saw through Noritsune's promises of peace, and the fox Genkurō aided them in subduing him.

Kawagoe, an agent of the shogunate, then appears, along with Fujiwara no Tomokata, who he has tied up. He reveals that the Imperial order which came with the drum, ordering Yoshitsune to oppose his brother, along with that to exterminate the Taira clan, came not from the Emperor, but from the machinations of Tomokata. Hearing this, Noritsune kills the defenseless Tomokata, and then turns to Yoshitsune, challenging his foe to kill him. Yoshitsune states that Noritsune died long ago, that he has since become Kakuhan, and that it is to Tadanobu to kill him.

The play thus ends with the last of Yoshitsune's foes slain, and a return to the peace and auspiciousness with which the play began.

Terry, an average, heterosexual man, advertises for a lodger for his flat in Streatham and Julian, a flamboyant gay Channel 4 celebrity moves in. Julian soon disrupts Terry's mundane life, turns the flat into something similar to an 18th-century Turkish boudoir and disrupts Terry's relationship with his girlfriend, policewoman Rene.

Unusually for a sitcom, ''Terry and Julian'' breaks the "fourth wall" by recognising the studio audience and viewers, and employs use of audience participation.

The episode begins with Richie and Eddie acting as volunteers in an identity parade. The suspects are brought in, who turn out to be Eddie's friends Spudgun and Dave Hedgehog. Spudgun's mother, Mrs. Potato, enters the room and identifies him as stealing her handbag to take to a cross-dressing party. Chief Inspector Grobbelaar orders one of the officers to take her outside and give her a good drubbing.

Next, we see Richie and Eddie entering their local pub, The Lamb and Flag. Ordering drinks with their earnings from the identity parade, they notice a new barmaid. The two pretend to be health and safety officers in order to get free food and drinks. Spudgun, Dave Hedgehog and Mrs Potato are also posing as health and safety officers, and are planning their next identity parade that afternoon. Richie tries to chat up the barmaid (Julia Sawalha), complimenting her on her "short summer frock" and asking whether she uses Timotei shampoo. While doing so, he claims he was a soldier in the Falklands War. This catches the attention of a nearby drinker (Robert Llewellyn), who actually fought in the war and starts questioning him.

Meanwhile, the toilet door bursts open, and a man staggers drunkenly into the bar and collapses, where a visibly shocked Richie announces that it is the local bookmaker, Tight-Mouthed Larry. The Falklands veteran begins questioning Richie again, and shows him his service medal, as well as demonstrating that he lost his leg in the war and now has a false one. He works out that Richie was lying about being in the Falklands War. When Richie shows his appendix scar it does not impress the veteran, who thinks that he is showing him his "very small" penis and beats him up. Then Tight-Mouthed Larry reappears and tells the entire pub of a horse, Sad Ken, that is certain to win despite having 100/1 odds.

Richie, lamenting the fact that he and Eddie have only £16 between them to put on the horse, openly admits he wishes he had a huge wad. He and Eddie go to the toilets, where they plan to steal the war veteran's leg, take it to a pawnbroker, sell it, place the proceeds on Sad Ken, buy the leg back with the winnings and keep the profit. They leave the toilets to find that the veteran has fallen asleep. Richie unfastens the false leg, and sends Eddie to the pawnbroker to sell the leg and place the bet. Richie starts feeding the veteran alcohol with a funnel to keep him asleep.

At a pawnshop, there is a crowd of people selling various items to raise stake money for the horse race. Eddie enters with the leg. Ted says it must be worth at least £2,500, but offers Eddie £1.50. Eddie blackmails the pawnbroker into giving him £500 for it.

Back in the pub, the war veteran wakes up, and says that he wants to go for a walk to clear his head. Richie persuades him to stay in his seat by asking to hear some war stories. At the bookie's, Eddie places "£500, on the nose, on Sad Ken", and the cashier asks him if he would like to pay tax. Outraged by the suggestion, Eddie declines before going to watch the race with the rest of the drinkers. Sad Ken, who is in fact blind and only has three legs, runs the wrong way and falls over, then is shot along with his jockey.

Eddie returns to the pub and explains that Sad Ken didn't win, and now they have no money to buy the leg back with. Tight-Mouthed Larry and Dick Head, the pub landlord, enter the bar with a pile of money and reveal that the Sad Ken tip had been a scam, and the new barmaid had been Dick's niece, Veronica.

The pair go back into the toilet and plan to mug the next person who enters. A man enters who they start to beat up, but it turns out to be Chief Inspector Grobbelaar. The episode ends back in the police station, with Richie and Eddie in an identity parade, where Eddie demands to see a, preferably naked female, lawyer. Chief Inspector Grobbelaar picks the two out as the men who assaulted him, and the other police officers start beating up Richie and Eddie.

By the year 2056, an epidemic of organ failures has devastated the planet. The megacorporation GeneCo provides organ transplants on a payment plan. Clients who miss payments are hunted down by Repo Men, skilled assassins who "repossess" the organs ("Genetic Repo Man"). The CEO of GeneCo, Rottissimo "Rotti" Largo, discovers he is terminally ill. Rotti's three children, Luigi, Pavi, and Amber, bicker over who will inherit GeneCo ("Mark It Up"). Rotti believes none of his children are worthy heirs and instead plans to pass on his fortune to 17-year-old Shilo Wallace, the daughter of his ex-fiancée Marni ("Things You See In A Graveyard").

Shilo has inherited a rare blood disease from Marni which requires her to stay indoors, and longs to see the outside world ("Infected"). Shilo's overprotective father Nathan believes he killed Marni with a treatment he created for her illness – in truth, Rotti poisoned Marni's medicine behind Nathan's back as revenge for leaving him, and then blackmailed Nathan, promising to keep him out of jail if he agreed to become GeneCo's head Repo Man, though he has led Shilo to believe he is a doctor ("Legal Assassin"). One night, Shilo secretly visits her mother's tomb and runs into GraveRobber, who is digging up bodies to secrete Zydrate, a euphoric and addictive pain-killer that he sells on the street to keep up with his GeneCo payments ("21st Century Cure").

Rotti lures Shilo to GeneCo's fair with the promise of a cure for her disease. There, the Largo brothers argue about their father's will while Amber harasses Blind Mag, an opera singer and GeneCo's celebrity spokesperson. Born blind, Mag has been given surgically enhanced eyes by GeneCo at the cost of working for them indefinitely. Rotti explains that Mag is soon resigning as GeneCo's spokeswoman. GraveRobber helps Shilo escape the fairgrounds, encountering several of his customers including the surgery-addicted Amber, who has skipped the fair she was supposed to speak at, once again publicly embarrassing her father ("Zydrate Anatomy"). Amber explains that Mag's eyes are set for repossession and that she will replace her. After GeneCops arrive, GraveRobber and Shilo part ways and she quickly returns to her room before Nathan notices her missing.

