1977

In 1977, following the events of the previous episode "The Variable", Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox) and Kate Austen (Evangeline Lilly) witness a young Eloise Hawking (Alice Evans) kill her adult son Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies) in the Others' camp. As Jack and Kate debate whether they should follow through with Faraday's plan to detonate a hydrogen bomb in order to change future events, they are attacked and captured by the younger version of Charles Widmore (David S. Lee). Eloise believes their claim of being from the future and decides to take Jack's advice to detonate the bomb. They travel with Richard Alpert (Nestor Carbonell) to a pond, which has an underwater entry to a series of tunnels in which the bomb is stored. The tunnels lie beneath the site of the Dharma Initiative's barracks. Kate does not want to take part in Jack's plan and leaves. However, an Other refuses to let her go, prompting an unseen Sayid Jarrah (Naveen Andrews) to shoot the Other. Sayid agrees to Jack's plan, but Kate still refuses and compares Jack to John Locke (Terry O'Quinn), whom Jack once regarded as crazy. She leaves for the barracks and the others enter the tunnels.

At the Dharma Initiative barracks, James "Sawyer" Ford (Josh Holloway) and Juliet Burke (Elizabeth Mitchell) are being held captive by Horace Goodspeed (Doug Hutchison), Stuart Radzinsky (Eric Lange) and Phil (Patrick Fischler). Sawyer does not answer any of Radzinsky's questions, even after he is severely beaten and witnesses Phil strike Juliet. Meanwhile, Dr. Pierre Chang (François Chau) confronts Hugo "Hurley" Reyes (Jorge Garcia), Miles Straume (Ken Leung), and Jin-Soo Kwon (Daniel Dae Kim) as they ready their escape to the beach. He wants to know if Faraday was correct concerning time travel. Chang asks Hurley time-specific questions which he fails to answer correctly; Hurley then concedes they are indeed from the future. Miles confirms that he is Chang's son, and supports Faraday's request for the island to be evacuated. Chang informs Horace and Radzinsky of this, and Sawyer makes a deal to leave the island on the submarine in exchange for telling them what they want to hear. Sawyer and Juliet, followed by Kate, are placed aboard the submarine in handcuffs. The sub departs.

2007

In 2007, following the events of the episode "Dead is Dead," Locke meets with Richard at the Others' camp and tells him that he now has a purpose. Sun-Hwa Kwon (Yunjin Kim) confronts Richard about the fate of her husband and the other survivors stranded in the past. Richard grimly informs her that he watched them all die. Locke, Richard, and Ben Linus (Michael Emerson) travel to the location where the time-jumping Locke will appear, so that Richard can remove the bullet from his leg and tell him what needs to be done (as seen in "Because You Left"). They return to camp, where Locke speaks to the Others and tells them that they are going on a trip to see Jacob, from whom they take orders but have never met. Locke tells Sun that Jacob will know how to save their friends. However, he later admits to Ben that his plan is not to ask Jacob for help, but to kill him.

School's finally out for the summer and the return to Sag Harbor is in full swing. Teenage brothers Benji and Reggie Cooper escape their majority white preparatory academy in Manhattan. Still clad in Brooks Brothers polos and salmon colored pants, the pair re-meet all of their friends. Like most well-to-do kids at their family's beach houses during the summer, most of the teens in Sag Harbor go almost the entire summer with virtually no contact from their parents (aside from occasional visits on the weekends). The lack of authority allows for plenty of interesting run-ins. Benji constantly remakes himself to become the coolest in town.

Doc Labyrinth fears for the safety of the fragile works of high culture, particularly classical music, in the event of the apocalypse. Accordingly, he orders a machine to be built that will transform musical scores into animals capable of surviving and defending themselves on their own. The machine successfully transforms several composers' works into various animals-- Bach pieces into little beetles, Schubert songs into a lamb-like creature, and so forth. The Doctor, joyful at his success, releases them into the world; but when he finds them later, he finds that they have undergone evolution-- they have grown claws, stingers, and fed on one another. When the Bach beetles are fed back into the machine, the resultant musical scores have also changed, become wild and chaotic, with all their beauty and harmony lost.

The entirety of the novel consists of Anaximander, a new candidate for The Academy, participating in a gruelling auditory entrance exam. The Academy consists of the most elite class in society and plays an influential role in the lives of all living on the island Republic. Therefore, it is little wonder that Anaximander would be enthusiastic over such an opportunity and consequently spend large amounts of time preparing with her tutor Pericles. Her chosen area of expertise, which she will be questioned over, is on the life of her long-dead hero Adam Forde. As the exam progresses, the reader is granted much insight into the history of the Republic, information that is integral to understanding the significance of Adam Forde’s life. Anaximander explains how, beginning in 2030, early attempts at genetic engineering created widespread fear throughout the world. The United States entered a war with the Middle East that could not be won in an attempt to spread democratic ideals that fit poorly with the native culture of the country. Europe at this time was viewed as having lost its morality, and China’s rise in power led to a fear that a global conflict loomed. In the midst of such global turmoil, a worldwide plague developed, and the island Republic formed, isolating citizens completely from outside contact. All living on the island were consequently safe but not free.