Rotti hires Nathan to repossess Mag's eyes but Nathan refuses, citing her close friendship with Marni, and quits his job mid-surgery ("Night Surgeon"). An infuriated Rotti vows to have Nathan taken out. Mag visits Shilo and reveals she is her godmother, and that Nathan had told her Shilo died with Marni. She cautions Shilo to not make the same mistakes she did ("Chase The Morning"). Nathan arrives home and forces Mag out after she scolds him for his lies and his incarceration of Shilo ("Everyone’s A Composer"). Meanwhile, back at GeneCo, Rotti writes his will, ready to make Shilo his sole beneficiary ("Gold").

Rotti invites Shilo to the Opera ("At The Opera Tonight"). Nathan is pursued by GeneCops who try to arrest him, but he quickly dispatches them and heads to the opera looking for Shilo. Amber takes the stage for her debut, but her performance is ruined when her transplanted face falls off. Mag completes her final performance, but deviates from the song's grand finale, denouncing the Largo family and gouging out her eyes in an act of defiance ("Chromaggia"). Rotti cuts the cords suspending Mag, impaling her on a fence. Rotti assures the audience that Mag's death is part of the show.

Shilo sees a Repo Man arrive and attacks him with a shovel before realizing that he is her father, and angrily confronts Nathan for lying to her about his profession ("Let The Monster Rise"). Onstage, Rotti reveals that Shilo does not have a blood disease but that Nathan has been poisoning her "medicine" in an attempt to keep her safe from the outside world after being unable to cope with the loss of Marni. As his disease begins to take its toll, Rotti promises Shilo GeneCo if she kills her father. When she refuses, Rotti uses the last of his strength to fatally shoot Nathan, and dies after disowning his children. After a tearful farewell to her father ("I Didn’t Know I’d Love You So Much"), Shilo leaves, deciding that her father's actions do not dictate her future ("Genetic Emancipation").

Shilo flees, leaving GeneCo with no legal heir. Amber inherits the company instead and auctions her fallen face to charity, which Pavi wins.

Standing next to a water reservoir in a monastery enclave, a monk sees a fish and goes to get his net to catch it. The fish eludes him and the monk gets rather agitated as he tries increasingly extreme ways of catching the fish. He gets into the pond himself, and enlists the help of other monks; he tries candles, and a bow and arrow to no avail. The more the fish manages to evade him, the more obsessed the monk gets. He follows the fish out of the pond into a canal, through different landscapes and out of the confines of the monastery. Eventually the chase gets less frantic and the monk and the fish move in harmony. They float through a door into the open space and drift off into the sky together.

When Michael Scott (Steve Carell) repeatedly disrupts Darryl Philbin's (Craig Robinson) warehouse safety training session, Lonny Collins (Patrice O'Neal) and Darryl mock the office workers' safety session in retaliation, claiming that office work does not entail physical danger. Offended by Darryl's disdain for office safety training, Michael decides to demonstrate the risk of depression and suicide by jumping off the roof, landing on a hidden trampoline. When Michael tests out the trampoline by dropping a watermelon from the roof, it bounces off and hits an office worker's car, prompting it to be replaced by a bouncy castle hidden from the general view of the parking lot. From the roof of the building, Michael talks dramatically about the dangers of depression. When the bouncy castle is discovered, Jim and Pam realize that Michael is "going to kill himself pretending to kill himself." The employees collectively talk Michael down from the roof, with Darryl doing most of the talking, to assure Michael that he is brave simply by living as himself. At the end, the car that was hit by the watermelon is revealed to be Stanley's (Leslie David Baker), who is shocked to see the mess.

Meanwhile, the office staff begins betting on various things, from counting the jelly beans in Pam Beesly's (Jenna Fischer) candy dish to whether Creed Bratton (Creed Bratton) will notice that his apple has been replaced with a potato. Karen Filippelli (Rashida Jones) loses every bet, realizing that she is not yet as familiar with the office as she thought she was. Also, Andy Bernard (Ed Helms) is back after several weeks in anger management training, determined to make a fresh start with his co-workers. His attempts to go by the name Drew are unsuccessful, and Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson) decides to shun Andy for three years, although he often "unshuns" him to inform him of Michael's plans.

An unnamed narrator meets the famous Brevet Brigadier General John A. B. C. Smith, "one of the most remarkable men of the age" and a hero of "the late tremendous swamp-fight, away down South, with the Bugaboo and Kickapoo Indians." Smith is an impressive physical specimen at six feet tall with flowing black hair, "large and lustrous" eyes, powerful-looking shoulders, and other essentially perfect attributes. He is also known for his great speaking ability, often boasting of his triumphs and about the advancements of the age.

The narrator wants to learn more about this heroic man. He finds that people do not seem to want to speak about the General when asked, only commenting on achievements of the "wonderfully inventive age" and how "horrid" the Native Americans whom the General had fought against had been. The narrator begins to believe there is some concealed secret he must uncover.

When he visits the General's home, he sees nothing but a strange bundle of items on the floor. The bundle, however, begins to speak. It is the General himself, and his servant begins to "assemble" him, piece by piece. Limbs are screwed on, a wig, glass eye and false teeth, and a tongue, until the man himself stands "whole". The General has lost more than battles, it seems: he was captured and severely mutilated by Native American warriors and now much of his body is composed of prostheses, which must be put in or on every morning and without which he cannot appear in public. The narrator now understands the General's secret — he "was ''the man that was used up''."

Stevie Castle is a Las Vegas showgirl whose teen daughter K.C. demonstrates a promising aptitude for tennis. When K.C. enters a local tournament, she encounters hostility and snobbery from the tennis crowd due to her mother's profession.

The book is a guide on starting a new identity. It includes chapters on planning a disappearance, arranging for new identification, finding work, establishing credit, pseudocide (creating the impression of one's own death), and more. The book recommends a method of disappearing by assuming the identity of a dead person with similar vital statistics and age, and also includes a section on avoiding paper trails which, due to the age of the book, may no longer be relevant or useful.

The film takes place in and around Cape Town and a nearby township, Khayelitsha. The film centers around two teenage friends, the younger Madiba (Junior Singo) and the elder Sipho (Innocent Msimango). One day, as they are playing alongside the railroad tracks, they find a dead body. With him they find a gun with one bullet and a video camera. Sipho takes the gun and Madiba takes the camera, which he puts inside a wooden toy camera to make it seem a not-working toy. Sipho seems to harmlessly joke about the gun at first, but begins spending more time in Cape Town, robbing parking meters and paying for glue to sniff. He eventually starts living in abandoned places in Cape Town with a group of thugs.

Madiba films the world around him, finding beauty in both Khayelitsha and Cape Town. He tries many filming techniques and is skilled, but finds his videos very personal and does not normally let other people see them. While in Cape Town, he meets and forges an unlikely friendship with a white Cape Town girl, Estelle (Dana de Agrella) from a rich family, who gets into conflict with her racist father about this. Sipho uses the gun to rob people. Madiba disapproves and does not want any of the stolen money, but still considers him his friend. One of Sipho's robberies goes wrong and he is killed. In the end Madiba and Estelle run off and take a train together.

Woody stays behind to swim while the other birds in the forest migrate south for the winter. Just after the other birds leave, the cold of winter sets in instantly, to the point that Woody's swimming hole freezes solid after he jumps in. Woody does not worry, because he has stored up plenty of food. However, a snow storm enters his house and makes off with all of his possessions, food included.

Two weeks later, Woody is delusional and literally staring starvation, personified as something vaguely resembling the Grim Reaper, in the face. A month later, a hungry cat happens upon Woody's cabin, and conspires to eat the woodpecker. The famished Woody, however, plans just as quickly to eat the cat, and the two have at it. Eventually a moose appears at Woody's open door, and the starving cat and woodpecker chase after it to capture and eat it. Afterwards, however, the meal proves not to be enough to satisfy both Woody and the cat, who instantly resume their game of trying to eat each other.

Professor Norman Reed falls in love with and marries a woman named Paula while on vacation in the South Seas. When they return to his hometown, she is greeted coolly by much of the community, especially Ilona, who felt that Reed was hers. Strange things begin to happen, including the death of a colleague, which turns people against her even more, especially as she believes in voodoo and other supernatural phenomena. Reed must work hard to prove her innocence and find the real culprit behind the strange doings.

Artist Dave Stuart is blinded by a jealous assistant. The father of his fiancé offers an operation to restore his sight, but Stuart will have to wait until the man dies. The benefactor dies a premature death and Stuart becomes a suspect.

In Moscow, four terrified women prisoners are brought to the office of Joseph Stalin, who chooses Dasha, the smallest and most beautiful, and punishes her by shaving off her black hair. Moments later, plastic surgeon Dr. Petrov leads Stalin into the operating room and transforms his face so that he is unrecognizable. After his handlers announce publicly that Stalin has died, they secret him away to a hideout, where Greta Grisenko serves as his nurse. Meanwhile, Greta's twin sister Lili continues searching for her, as she has been ever since Russian troops invaded their home country of Lithuania and took Greta, against her will, to Moscow. Earlier, Lili had engaged private investigator Steve Anderson, an American living in Berlin, to find Greta, and now locates him there and asks why he has failed to contact her with information about her sister. Steve has discovered that Greta is working in Moscow and, despising Communists, refuses to work with Lili until she convinces him that her sister is an innocent victim of the Russians.

Steve takes Lili to the home of Mischa Rimilkin, a one-armed espionage agent who reveals that Greta has been working for Petrov. Upon receiving assurance from the U.S. Army that Lili is not a spy, the men divulge to her that Dasha, now confined to a mental hospital, claims that Stalin has been surgically altered and is living clandestinely with Greta.

The next day, Lili once again pleads with Steve to help her locate Greta, but Steve protests that the job is too dangerous. He is won over, however, by Lili's clever idea to force Stalin into action by announcing over the radio that he is alive. As they have hoped, Stalin hears the broadcast and orders his henchman, Igor Smetka, to kill Steve.

Mischa then brings Steve and Lili to Abensburg, West Germany, where Stalin's son Jacob has been living in secret since the Allies captured him during World War II. On the train, Steve and Mischa note the suspicious presence of a nun wearing combat boots, and once in Abensburg, Mischa follows the nun into a church. At the same time, Steve and Lili visit Jacob, who hates his father and, after conceding that he may be alive, warns them that they are in grave danger.

That night, Mischa and Steve vie for Lili's attention, and although Steve eventually wins a kiss, he then insults her, prompting her to slap him. From Lili's hotel room window, Steve spots the nun approaching and races downstairs, where he finds that Mischa has been knocked out. Steve overpowers the nun and removes the disguise, revealing his old cohort, Russian Tata Brun. Tata explains that he has been ordered to kill Steve in return for permission to see his exiled family, and the two agree to part without violence.

In the next few days, Mischa, Steve and Lili study old films of Stalin to become familiar with his mannerisms. Before one screening, Steve spots Igor and, suspecting impending danger, orders Lili to return to the hotel. Although Steve and Mischa wait in the screening room for an attack, none comes. Soon after, Tata arrives with a cab driver who announces that Lili has been abducted by Igor. Steve notifies the police and agrees to act as bait to attract Stalin's men. Surrounded by undercover agents, Steve and Mischa walk the streets near the screening room, and as planned, they are attacked. With Tata's help, they capture one of the assailants, whom Tata recognizes as one of the Communist agents who tortured him. Tata now returns the favor, torturing the man into confessing that Stalin is in the Greek mountains.

After the agent dies from his injuries, Steve and Mischa travel to the mountains, and there learn from bistro owner Count Molda that a nearby monastery was taken over years earlier by a mysterious group. Curious, Steve and Mischa sneak into the monastery at night, but are immediately captured by the waiting Molda, who introduces them to three other men and their women companions. Unable to discern which man is Stalin, Steve offers them all political asylum in the West, but the men respond by showing them Tata, who has been tortured and killed. They then place Steve and Mischa in a cell next to the imprisoned Lili.

That night, Lili receives a visit from Greta, and although Lili is thrilled to see her sister, Greta attacks her. When Lili pulls at Greta's hair, Greata's wig comes off in her hands, and Lili realizes that her sister has been enslaved and brainwashed. Although the women whip Steve mercilessly, he refuses to talk, and when Steve returns to the cell, Mischa uses his fake arm to bludgeon the guard. The two men then manage to free Lili, and together they stumble onto a room full of stolen cash and burn the currency in the lit fireplace. Just then, Greta bursts in and kills Mischa, forcing Steve to slay her.

Steve and Lili are soon recaptured and taken to Molda, who orders them killed. Just then, however, Jacob enters and shoots Stalin's henchmen. Molda steps forward, tenderly addressing Jacob as "son," but Jacob is unmoved and orders his father at gunpoint into a waiting car. As Steve and Lili follow them in another car, Stalin tries to reason with his son, but Jacob resists, denouncing his father's violence and campaign of terror against their people. Steve pulls up to the car and shoots at Jacob to make him stop. Trapped, Jacob willingly steers the car over a cliff. While Steve and Lili watch the fiery explosion, they note a nearby Biblical inscription reading "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

In one sketch, Gingold and Epstein played two wealthy hypochondriacs who compare their X-rays.

The film covers 24 hours in the life of three youths in Montevideo. The story is about three young boys, Leche, Javi and Seba, trying to survive until Sunday. They have a lot of problems regarding studies, girls, and their lives consist mostly of drinking or sleeping or meeting strange people like the crazy delivery boy, a retarded drug addict, and a philosophical counter clerk at a video rental store.

Javi has landed a job driving a sound truck that plays the same radio spot for pasta all day long, while his buddy Leche, who is supposed to be studying for his exams, instead finds himself having sexual fantasies about his tutor, and Seba is waylaid by a handful of small-time dope dealers when all he wants to do is go home and watch the porno movie he's just rented.

Judd is upset that Shiloh (his former hunting dog) now belongs to Marty. In the first film, Marty did hard labor to get Shiloh from Judd. Judd starts drinking more heavily and almost runs Marty and Shiloh off the road with his truck. Marty encounters Judd several times, including one key moment when Judd thinks he heard Marty on his property, threatens him and holds his gun and goes to find him but he is too drunk.