Adam Forde is the first to act against the extensive security measures. He spots a young girl in a small battered boat that narrowly avoids the explosives placed in the surrounding ocean and, in an act of compassion, rescues and protects her against assassination. He is consequently thrown in prison and is sentenced to participate in an experiment involving artificial intelligence developed by a respected leader of the Republic, Philosopher William. William wished that the android’s education be furthered after his death, and Adam complied knowing that it was his only opportunity to avoid public execution. Anaximander gives an extremely detailed account of the interactions between Adam and Art, the android. The conversations she recites illustrate Adam’s reluctance to develop and converse with artificial intelligence, as he believes it lacks personhood.

Anaximander encounters numerous Socratic lectures in which she arrives at a greater understanding of the reasoning behind Adam’s actions and the true extent of Art’s intelligence and being. In the end, The Final Dilemma, accurately revealed by the examiners, answers Adam’s question of Art’s identity far better than any of Anaximander’s well-developed speculations. A never before released hologram shows Art acting upon the free will to self-replicate and kill a conscious being, Adam. As Anaximander is experiencing history redefining itself through these explanations, the reader learns that the examiners, Pericles, and Anaximander herself are all replications of Art’s orangutan being. The examiners sadly reveal that The Academy never accepts new applicants and that the examination is a way to control the “virus” that Anaximander is subject to. The virus is found in all candidates that find a particular interest in Adam Forde’s life and allows the infected orangs, another name for Art–like androids, the ability to understand the extent of free will these mechanical beings possess. In a final act to control the virus, Pericles enters the examination rooms and breaks Anaximander’s neck, disconnecting her for the final time.

The episode begins with Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler), deputy director of the Department of Parks and Recreation for Pawnee, Indiana explaining to a documentary crew about the Annual Easter Egg Hunt, in which her colleague, Tom Haverford (Aziz Ansari), has hidden the eggs, and Leslie notes that nobody is able to find them. Tom secretly confesses to the documentary crew that he forgot to plant the eggs.

Leslie plans for an upcoming town hall meeting about her proposal to turn a construction pit into a park. She invites her mother Marlene Griggs-Knope (Pamela Reed), an official with the county school system, but she does not appear supportive and tells Leslie she may be too busy to attend. Leslie holds a subcommittee meeting with Tom, interested citizen Ann Perkins (Rashida Jones), intern April Ludgate (Aubrey Plaza) and city planner Mark Brendanawicz (Paul Schneider). Mark warns her it might be too early for a meeting with the public, who could opt to vote the proposal down if they are unhappy with it. Leslie remains confident about the meeting and says the group will be doing neighborhood canvassing to try to win support.

The canvassing is largely unsuccessful. Most of the supporters of the park say they will not be able to attend the meeting. Mark, April and Tom speak with one seemingly interested resident, who is implied to be a pedophile. Leslie becomes frustrated with the lack of success and attempts to push poll the community residents. She suggests phrasing the question, "Wouldn't you rather have a park than a storage facility for nuclear waste?" Tom leaves the canvassing group to call prospective contractors about the park project, hinting at accepting bribes and making corrupt deals. Several residents express a lack of support for the park. Resident Kate Speevak (Lennon Parham) vows to attend the public meeting and voice her disapproval after a frustrated Leslie says, "You don't care about your kids if you don't support this park". The canvassing ends with an angry Leslie finding Mark and April playing ''Rock Band'' with Ann's boyfriend, Andy Dwyer (Chris Pratt) at Ann's house.

Leslie tries to get her boss Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman) to postpone the town hall meeting, but Ron says he cannot because the town manager Paul Iaresco (Phil Reeves) has "fast-tracked" the project. As the meeting begins, Leslie notices her mother has attended after all, along with many of the people critical of the project. Led by Kate Speevak, the crowd says they do not support the proposal and are angry an environmental study has not been conducted. Leslie tries to pretend April is a supportive resident, but one of the audience members recognizes her from the canvassing.

When Ron tells Leslie to try to place a positive spin on the meeting and prevent a vote from occurring, Leslie attempts to filibuster the meeting. Kate pushes for a vote, but Leslie says she will not hold one until she has heard from each audience member individually. They criticize and yell at Leslie until 9 p.m., when she announces time is up and ends the meeting. Marlene, who privately described the meeting as a "train-wreck", nevertheless expresses her pride for Leslie with a smile. Although frustrated with the meeting itself, Leslie says she is happy to have hosted her first subcommittee meeting. When one resident, Lawrence (Eric Edelstein) says, "Hey park lady, you suck", Leslie says with pride, "Hear that? He called me 'park lady'".

''My Family and Other Animals'' tells the story of the Durrell family, Lawrence Durrell, Leslie Durrell, Margaret Durrell and Gerald Durrell, as well as their mother Louisa Durrell, as they spend five years (1935–1939) on the Greek island of Corfu. The family reside in a series of villas, and spend their time indulging in their varying interests. Gerald develops his passion for wildlife, his mother spends her time cooking and worrying about everyone else; Larry writes and annoys the entire family with high-brow guests and unhelpful suggestions; Leslie develops his passion for ballistics and sailing, whilst Margo sunbathes and enchants the local young men.

The plot is divided into three levels.

First there is the frame story, where, in the south of England in the 1920s, a struggling theatrical troupe is performing a musical about romantic intrigues at a finishing school for young women in the south of France. As well as weathering ongoing backstage dramas, and audiences that are smaller in number than the cast, two extra stressors arrive: a famous Hollywood film producer turns up to see the show, and Polly, the mousy assistant stage manager, is forced to go on when the leading lady breaks a leg. As Polly struggles to keep her cool while acting opposite the male lead whom she secretly loves, the rest of the company backstab each other as they try to impress the impresario.

Next there is the musical itself. Four of the girls at the school are very forward and acquire boy friends, but Polly is shy and has nobody to take her to the carnival masked ball that night. Tony, a messenger boy from a dress shop, brings her a costume and the two young people are struck with each other. They meet again in the afternoon and reach an understanding, she pretending to be only a secretary, so as not to seem above him socially. He comes to the ball and, when unmasked, is recognised as a peer's son. So Tony and Polly are both rich and can marry openly.

Thirdly, there are extensive fantasy sequences in the film, during which the characters' dreams and hopes are enacted in music and dance without words.

Love story of Premadasa and Mallika.

In the rural American south, Angel Baby, who has been mute from age eight on, is caught kissing Hoke by her mother, who interrupts them and chases Hoke off. Worried about Angel's soul, they go to a tent revival where Paul is preaching. Paul heals her muteness, urging her on to say "God" at first, then "Lord God" and a prayer of thankfulness.

The next day, Angel believes that God has called her, so she decides to follow Paul and work in his ministry. She is given speaking lessons and a great deal of attention. Paul's wife, Sarah, is a bit jealous. Paul's preaching method includes having provocatively costumed women perform the parts of temptresses in the bible, such as Jezebel and Delilah.

Increasingly attracted to Paul, Angel's devotion and passion is cemented when she is rescued by Paul after being attacked by Hoke for rejecting him due to her newfound piety. However, Paul's wife and several other people see the end of the fight and misunderstand Paul's intentions, though it turns out that Paul is in fact in love with Angel.

Angel sets off on her own traveling ministry (with the help of Ben and Molly Hays), but she isn't attracting many followers or many donations.

Noticing her beauty and potential, an unscrupulous businessman, Sam Wilcox, approaches Angel Baby to market his patent medicines. To restore her faith, he hires a few shills in the audience to be healed, despite the warnings of Angel's support team. When they see that the trick has empowered her, they remain silent. They "have a little nip" and head over to Paul and Sarah's to reveal this falsehood.

Paul remains dissatisfied with his marriage to Sarah, because it turns out he was but a choirboy who was led astray by her, molded into a prophet of her imagination. His faith at a low point, he leaves Sarah, ostensibly to go set Angel back on the right path.

Angel has become more and more popular, drawing huge crowds, including Hoke, who vows that he will not stand in line to see her. He and his friends spy Paul approaching the revival tent.

At the front of the tent, there are so many people trying to get in, they are assigned numbers. One man (with a lame leg and 13 children) is particularly bitter about this, yet manages to get in.

Paul tells Angel he wants to marry her (and will be divorcing Sarah). This invigorates Angel's preaching. Meanwhile, Paul confronts Sam who is drinking heavily in the parking lot, telling him he must confess.

Things are going well in the tent, until Sarah bursts in, shouts condemnation of Angel and claims the man in the wheelchair has been paid to fake a miracle. Hoke joins in the fray. The man in the wheelchair freaks out and leaves, which clearly demonstrates the falsehood, and a large fight ensues. As people flee, there is a particularly vivid shot of an upturned wheelchair wheel spinning as the crowd in the background runs around. The tent stars to fall. Sam tries to confess during the middle of the melee, but no one is really listening. Eventually the tent sinks down.

Hoke approaches Angel, who has become mute again. She continues past him as if she can't see or hear him.

Paul emerges from the tent, after removing a large timber that has fallen on his wife.

Angel winds up at a small store, where a husband and wife recognize her and want her to heal their lame son. She turns out not to be mute after all; she tells them that she cannot heal the child. Paul shows up about the same time, and watches as she performs a final miracle; while her faith in herself is destroyed, other people still believe.

The song playing during the closing credits is sung by George Hamilton.

The story takes place in Tai Hom Village, a small Hong Kong shantytown that is literally and figuratively overshadowed by a large apartment and mall complex called Plaza Hollywood. The movie begins with pig butcher, Mr. Chu (Glen Chin) and his sons, Tiny (Leung Sze Ping) and Ming (Ho Sai Man) who are all obese. Keung (Won You Nam), also a resident of the town, is preoccupied with internet porn which leads him to meet Mainland Chinese prostitute Hung Hung (Zhou Xun), who advertises her services online and whom he pays for a night of torrid sex in the bushes outside Plaza Hollywood.