Later, Judd crashes his truck into the creek while driving drunk. Shiloh's loud barking gets Marty's attention, and he finds Judd. Judd is taken to the hospital and returns home sometime later. Marty wants to be nice with Judd and makes donations of bread and meat. Marty then starts writing Judd letters, telling him stories about Shiloh. Judd reads them and starts to bond with Marty.

In the end, Marty decides he wants to take Shiloh with him to visit Judd. Marty and Judd start to become friends after Judd tells him that it was Shiloh who really saved him, Judd starts to gets close with his dogs and he lets them come inside when it starts to rain.

The story tells of the 29 December 1386, trial by combat (duel) in which the Norman knight Jean de Carrouges dueled squire Jacques Le Gris. Carrouges had accused Le Gris of raping his wife, Marguerite de Carrouges, née de Thibouville, some months before. He had gone to King Charles VI, seeking an appeal to the decision handed down by Count Pierre d'Alençon, who Carrouges believed favoured Le Gris. Whichever combatant was still alive at the end of the duel would be declared the winner, as a sign of God's will. If Jean de Carrouges had lost the duel, his wife would have been burned at the stake, as punishment for her false accusation.

In the centuries since Le Gris's death, the case has become an important cultural legend in France, and the guilt or innocence of its participants has been a source of great debate among historians and jurists.

Though this was the final judiciary duel held in France, it was not the last legal duel. Subsequently authorised duels were not judicial duels deciding the guilt and innocence of the participants, but duels for honour to avenge an affront. The last duel to be publicly authorised took place on 10 July 1547 at the castle of Saint-Germain-en-Laye: it opposed Guy Chabot de Jarnac against François de Vivonne, following a request by Jarnac to King Henry II for permission to duel to regain his honour. Jarnac went on to win the duel after injuring Vivonne. Vivonne later died of the sword wounds inflicted by Jarnac during the duel.

This historical drama recounts the events that led to the accession of Catherine the Great, Empress of all the Russias. The film opens with the arrival in 1744 of Princess Sophie Auguste Frederika – whose name would be changed to ‘Catherine’ – from her father's court of Anhalt-Zerbst (in modern Germany) to the court of the Empress Elizabeth. "Little Catherine" is to marry the Grand Duke Peter, nephew and heir presumptive of the unmarried and childless Empress Elizabeth.

Peter already displays signs of mental instability and a sharply misogynist streak. He rejects Catherine on their wedding night, reacting to something innocently said by his French valet, claiming that she used feminine tricks to win him over. In time, though, Peter accepts her and they have a happy marriage for a while. Meanwhile, Catherine gains important experience of government from working as principal aide to the empress.

The empress dies and Peter becomes tsar, but his mental illness is starting to get the better of him, along with sheer boredom in the job. Catherine still loves him despite beginning a very public love affair with one of her best friends – until one night when Peter goes one step too far in publicly humiliating his wife. She ceases to love him, which enables her to be clear-headed in supporting a planned ''coup d'état''. The following morning, he is arrested and Catherine is made Empress of All the Russias.

The elevation is marred by Peter's murder that very morning, contrary to Catherine's command. Grigory Orlov explains that everything has a price, and the crown has the highest price of all. The film ends, with Catherine in tears on her throne, while the cheers of the crowds are heard outside.

Stenographer Marilyn David (Claudette Colbert) and newspaper reporter Peter Dawes (Fred MacMurray) meet every Thursday on a bench outside the New York Public Library to eat popcorn and watch the world go by. One day, Peter confesses his love to her, but she tells him she only considers him a friend—that someday she will find love when she meets the right man. Afterwards on the subway, Marilyn meets a wealthy English aristocrat, Lord Charles Gray Granton (Ray Milland), who is visiting New York incognito as a commoner. After she helps him escape a confrontation with a subway guard, he walks her home and the two flirt with each other. He does not tell her that his father is the Duke of Loamshire, nor does he mention that he is engaged to an Englishwoman. In the coming days they go on dates to Coney Island and have dinner together, and soon they fall in love.

At their next Thursday meeting, Marilyn reveals to Peter that she has fallen in love with someone. Disappointed, he tells her that things can never be the same between them, but assures her that she can always depend on his friendship. When Charles' father, Lloyd Granton (C. Aubrey Smith), learns that his son intends to propose to an American girl, he insists that they first return to England to break off his current engagement properly. Charles visits Marilyn before he leaves and—still not revealing his identity—tells her that he found a job and will be out of town on business for a few weeks.

The next day, Peter learns from his editor that the Duke of Loamshire and his son have been in New York for six weeks without the press being aware of it, and are preparing to sail back for England. While working on his usual shipping news column at the docks, Peter spots Duke Granton and his son Charles boarding a ship. After a brief interview, the duke gives Peter $100 to keep their names out of the newspapers. Annoyed at the duke's arrogance, Peter publishes his column the following day, complete with a photo of the Grantons.

When Marilyn sees that her "Charles" is in fact Lord Granton returning to England to marry his English fiancé—at least according to Peter's story—she rushes to her friend heartbroken and reveals that Charles is the man she's been dating. Believing that Charles was simply using her, Peter writes a fictitious article about Marilyn, whom he calls the "No" Girl, turning down Lord Granton's marriage proposal and deciding to hold out for true love instead. The story causes an immediate scandal and generates sympathy for Marilyn who becomes an overnight celebrity. Meanwhile on the ship, the Grantons are informed of the scandal and that Charles' fiancé has broken her engagement. Convinced that Marilyn is attempting to blackmail him, Charles sends her a telegram asking how much money she wants in return for her silence.

That night while comforting Marilyn over drinks at the Gingham Café, Peter decides to capitalize on the publicity and her newfound celebrity. He works out a deal with the owner who gives Marilyn a job as a singer and dancer at the café—even though she cannot sing or dance. After a few singing and dancing lessons and a massive promotional campaign, Marilyn opens to a packed house. Despite her lack of talent, her self-effacing manner wins laughs from the audience who are completely won over by her innocence and charm. Through Peter's clever management and publicity stunts, the "No" Girl becomes a household name and a nightclub star, with her image appearing on billboards, posters, and front page newspaper articles across the country.

Despite her fame and popularity, Marilyn is unable to forget her feelings for Charles. Needing to know how he really feels about her, Marilyn travels to London to perform her nightclub act. During one performance, she sees Charles in the audience; after sharing a romantic dance together, they agree to renew their relationship. A brokenhearted Peter graciously bows out of her life and returns to America so she can be happy. Later he sends her a box of popcorn as a reminder of their friendship.

Meanwhile, life with Charles is not as perfect as Marilyn had envisioned. Having spent months reading about The No Girl in the papers, he's more interested in her celebrity than in their love—unlike Peter, Charles never got to fully know the real Marilyn, who is now hopelessly obscured by the fake one. Charles invites her to go away with him to the country for a week—implying she might become his mistress, or at least the press would assume as much, which is precisely what he wants. She invites some American reporters to her flat, announces that she's "going home to sit on a bench and eat popcorn", and Charles is now stuck with a second public jilting, real this time, which he accepts ruefully.

Back in New York on a snowy Thursday night, Marilyn rushes through crowds of her admirers and makes her way to the library bench. Peter, having forgotten his wallet in his haste, gets roughed up by both his cab driver and a popcorn vender—but still arrives with his popcorn, and they pick up right where they left off, happily observing the world around them—only this time punctuated with a kiss.

The protagonist is Ed Kennedy, an uninspired nineteen-year-old Australian taxi driver. Ed laments his mediocre life and strained relationship with his mother, as his father died recently and left Ed with only his dog, the Doorman, but does nothing to improve his situation, instead preferring to continue living alone and playing cards every week with his friends: Ritchie, who is unemployed and generally apathetic about life; Marv, a stingy carpenter; and Audrey, a fellow taxi driver whom Ed is in love with, although she does not reciprocate. After accidentally foiling a robbery he is proclaimed a hero by the public, though the robber leaves him a warning that he sees "a dead man" when he looks at Ed before being taken away by police.

One night, he receives a small unmarked envelope, inside of which is an Ace of Diamonds with three addresses and times of day written on them. His friends deny involvement, so Ed investigates the three addresses. Ed arrives at the first address at midnight, and witnesses a man raping his wife while their daughter cries on the porch. The second corresponds to a senile widow named Milla who lives alone, and the third is the address of a young girl named Sophie who runs barefoot every morning but still cannot win at her track meets. Realizing that the sender of the cards intends for Ed to involve himself with the three people, Ed researches Milla's history and discovers that she is waiting for her husband Jimmy, who died sixty years ago during World War II, so he pretends to be Jimmy and comes to read to her weekly. For Sophie, he raises her spirits by giving her an empty shoe box to encourage her to try running barefoot at her next competition; although she loses again, she still finds pride in her achievement. Ed is initially unsure how to approach the rapist, until he receives a gun in the mail, which he uses to kidnap the man and threaten him to leave the city and never return.

After finishing the Ace of Diamonds, two masked men break into his house, assault him, and leave him a congratulatory letter as well as an Ace of Clubs with a vague clue. The next day, Ed reveals to Audrey his involvement in the cards, before telling her that he wishes the two of them could be together, but Audrey declines him. Eventually, Ed picks up a man in his cab who tells him to drive to the river before leading Ed on a chase to a rock formation on which the three names are written for Ed to "solve." The first is Thomas O'Reilly, a pastor in a run-down area of the city with a dwindling congregation; Ed helps him by organizing and advertising for a party with free beer in order to encourage everyone to come on Sunday. The next, Angie Carusso, is a single mother who Ed witnesses buying ice cream for her children, and he buys her one as well to show that she is appreciated. Finally, Gavin Rose is a young boy who constantly fights his brother, so Ed beats up Gavin in order to encourage the brother to take revenge, which they do one night by assaulting Ed and cementing their brotherhood.

After participating in a yearly football game, Ed's dog is stolen and he has to buy it back from a boy, who also gives him the Ace of Spades, on which are three names of famous authors. After trying to kiss Audrey one day and being gently rejected again, he goes to the library and eventually realizes that the street names come from parts of the title, with notes written on certain page numbers for specific addresses. The first, Glory Road, has Lua Tatupu, whose family has decorated their home for Christmas with strings of broken lights, so Ed buys new ones for them and sets them up himself. On Clown Street, Ed runs into his mother on a date, and he eventually drives to her house and confronts her about her disdain for him before reconciling. Finally, on Bell Street he meets an old man named Bernie Price who runs an antiquated theater. Ed brings Audrey there to watch ''Cool Hand Luke'' and invites Bernie to watch it with them, but eventually the screen cuts to videos of Ed performing his tasks so far.

Ed finds the Ace of Hearts on his seat in the theatre, on which is written three movie titles. After consulting with Bernie, he realizes that they are references to his three friends Ritchie, Marv, and Audrey. He talks to Ritchie late one night and the two stand in a river for an hour, as Ed encourages him to search for something he cares about. Afterwards, Ed, confused by Marv's stinginess, asks him for a loan as a ploy, causing Marv to reveal that he has been saving money to care for a child he had with a girl named Suzanne Boyd who moved away after she became pregnant years ago. After discussing it, Ed convinces him to travel to her house, and although Suzanne's father angrily claims that he brought shame upon the family, the two eventually reconcile and Marv is reconnected with Suzanne and their daughter. Finally, Ed comes to Audrey early one morning and dances with her for three minutes to show his love for her, hoping that she can love him back.

Upon returning elatedly to his place, he finds a Joker with his own address written on it, which bothers him greatly because he assumed he had finished. One day a man enters his cab and asks him to drive to every address he has been to so far, taking him on a tour of his accomplishments, before revealing that he was the robber, who asks Ed if he still sees "a dead man" when he looks in the mirror, before telling him to go back home. Inside is a man who claims responsibility for the entire series of events, before handing him a folder that details all of Ed's adventures. In a postmodern twist, the man is strongly implied to be Markus Zusak himself, who has written Ed's story right down to the current discussion they are having. He leaves Ed to consider the philosophical implications, and Ed stays inside for days before Audrey comes one afternoon and asks to stay with him for good. They kiss and Ed explains everything to her, before realizing that the story he resides in is actually a reminder to others of their true potential, ending with "'I'm not the messenger at all. I'm the message.'"

The story revolves around Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, a little boy who grew up on an island in the Indies under the equator, isolated from the people, in the bosom of an antelope that raised him, feeding him with her milk. Ḥayy has just learned to walk and imitates the sounds of antelopes, birds, and other animals in his surroundings. He learns their languages, and he learns to follow the actions of animals by imitating their instinct.

He makes his own shoes and clothes from the skins of animals, and studies the stars. He reaches a higher level of knowledge, of the finest of astrologists. His continuous explorations and observation of creatures and the environment lead him to gain great knowledge in natural science, philosophy, and religion. He concludes that, at the basis of the creation of the universe, a great creator must exist. Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān lived a humble modest life as Sufi and forbade himself from eating meat.

Once 30 years old, he meets his first human, who has landed on his isolated Island. By the age of 49, he is ready to teach other people about the knowledge he gained throughout his life.

; Ryo is a high school freshman who tends to take people's words literally. After being hurt several times because she misunderstood someone, she avoids people. She creates an imaginary cell phone, feeling it would be pointless to buy one when no one would call. One day while she is on the bus, however, her imaginary cell phone begins to ring. At the other end is a boy named Shinya who is also calling with an imaginary cell phone. Ryo is shocked and after they disconnect, she tries calling people and connects with a college student named Yumi, who instructs her in the ways of imaginary phones. Though Shinya lives an hour in the past from Ryo, they talk regularly through their imaginary phones, staying constantly connected. Through their friendship, Ryo is able to find her voice and begin talking in the real world. They eventually talk on the real phone, and decide to meet. Ryo takes a bus to the airport, but a car nearly runs her over. Shinya pushes her out of the way and is struck instead. In the ambulance, Shinya dies. Ryo calls Shinya in the past. She tries to save him by saying she hated him on sight, but he sees through her and gets her to admit what happened. He is determined to save her, so they frantically say their good-byes.