Hung Hung slowly infiltrates the lives of the town's characters, befriending Chu's family, especially Tiny. She goes by the alternative name of Tong Tong. At first, Tong Tong seems a refreshing, welcoming presence in the depressing, mundane life of Chu's family. Nevertheless, after Tong Tong seduces Ming for sex, the light, almost happy dynamic of the movie begins to shift and Tong Tong's "sweet innocence" is replaced by an opportunistic bitterness.

Tong Tong disappears from the town and sends letters to Ming and Keung claiming statutory rape as she is allegedly under sixteen. She extorts them for money to avoid legal repercussions and jail. When Keung refuses payment he is chased down by gangsters and his hand hacked off and flung far away. In a sick twist of black humour, Tiny finds what he believes to be Keung's hand and a quack doctor re-attaches it, only to find that it is the wrong hand. Angered, Keung joins Ming and with machetes they run to Plaza Hollywood to track down Tong Tong. But by the time Tong Tong is long gone. In a fit of despair Keung commands Ming to cut his wrongly attached hand off. In the end no one's story ends happily. Tong Tong however allegedly makes her way to the real Hollywood.

The story is set in 411 AD, one year after the legions of Rome withdrew from the Isle of Britannia. ''Pendragon'' is the story of young Artos who is raised to believe that God has a purpose for his life. After a tragic event resulting in the burning of his village, the death of his father, and the disappearance of his little sister Adria, he is taken into slavery by the Saxons, where Artos begins to question his God. He soon manages to escape from the Saxons and is nursed back to health by a Roman outcast named Lailoken. When he fully recovers, Artos travels to a Celtic fortress hidden in the Welsh mountains where he becomes a great warrior under King Ambrosius. Advancing through the military ranks, Artos begins to understand that his father's vision was not based on the strength of man, but on the plan of God. However, his success causes one of Ambrosius's men, his pagan Captain of the Guard Cadern, to become jealous of Artos's rapid rise to power in the military. Using a secret guard that he created several years ago, Cadern is able to murder Ambrosius, and to frame the assassination on Artos. While on trial, Artos escapes from the court, and is able to elude Cadern's elite guard. Further events force Artos to decide between following God's plan unto certain death or abandoning God to save himself.

A young boy, Jim Aherne Jr., is the only survivor of a raid on a wagon train by Crow Indians. He is rescued by a group of Sioux Indians and is raised by Chief Yellow Eagle as a Sioux and renamed War Bonnet. Jim grows to maturity, but soon his loyalties between his tribe and his white heritage are questioned. Gold is discovered in the Black Hills and the Sioux expect the sovereignty of their territory to be respected because of an earlier treaty.

War Bonnet is sent to Fort Duane to determine whether the U.S. government intend to honor the treaty. On his way, he helps save a party of U.S. cavalry, led by Lt. Hathersall, from an attack by Crow Indians. He then introduces himself as Jim Aherne and tells them he is taking some ponies to the fort to sell, insinuating that he is merely a local trapper. Because of his actions, he is received warmly by Col. Robert Ellis at the fort. The Colonel has Lt. Hathersall take care of Jim while he is their guest and Hathersall's sister, Tally, takes an instant liking to him, seeing him as rugged, mysterious, and handsome. Capt. Vaughant has his eye on Tally and doesn't agree with Jim having dinner with them. She asks him to leave and on his way out he calls Jim a savage, inciting Jim to attack him briefly. After several days, War Bonnet is leaving the fort to go on a picnic with the Hathersall siblings when he sees smoke signals in the distance. Not disclosing their meaning to them, he leaves and discovers dead soldiers in the hills. Out of the woods comes his friend from the tribe, Long Mane, who tells him that the soldiers were killed by a party of Crow and that Jim's sister, Luta, was taken captive. She had been with the soldiers as she was traveling to the fort to find Jim. War Bonnet leads a party of Sioux on a raid on the Crow camp and rescues his sister. On the ride back, they encounter Capt. Vaughant and some soldiers who have discovered the soldiers that were killed by the Crow. During the brief encounter, Luta is killed as the troops attack them without provocation.

Taking her body back to his tribe, War Bonnet is now convinced that the whites will not honor the treaty and agrees to go back and lead the soldiers at Fort Duane into an ambush. Meanwhile, Col. Ellis has received orders from Washington that all the Indians are to be moved to reservations, by force if necessary. Returning to the fort as a scout, War Bonnet leads Vaughant's men to a Crow camp instead of the Sioux. They send artillery into the camp, scattering the Crow into the hills. Using explosives, War Bonnet and Corp. Martin flush the fleeing Crow out of the forest where they are subdued by Lt. Hathersall and his men. After the battle, Vaughant, wounded and furious at the outcome, tries to shoot War Bonnet. Corp. Martin intervenes and Vaughant is killed. Later that night, War Bonnet leaves camp and meets with Yellow Eagle and finds they have planned to attack the remaining column the next day. When Yellow Eagle orders no prisoners to be taken, War Bonnet questions the wisdom of the attack. He goes along with the plan but his internal struggle continues after a wagon train of women and children have joined the column for protection.