Ryo goes to his funeral and afterwards finds his locker where he left a cassette radio he'd promised her. Ryo also realizes that Yumi is really her future self.

; An unnamed Boy is put in the special class at school after he attacks a classmate who teased him about the burn mark on his back. The Boy's father regularly abused him, including leaving the burn on his back by throwing an iron at him. His mother abandoned him, and he now lives with an aunt and uncle he feels don't care anything about him. In the class, he meets Asato, a quiet boy who rarely talks. Asato's mother murdered his father and then tried to kill Asato as well. While alone with Asato after school, the Boy hurts himself carving. Asato comes over and touches him, and half the wound leaves the boy's arm and moves to Asato's so that they are equally sharing the pain. They become friends that day, and begin exploring the depths of Asato's powers. After Asato removes a scrape from a little boy's knee, the child's mother treats them to ice cream. At the parlor, they meet Shiho, a young woman with a burned face who hides her scars behind a mask. When a kid the Boy had pushed out of a window breaks his arm with a baseball bat, Asato takes that wound as well, but then moves it to the kid with the bat. The Boy decides Asato should move all of his wounds to his father, who is lying unconscious and dying in the hospital. Whenever gets new injuries, the Boy would take Asato there to use his father's dying body as a "dumping ground." Eventually, they share the secret of Asato's powers with Shiho and she asks Asato to remove the burn for just three days so she can remember what its like to live without it. She leaves town afterward, however, and Asato sinks into a depression. No one can stand looking at him with the scar on his face, even the Boy, so they go to the hospital to give it to the Boy's father. However, when the arrive, they find he had just died. The Boy cries for him, and asks Asato to move all the scars back from his father's body to him instead. Asato says he can't and runs, and the Boy realizes Asato had never given any of the wounds to his father after all. Asato runs from through the hospital, curing everyone he touches and taking on their wounds. The Boy realizes Asato wants to die because he thinks no one wants him. Outside, he takes on the fatal wounds of an accident victim, but the Boy convinces him to give him half, just like the day they became friends, so that they could share the pain equally. The wounds are serious and both spend a long time in the hospital, but during the stay the Boy comes to the conclusion that Asato was given the power because he had a pure heart, and that he wants Asato to always know someone is there willing to share his pain.

; A patient at a hospital finds a flower with the face of a girl, that hums a beautiful melody.

Gösta Berling, a Lutheran vicar, is sacked because of his inappropriate life style. He entertains a wealthy lady who in return supports him. Following a variety of adventures he meets up with Elizabeth Dohna, a former duchess, and they start a new life together.

The story deals with the narrator's attempt to make sense of the only additional character, Odradek, and gives a detailed description of the creature in the second paragraph:

At first glance it looks like a flat star-shaped spool for thread, and indeed it does seem to have thread wound upon it; to be sure, they are only old, broken-off bits of thread, knotted and tangled together, of the most varied sorts and colours. But it is not only a spool, for a small wooden crossbar sticks out of the middle of the star, and another small rod is joined to that at a right angle.

These details offer the reader the ability to examine and criticize the purpose and necessities of objects for things or people such as Odradek. Odradek is described as an object, yet is also given a “hypothetical humanoid appearance” when the narrator describes the object as being able to stand upright on two points of the star.

In the fourth paragraph the narrator states that Odradek has a lingering presence in his home, often not seen but his presence is noticeable. It is discovered that Odradek can speak, another human capability.

Throughout the story, the narrator provides an extensive analysis of Odradek, attempting to emphasize how the object has taken on a life of its own, displaying life like qualities and traits, as well as his silent relationship with the object.

The narrator's main concern about the creature Odradek is revealed in the final paragraph:

In vain I ask myself, what will happen to him. Can he die? Everything that dies has once had a sort of aim, a sort of activity, which has worn it out; this is not the case of Odradek. Will he therefore one day tumble down the stairs before the feet of my children and my children's children, trailing a line of thread after him? It's clear he does nobody any harm; but the notion that he might even outlive me is almost painful to me.

The narrator fears that this purposeless object will outlive him. The family man, throughout the story, fears that Odradek will attack his role as the family man, the patriarchal figure in society.

Paulsen opens his book with a vivid retelling of a story in which he watched brush wolves kill and devour a live doe in the woods. This event revealed the raw, unfabricated realities of nature to him. Paulsen recounts many incidents he has undergone with his dogs on their runs, including times he has been carried to safety by his sled dogs after breaking his knee on the trail, became violently ill in the midst of extreme cold conditions, and a variety of mysterious happenings in the Alaskan wilderness. In all of their adventures, he bonds closely with his dogs, particularly one named Storm. Storm is portrayed as an ideal dog that taught Paulsen many life values.

Part One closes, and Part Two begins with Paulsen entering a team of fifteen of his dogs in the Iditarod Sled Dog Race, an approximately 1,153.2 mile-long sled dog race from Anchorage, Alaska to Nome, Alaska. The race proves to be long and arduous. Extreme cold conditions and difficult terrain put both him and his team to the test. He is repeatedly afflicted by lifelike hallucinations caused by extreme sleep deprivation, such as a man with a trench coat talking about educational grants, and hallucinating about a man hallucinating. But Gary is spurred onward by the beauty of the race and his devotion to the team. During the race, Gary experiences a unique feeling when he is running with his dogs. After nearly seventeen days, he at last crosses the finish line in Nome. He places last in the race, but accomplishment and adventure are all that matter to him. Gary feels at home and a sense of peace when he is sledding with the dogs in the race.

The main characters include Paulsen (the narrator), Dollar, Storm, Yogi, Obeah, Duran, Columbia, Cookie, Olaf, Dunberry, Scarhead, Hawk, Neil, Fred, Clarence, Alex, Wilson, and Blue (dogs).

Mux's main motivation is an intense desire to bring justice to rapists, thieves, and vandals in his own way, documenting all his actions through a camcorder held by his colleague Gerd, a somewhat simple-minded former long-term unemployed man in his fifties. Through his accidental involvement in a domestic murder case, he eventually attracts a great deal of media attention, allowing him to expand his operation to a nation-wide affair and effectively becoming a crime-fighting entrepreneur. However, his inability to cope with the flawed nature of the human condition proves to be his downfall, as he shoots his girlfriend Kira after discovering that she cheated on him. After a suicide attempt and a hasty burial, Mux hands ownership of his company off to an employee and flees to Italy, taking Gerd with him, as he is a witness to his murder of Kira. Mux dies soon after, getting run over while stepping in the way of a speeding car.

Paul Kersey is a successful, middle-aged architect and family man who lives happily in Manhattan with his wife, Joanna. One day, Joanna and their grown daughter, Carol—who is married to Jack Toby—are followed home from D'Agostino's by three thugs. The trio invade the Kersey apartment by posing as deliverymen. Upon finding that Carol and Joanna only have $7 on them, the thugs assault beat Joanna and rape Carol before fleeing. Upon arriving at the hospital, Paul is devastated to learn that Joanna has died from her injuries. Shortly after his wife's funeral, Paul has an encounter with a mugger in a darkened street. Paul fights back with a homemade weapon, causing the mugger to run away, while Paul is shaken and energized by the encounter.