As they approach the ambush site, struggling with memories of his own youth and family that were killed, War Bonnet helps the wagon train escape the planned ambush but is injured by an arrow. Taken back to the fort, a doctor tends to his wound. Tally and Corp. Martin, who has taken a liking to Jim as well, question how he knew the ambush was going to happen. That same night, Jim sneaks out of the fort and, still weak from his wound, meets with Yellow Eagle to try to persuade him to abandon his war plans. Surrounded by those who now hate him, he pleads for them to not fight so they won't be decimated and forgotten to history due to the white man's numbers and war superiority. Reluctantly, but according to Sioux law for betraying him, Yellow Eagle throws a spear at him, injuring him but leaving him alive. Yellow Eagle then declares the matter over and says for his people to return to their fires. War Bonnet's mother, Pehangi, then argues in support of War Bonnet's pleas while tending to his wound, convincing Yellow Eagle that his son is right. War Bonnet is then taken back to the fort and left outside its walls where Corp. Martin and other soldiers ride out to meet him. As the Sioux go away, War Bonnet tells Corp. Martin that they aren't going away but merely making some elbow room for others, using Corp. Martin's line from earlier and implying that the war has been averted.

The film opens showing Gabrielle Chanel and her sister Adrienne being abandoned by their father at an orphanage in Aubazine. Gabrielle waits every Sunday for their father to visit them, but he never shows up. We learned later from Gabrielle's own reminiscing that her parents' marriage made her mother extremely unhappy, and that the father abandoned the two little girls after their mother's death. It also emerges that shortly after abandoning the two little girls their father left France to try his fortune in America.

Several years down the line, we find a young Gabrielle Chanel working in a provincial bar. She works as a seamstress for the performers by day and as a cabaret singer by night, singing and dancing with Adrienne a song about a little dog named "Coco" that gets lost at the Trocadero in Paris. Gabrielle and Adrienne resist being confused with the hookers whose services are purchased by the male customers of the bar, but they both get the seductive attentions of two older rich men, a baron for Adrienne, and another aristocrat named Balsan for Gabrielle. "Coco" becomes Gabrielle's nickname. Adrienne becomes the de-facto wife of the baron, who however never marries her, due to his family opposition.

Deprived of opportunities and driven by an inner drive to make it at all costs, Gabrielle resolves to leave the provincial city and reach Balsan's country estate. Here she accepts to have a liaison with Balsan, while still trying to assert her independence. She learns to ride horses and this experience gives her the idea of designing trousers for women. She meets actress Emilienne, in the circle of Balsan's friends, and she begins designing hats and dresses for her, as well as for herself. She starts reinventing women's dresses by dropping corsets and excessive decorations, and shortening skirts.

Balsan's circle of friends includes a self-made, rich, English businessman, named Arthur Capel, significantly younger than Balsan. Capel courts Gabrielle-Coco until the two fall in love during an escapade at the seaside in Normandy. Balsan is upset at the prospect of losing Coco to a man whom he has himself introduced to her, and he offers to marry Gabrielle to win her back from Capel, but Gabrielle refuses. In revenge, Balsan reveals to Gabrielle that Capel is betrothed to a woman in England. Coco decides to continue the liaison with Capel, but with no more illusions about marriage, declaring that she will never get married.

Capel believes in Coco's talent making hats and dresses and tells her "There's no one else like you". Coco continues developing independently her own new vision of how a modern woman should be dressed, in a style that conveys freedom and self-determination, rather than being a man's toy. When she learns that the bank is lending her money for her new business in Paris only thanks to guarantees offered by Capel, she shows aversion, and she insists to deal with the bank by herself, understanding that her independence and her success will not be for real if she depends on a man. Suddenly, Capel dies in a car accident. Coco is emotionally devastated, but rationally determined to continue asserting herself, her independence, her unique style.

The movie ends showing Coco dressed in one of her hallmark ''tailleurs'', sitting on a stair, and watching a series of beautiful models wearing Coco Chanel's dresses from various decades of fashion making. The movie only shows the beginning of her career, hence the title "Coco avant Chanel," summarizing her future success and ascent in the stardom of fashion only in this final sequence.

For the first time since taking possession of the family cabin, Vaughn who has just celebrated his 30th birthday, has invited his best friends up for a winter weekend of hunting and drinking. But the arrival of unexpected visitors turns a simple getaway into two days of life changing turmoil.

Vaughn and his brother Trevor were abused by their father and have become estranged. After their father’s death, Vaughn buys the family cabin from his mother with his inheritance while brother Trevor has gambled all his away and has a large debt to pay. With the unexpected visit of his brother at the cabin, Vaughn and his best friends discover they all have deep issues.

Bryan, Vaughn’s best friend, is having relations with Vaughn’s ex girlfriend (Renee) behind his back. Jon and Steve have a fling that threatens Steve’s marriage and all he knows about himself. The story culminates in Trevor’s hidden depression coming to light shocking his brother and friends into facing their own issues, all while saving somebody they didn’t realize needed saving.