Paul's boss sends him to Tucson, Arizona, to see Ames Jainchill, a client with a residential development project. A few days later, Paul is invited to dinner by Ames at his gun club. Ames is impressed with Paul's pistol marksmanship at the target range. Paul reveals that he was a conscientious objector during the Korean War, when he served as a combat medic. He had been taught to handle firearms by his hunter-father, but after the senior Kersey was mortally wounded by a second hunter (who mistook Paul's father for a deer), Paul's mother made him swear never to use guns again. Paul is successful in helping Ames plan his residential housing development. Ames drives Paul back to Tucson Airport and presents Paul with a gift for his work on the development, which he places into Paul's checked luggage.

Back in Manhattan, Paul learns from Jack that Carol's mind has snapped due to the traumatic rape and her mother's death; Carol is now catatonic, and an elective mute. With Paul's blessing, Jack commits Carol to a mental hospital. Paul learns that Ames has given him a nickel-plated Colt Police Positive revolver and a box of ammunition. He loads it and takes a late-night walk during which he is mugged at gunpoint. Paul fatally shoots the mugger and, in a state of shock, runs home and vomits. The next night, Paul walks through the city looking for dangerous and violent criminals; sure enough, he kills several muggers over the next few weeks, either luring them into a confrontation by presenting himself as an affluent victim, or when he sees them attacking other innocent people.

NYPD Inspector Frank Ochoa investigates the vigilante killings. His department narrows it down to a list of men who have had a family member recently killed by muggers, and/or are war veterans. Ochoa soon suspects Paul and is about to make an arrest when the district attorney intervenes and tells Ochoa that "we don't want him." The district attorney and the police commissioner do not want the statistics to get out that Paul's vigilantism has led to a drastic decrease in street crime; they fear that if said information becomes public knowledge, the whole city will descend into vigilante chaos. If Paul is arrested, he will surely be labeled a martyr. Ochoa does not like the idea, but relents and opts for "scaring him off" instead.

One night, Paul shoots two more muggers before being wounded in the leg himself by a third. Paul pursues the mugger and corners him at a warehouse. He challenges the mugger to a fast draw, Wild West-style, only to faint because of blood loss while the mugger escapes. Paul's gun is discovered by young patrolman Jackson Reilly, who hands it to Ochoa, who orders him to forget that he found it. Ochoa visits Paul at the hospital where he's recovering, and agrees to surreptitiously dispose of Paul's revolver in exchange for Paul's leaving NYC permanently. Paul takes Ochoa's deal, and his company agrees to transfer him to Chicago, while the press is informed that Paul is just another mugging victim.

Paul arrives in Chicago Union Station by train. Being greeted by a company representative, he notices a group of hoodlums harassing a young woman. He excuses himself and helps the young woman. As the hoodlums make obscene gestures, Paul just smiles while making a finger gun at them.

It is 1814. There is peace in Europe as a defeated Napoleon is sent into exile on the island of Elba. Major Sharpe is assigned to head the Scarsdale Yeomanry in his native Yorkshire, depriving him of a chance to settle the score with his adulterous wife Jane and her lover, Lord Rossendale.

Sharpe and Regimental Sergeant Major Harper are met on their arrival by Captain George Wickham, an officer in the Yeomanry. As he escorts them to town, they are ambushed and shot at. Sharpe pursues (but does not catch) one of the men, who turns out to be his close childhood friend, Matthew Truman.

Wickham takes Sharpe to meet Sir Willoughby Parfitt and Sir Percy Stanwyck, wealthy businessmen who own many cotton mills between them. Parfitt tells Sharpe about the post-war unrest. The discharge of men from the army has flooded England with unemployed workmen; the increased competition and a reduced demand for cotton gives Parfitt an excuse to lower wages. He is opposed by Truman, a rabble rouser who stirs up the discontented, poverty-stricken masses.

Meanwhile, the financially strapped Rossendale inherits an estate in neighbouring Lancashire. He had used his influence to get Sharpe posted as far from London as possible, but now has to relocate (with Jane) nearby. Both Rossendale and Jane speak with Sharpe separately, but nothing is resolved.

Dan Hagman, one of Sharpe's former riflemen, shows up looking for work, but turns down Sharpe's offer - nine years in uniform is enough for him. He becomes a follower of Truman.

When Sharpe hears of an illegal meeting, he orders his soldiers to tread gently, but Wickham deliberately disobeys his orders and incites a massacre; Truman gets away in the confusion. However, Wickham cleverly manages to place all the blame on Sharpe.

Sharpe visits Sally Bunting, a woman who had been kind to him in his childhood. From her, he learns that his mother is dead and also that Truman is his brother (or more likely half-brother). He arranges to meet with him at their mother's grave. Parfitt learns of it and sends Wickham to take them both. Sharpe, Harper and Hagman get away, but Truman is shot dead by Wickham.

While in hiding, Sharpe is warned by Lady Anne Camoynes that Parfitt and Wickham intend to secretly intercept and destroy a steam engine that Stanwyck is bringing in, in order to weaken his business rival. They intend to blame it on disaffected machine wreckers. Sharpe and his friends foil the scheme, catching Wickham red-handed. Sharpe uses this to blackmail Parfitt into clearing his name. In the end, Sharpe heads back to London, Harper to Ireland, while Hagman stays behind, having taken a liking to Sally.

A young man is erroneously sentenced to life in prison for killing two children. He is released after DNA evidence proves his innocence. After his release, a vengeful prison gang abducts and claims to murder his daughter.

Erica Sheldon, the teenage daughter of Karen Sheldon, Paul Kersey's current girlfriend, goes with her boyfriend, Randy Viscovich to an arcade to meet up with a man named JoJo Ross and another buddy, Jesse Winters. JoJo offers her crack cocaine, and Erica dies from an overdose. Having seen Erica smoke a joint with Randy while in his car the previous night, Paul suspects Randy was involved with Erica's death, so he follows him to the arcade. Randy confronts JoJo, only to be killed by him before Paul shoots and kills him. At home, Paul receives a package indicating the sender knows he's "the vigilante," and a phone call threatening to go to the police if Paul won't meet. Paul is taken to the mansion of the secretive tabloid publisher Nathan White. Nathan says that his daughter became addicted to drugs and eventually died of an overdose, so he wants to hire Paul to wipe out the drug trade in Los Angeles. There are two major gangs competing for the local drug supply: one led by Ed Zacharias, the other by brothers Jack and Tony Romero. Kersey accepts and Nathan supplies him with weapons and information. Meanwhile, LA detectives Sid Reiner and Phil Nozaki investigate the arcade deaths.