A volcano erupts and an earthquake opens up a crevasse, swallowing up many members of the 'Dark Tribe'. The tribal leader is killed and a fight for leadership between two survivors, Mak (Brian O'Shaughnessy) and Zen, soon breaks out. Mak is victorious and leads the surviving tribe members across a desert in search of a new home. They meet and befriend a tribe of fair-haired people. The leader of the fair-haired people presents Mak with a girl, Noo, as a wife. Mak offers a girl in exchange, but she already has a mate. She tries to escape with her mate, but they are caught and killed. The Dark tribe move on and eventually settle in a fertile valley where they flourish. Noo gives birth to twin boys on the same day another woman gives birth to a mute girl. The tribe demand that the girl be sacrificed, but a lightning strike convinces the tribes' old witch to adopt her as her apprentice.

Years later, the now adolescent twins, (dark haired Rool and fair haired Toomak) fight for their father's attention. Rool tries to rape the mute girl. She escapes but falls into the grasp of a marauding tribe. Toomak leads Mak and the other tribesmen to the marauders' cave. A battle ensues and the marauders' chief is killed by Toomak. Toomak rescues the mute girl and takes the defeated chief's daughter, Nala, as his wife. Mak names Toomak as his successor as tribal chief and then dies of wounds sustained in the battle. Rool disputes the decision and he fights with Toomak in a ritualised battle. On the brink of victory, Toomak spares his brother's life. Toomak decides to leave, taking Nala and half the tribe with him. Consumed with hatred for his brother, Rool decides to track Toomak down. Rool and his men are attacked by a forest tribe, but are rescued by Toomak. Rool, still hating his brother, abducts Nala. Toomak chases after Rool. At the top of a cliff, Rool stakes Nala to a pyre. Toomak and Rool fight whilst Nala frees herself (only to be caught in the grasp of a python). Toomak saves Nala whilst the mute girl stabs an effigy of Rool, sending him falling to his death.

In both "Amanda Morgan" and the later portion of ''Tactics of Mistake'', Dow de Castres unites Earth forces and galvanizes Earth opinion against the Splinter Cultures of the colonized worlds and against Cletus Grahame who leads the bid for independence of those cultures. As de Castres arrives at The Dorsai's Foralie District, local residents, under Amanda Morgan, enact a pre-arranged plan of defending their home against the invading troops with the power of the disabled, the elderly, and the children. The plan is predicated on the principle of inevitable and acceptable losses in the face of unavoidable conflict. As a science fiction story, it employs a subtle and clever, nearly passive form of chemical warfare as a military action. The theme is given its central power when the disabled, the elderly, and the children overcome the seasoned and better equipped Earth troops in the cause of their culture's independence from Earth control.

The subplot of the naming of Betta Hasegawa's child, Amanda's great-great grandchild, treats Amanda Morgan's age with sympathy and grace. Amanda Morgan is a strong and able commander and a flawed, elderly woman of pride and wisdom. Both her strengths and weaknesses are treated with literary integrity. Morgan's identity in the inner struggle over the use of her name, is as important as the idea of cultural identity to the development of the overall Cycle theme.

Auggie Hamilton (Clark Brandon) is always looking for ways to earn a quick buck. When he learns that his friend Samantha Brooks (Tracy Griffith) is going to sell her garage to fast food king Wrangler Bob Bundy (Jim Varney) he comes up with one more scheme, to turn the garage into a burger joint. When Wrangler Bob proves to be stiff competition, they develop a secret sauce that makes people go crazy.

It was shot in Atlanta and Los Angeles.

At the beginning of the film, Vinny Minieri (Joseph Donofrio) and his two men are beating a man. It finishes with Vinny burning the man's face with a cigarette. Two brothers, Angelo Argono (William DeMeo) and Paulie Argono (Conor Dubin) are leading a poor and boring life on the streets of Brooklyn, New York City, along with their childhood friends Pete (Daniel Margotta) and Dominic "Dom" (John Palumbo). Brooklyn is owned by mob boss Santo Minieri (Joe Viterelli), an old but ruthless crime boss. The Argono brothers are working in a local restaurant belonging to Mr. Letto (Robert Constanzo) as waiters. Although they can't stand their boss, they are forced to work there.

All changes when Angelo decides to quit his job. He, Paulie, Pete and Dom borrow cash from a loan shark called Hector and start a bookie business, although their Uncle Tommy (Raymond Serra) doesn't like the idea. The business goes well and more and more money goes into Angelo's crew's pockets from losing customers. Because of the success, they are able to sit in a luxury strip club (owned by Minieri) and drink expensive drinks.

Problems appear when Angelo fights Minieri's men and they are thrown out by Vinny and his guys. The crew then starts collecting more and more money, and hotheaded Angelo comes to the idea of racketeering. They set up a protection racket in a candy store, but when they come to collect the cash, they are confronted by Vinny who takes them to his father's home. Santo tells Angelo to give him one good reason not to tell his bodyguard Eddie (John Hoyt) to take him out and beat him to death. Angelo explains that they're just trying to earn money and it would be good if they could work with Santo. Santo takes the offer.

After saving Vinny's life and doing some errands and jobs for Santo, Angelo is now right-hand-man of the crime boss. Vinny doesn't like this and prepares to kill Angelo's gang and his father to be the neighborhood boss. Santo soon has a heart attack and dies, and Vinny understands that it's now a perfect chance to kill the wannabes and become the crime boss. He ambushes Angelo, Pete and Dom (Paulie wasn't there, he was on a date) with his men and kills them in a drive-by shooting.

When Paulie returns, he sees what happened and has a flashback of his childhood, while crying. Suddenly he stops crying and goes to Vinny's house. There he finally kills Vinny and his two bodyguards, saying "And you're the fucking wannabes". The film then ends.

The evil Mannax the Dark Lady has conquered the Kingdom. To "restore order and goodness to the land", three adventurers serving the good wizard The Master's embark to seek out and kill her. Once Mannax, who takes the form of a dragon for the final battle, is slain, The Master uses his returned full powers to destroy all forces of darkness through the land.

Attorney Phillip Reed is tired of one-night stands. At the zoo, he meets Gloria Franklin, who is getting married in two weeks. She tells him her name is Marsha Lyons. The two hit it off right away, and Gloria/Marsha tells Phillip she will call him. Gloria/Marsha doesn't plan to ever call him, but when her call to her fiancé is answered by a woman who he presumably slept with, Gloria/Marsha, feeling betrayed, decides to call Phillip and she asks him to go to Mexico with her.

The two have an adventure getting there when the car they rented breaks down and catches fire. They hitch a ride with some local farm workers. Finally, they make it to a beautiful home that is owned by Gloria/Marsha's parents. They have a blast in Mexico, dining and dancing, eventually winding up in bed together. The next morning Phillip gets up looking for Gloria/Marsha who has already left.

Phillip finds out from a videotape explanation left by Gloria/Marsha that she is getting married in a week and that he was supposed to be her last fling. Phillip then tries to find her. When he does, he tries to stop the wedding and convince Gloria that they belong together. In the end, Gloria leaves the groom at the altar, and she and Phillip go for a walk in the zoo where they first met.

Paul Abrams has just moved to New York City with his parents. He starts at tenth grade in a new high school, Don Carey High School, which has earned the nickname "Don't Care High" for prevalent student apathy.

When Paul finds out that no one at Don Carey cares much about much of anything, he tries to motivate them by nominating Mike Otis, a reclusive man of mystery, for student council president. Mike runs unopposed and is soon elected (first since 1956), but the students soon forget about him. Paul's friend Sheldon takes a role in boosting Mike's reputation, attributing a round of much-needed facility repairs to him. As the students begin to care, the teachers sense that something is going on.

Paul and Sheldon publish a newsletter, ''The Otis Report'', which praises Mike and criticizes the school staff, and distribute it in the halls while wearing masks and speeding past on roller skates. Mike is stripped of his position, but the pair respond with a campaign to reinstate him that sparks genuine interest among the student body.

Finding that the home address for Mike in the school files is fake, Paul and Sheldon find his actual residence and learn by eavesdropping that he is about to fail one of his courses. Since a large portion of the student body now idolizes Mike, they collaborate to produce a project for him. It is of such high quality that it is entered in a science fair, but the judges disqualify Mike after learning that the work is not his; the students react so badly that Don Carey is banned from the event. An announcement that Mike likes basketball leads to massive turnout at an away game, which Don Carey wins by one point, resulting in a joyous riot and much destruction.

The staff gives in and reinstates Mike as student body president, but he shocks everyone with the news that he will be leaving. Nevertheless, the students organize a huge going-away party in his honor.

The story, set in 2000, begins when Eric Young, stagnant and lifeless since his father's death, is coerced by his best friend, Sean, to borrow an identity and take back a forgone year of baseball eligibility. Once in class, Eric immediately connects with Monica, the charming, All-American daughter of his coach, Coach Donovan. Although Eric works harder than anyone to earn playing time, the jealous Donovan permanently relegates him to the bench. Due to his own hidden motives, Sean warns Eric to steer clear of Monica and to focus strictly on baseball. But when Eric turns the other ear, he finds the closer he grows to Monica, the darker the secrets that surface from her abusive past. Eric is ultimately forced to the weigh the challenges of his own mental well-being against the psychological pain which causes Monica to spiral out of control.

Rosario (Andrea Palma) was the average Mexican girl that grew up in a humble household with her dad. Her boyfriend had promised to marry her and that they would be better off once he landed a decent job. The Father falls sick and isn’t able to work, leaving his daughter helpless because she was not wedded yet. In the process of trying to find some money and trying to get help she turns to her boyfriend and finds him sleeping with another village girl. She is distraught and leaves town. She decides to leave Cordoba City to settle in Veracruz City. In a port that is facing the Gulf of Mexico, she establishes herself above a sordid cabaret, and starts “selling love” to the sailors that come from afar. She made this her life profession and enjoyed being heartless and reckless with men’s feelings. One night, a drunken sailor gets out of hand and Alberto (Domingo Soler) rescues her from getting beat. She is grateful and takes Alberto to her room to compensate him. After the love making they begin to talk about their backgrounds and discover that they are siblings. Rosario, distraught, leaves the cabaret and makes her way to the port's dock. Alberto searches for her, only to find her shawl floating in the water near the dock, implying that she jumped.