Paul infiltrates Zacharias' manor as a party bartender. After bugging a phone, he witnesses Zacharias murder a colleague before being discovered by him. He orders Paul to help carry out the dead body while motioning to one of his henchmen to kill Paul when they're done, but Paul kills him and escapes. Paul proceeds to kill three of Ed Zacharias' enforcers, Art Sanella, Danny Moreno and Jack Stein at a restaurant with a bomb in a wine bottle, drug dealer Max Green, and Romeros' top hitman Frank Bauggs. A few days later, Nathan instructs Paul to go to San Pedro, where a local fisherman wharf acts as a front for Zacharias's drug operations. Breaking in, Paul kills the criminals and blows up the drug processing room with a time bomb. Nozaki reveals himself to be a corrupt cop working for Zacharias, and demands that Paul tell him who he works for, but Paul kills him. He lures Zacharias and the Romero brothers into a trap, leading to a shootout in which both cartels are completely destroyed and Zacharias is personally killed by Paul. Nathan congratulates him, but then sets him up with a car bomb, which Paul narrowly escapes. Enraged, Paul returns to the White Manor only to find a stranger who claims to be the real Nathan White; the impersonator who hired Paul was actually a third drug lord who used him to dispose of the rival cartels. Paul is approached by two cops, who arrest him, but he recognizes them as fakes, causes their car to flip over and flees.

To get rid of Paul, the Nathan White impersonator kidnaps and uses Karen as a bait. Reiner waits inside Paul's apartment to kill him out of vengeance for Nozaki's alleged murder, but Paul knocks him out. He arms himself with a rifle fitted with a grenade launcher and goes to the meeting place designated by the drug lord, the parking lot of White's commercial building. After killing many of his men, Paul follows White into a roller rink and kills the rest of his gang, before confronting him and Karen on the roof. Karen breaks free and attempts to escape, but White kills her, with Paul firing his last grenade at him in return. Reiner arrives and orders him to surrender, but Paul simply walks away, proclaiming: "Do whatever you have to". Reiner decides to let him go.

Paul Kersey returns to New York City, having assumed the name Paul Stewart under the witness protection program. He is invited by his girlfriend, Olivia Regent, to a fashion show. Backstage, mobster Tommy O'Shea and his goons begin to muscle in. Tommy threatens Olivia, who is his ex-wife and mother to their daughter, Chelsea. When Paul discovers bruises on Olivia's wrist, she informs Paul of her ex-husband's behavior. Paul confronts Tommy, but Tommy's henchman Chicki Paconi threatens Paul with a revolver. The confrontation ends with the arrival of Chelsea. D.A. Brian Hoyle and his associate NYPD detective Lt. Hector Vasquez visit Paul's home. He informs them about Tommy O'Shea. Hoyle says they have been trying to nab Tommy for years, and he wants Olivia to testify. That night at a restaurant, Paul proposes to Olivia, who accepts. Olivia excuses herself to the bathroom and is attacked by Tommy's associate, Freddie "Flakes" Garrity. Flakes bashes her head against a mirror, disfiguring her. Freddie escapes, although Paul gets a look at him. Later, at the hospital, Paul is told that even if Olivia gets reconstructive surgery, her face will never be the same. While at the hospital, he meets Lt. Mickey King and his partner Janice Omori, who are working on the O'Shea's case. During a failed bugging mission against the mob, both Albert and Janice are killed, getting struck by Freddie's car. Then, at the hospital, Lt. King warns Kersey not to go back to his old ways, saying that he has been working on the case for 16 years. Unimpressed, Kersey says that is a long time to be failing. Freddie and his henchmen, pretending to be the cops sent to protect Olivia, attack Paul and Olivia at her apartment. Freddie shoots Olivia in the back, killing her as the couple tries to escape. Paul jumps from the roof of his apartment, where he lands in a pile of trash bags, and is retrieved by the police. Tommy is cleared of involvement in Olivia's death and seeks custody of their daughter. Paul assaults Tommy, but his Sal leaves him unconscious.

Paul plans to return to his vigilante methods and is assisted by Hoyle, who learns his department has been corrupted by Tommy. Paul poisons Chicki with cyanide disguised as sugar in a cannoli. He then kills Freddie with a remote-controlled explosive soccer ball. Tommy finds out from an informant that Paul is the vigilante killer, known for series of slayings and will be going after him for killing Olivia. The informant, revealed to be Vasquez, tries to kill Paul himself. However, Paul gets the upper hand and kills him. Hoyle arrives and finds that Tommy wants both him and Paul dead. Hoyle tells Paul he must never see him again, and Paul agrees. Using Chelsea as a bait, Tommy puts three henchmen named Frankie, Mickey and Angel (the same three thugs who murdered Paul's wife and raped his daughter twenty years earlier) to guard the dress factory. Once Paul gets inside, he uses a forklift as a bait to trick the henchmen. They manage to destroy it, but Paul appears behind them and shoots Angel's shotgun away from his hands, but shoots both Frankie and Mickey dead. After Paul makes Angel tell him where Chelsea is, he wraps Angel in plastic wrapper. Meanwhile, Chelsea makes a getaway and Sal and Tommy go after her, but Tommy sends Sal to go after Paul. While searching for Paul, Sal accidentally shoots Angel to death. After Sal finds Paul, the latter shoots causing Sal to fall fatally backward into a garment shredding machine. Paul finds Tommy, and makes him beg for mercy. Lt. King arrives, but is wounded by Tommy. Armed with Angel's shotgun, Paul corners Tommy and knocks him into an liming pool, where he disintegrates. King thanks Paul for saving his life and Paul gives Angel's shotgun to him. Paul goes to rejoin Chelsea, calling out to the injured King, "Hey Lieutenant, if you need any help, give me a call". The film ends with a freeze-frame of him walking.

'''Unfilmed alternate ending'''

In the original draft of the screenplay, Tommy O'Shea received a more merciful death by engaging in a shootout with Kersey gaining the upper hand by shooting apart the glass ceiling above O'Shea's head causing the glass to cut up O'Shea's face. Kersey would then finish O'Shea by shooting him in the chest.

After being blamed for a party which he didn't throw or have any knowledge of, that resulted in many damages, young Darren (Lou Taylor Pucci) loses his scholarship. Being from a lower-middle-class family he will not have enough money to pay for college next semester without his scholarship. His roommate, Coleman (John Hensley), who actually threw the party, sympathizes with Darren and gives him a stash of fifty ecstasy pills. If he sells the pills he would have enough money to stay in school.

Darren sells to many weirdos, including a dominatrix who wants the pills so her "pets" can be numb when she has sex with them. When he visits his girlfriend, her roommate sets Darren up with a connection. The brother of this roommate, a seemingly mentally-challenged and over-zealous white-collar employee named Ralphie (Eddie Kaye Thomas), is obsessed with ''Diff'rent Strokes''. He makes Darren watch four hours of the show, but Darren leaves. Upon leaving he is harassed by a drug dealer known as The Seoul Man (Ron Yuan), who almost kills him. Once again his luck turns sour when his girlfriend finds out that he is selling drugs and breaks off with him.

Coleman owes money to a drug dealer, so a group of three armed thugs are sent to extract the money from him at his dorm. Not having the money, he says he will call Darren and they can take whatever pills he has left as collateral. Darren comes back to the dorm, and gives the pills to the thugs, who leave. The next day, Darren feels defeated, but discovers that Coleman paid his tuition in full and is leaving the college. Reinvigorated, Darren begins dating Gracie and the movie ends with the two sitting on a bench with Darren taking a picture on his phone, saying that Gracie is about to make his parents very happy.