Joseph Krauzenberg is a wealthy Hungarian Jewish industrial tycoon whose fortune is mirrored in the great properties he owns. By 1944, his factories and banks are needed by the Nazis, as Hitler's 'Final Solution' is sweeping through Europe.

The Nazis are greedy to accumulate wealth as easily as possible, and under the terms of the Third Reich's "Europa Plan", Krauzenberg arranges with Nazi leaders to exchange his business holdings and his collection of rare art for safe passage to Switzerland for himself, his wife Rachel, and their family. As the night of transaction approaches, Krauzenberg visits his large family being held by the Gestapo, and reassures them that all will be safe.

Such is Krauzenberg's wealth and power that when he agrees to sign over his property, it is two of the most powerful men in the Nazi regime who announce they will be coming to his house to handle the paperwork – Adolf Eichmann and Heinrich Himmler. As the Nazi leaders are ushered into Krauzenberg's home, they are struck by something unusual – Krauzenberg's two most trusted servants, married Aryan couple Hans and Ingrid Vassmann, are breaking the law by working for Jews.

As it happens, Eichmann and Himmler's suspicions are well-founded – despite appearing to be the perfect Aryan couple, Hans and Ingrid are actually Jews working deep undercover with the underground Resistance. Young, in love and expecting their first child, they work as valet and maid for the elderly Jewish couple.

In a sub-plot, Nazi officer Edelhein, the most repulsive of the group, pursues Ingrid – despite her pregnancy – as a perfect foil for implanting his precious seed in the 'Aryan beauty' to populate the new Germany.

As they have regular contact with the Nazis, in their roles as servants, Hans and Ingrid consider taking the opportunity to kill Eichmann and Himmler for the greater good, even if it would mean certain death for the Krauzenbergs and themselves. Instead, the Vassmans, place their fate in the hands of the Krauzenbergs, express their admiration for them and confessing that they are Jewish and wish to escape with them. However, little can be done, as the Krauzenbergs have already submitted the list of people traveling with them.

On his way to the plane that is to take him and his family to the safety of Switzerland, Josef Krauzenberg makes an unknown deal with German Captain Dressler. Dressler then deceives Eichmann, thus giving the Vassmans the means to escape.

The Vassmans are confronted at the last checkpoint before Switzerland by Edelhein, who has discovered Dressler's treachery and has pursued them for the so-called murder of a German soldier, and of course for being Jews. However, Himmler wants to avoid any bloodshed that could ruin his agreement regarding the Krauzenberg properties, and has sent word that the Vassmans are allowed to pass freely and safely. Angered that he has lost his chance to 'plant his seed' in Ingrid, Edelhein disregards Himmler's orders, and attempts to stop the Vassmans. Under Himmler's orders to allow the Aryan Couple through, the Major commanding the crossing kills Edelhein.

The film ends with the Vassmans reunited safely in Switzerland with the Krauzenbergs.

In the town of Red Rock, gun salesman Steve Farrell demonstrates the new Colt .45 repeating pistols to the sheriff. The demonstration is interrupted when men arrive to transfer one of the prisoners to another jail. As he's being led away, prisoner Jason Brett grabs the pistols, shoots the sheriff, and escapes. Convinced that Farrell was involved in the escape, the townspeople arrest the innocent gun salesman. Brett initiates a campaign of robberies and cold-blooded murder, with regular guns being no match for his Colt .45 pistols.

Farrell is released from jail due to a lack of evidence. He tracks Brett into Texas and comes across a band of Indians whom Brett has killed to provide cover for a stagecoach robbery. The only survivor of the attack, Walking Bear, tells Steve about Brett's plan. Farrell jumps onto the stage to fight off Brett's gang with his own set of Colt .45s. The only passenger on the stage, Beth Donovan, tries to prevent him from fighting off the robbers.

After Brett's gang retreats, Farrell stops the stage and notices a white scarf hanging outside the stagecoach window. Believing it to be a signal to the robbers, Farrell suspects that Beth is part of the gang; she escapes on horseback while Farrell is helping the wounded stagecoach driver. Farrell does not know that Beth is the wife of Paul Donovan, one of Brett's associates. Beth returns to her home, which is being used by Brett as a hideout. Although she believes that her husband has been forced to work with Brett, he is actually plotting with the killer to take over the nearby town of Bonanza Creek.

Unknown to the citizens of Bonanza Creek, Sheriff Harris is working with Brett and his gang. When Farrell arrives in town, Harris agrees to make him his deputy. Harris then rides out to Brett's hideout and warns him that Farrell is in town. Farrell learns Beth's identity. Harris encourages him to ride out to her house, knowing Brett and his gang will be lying in wait, but Farrell is able to evade the ambush with the help of Walking Bear and his Indians.

Back at the hideout, Beth overhears Paul plotting with Brett and realizes her husband is actively working with the gang. After she denounces her husband, Paul locks her in a store room. She manages to escape and hurries into town to reveal what she knows, but as she rides past Paul, he shoots her. Hearing the shots, Farrell takes her in his arms and rides off seeking refuge with Walking Bear and his people. After being treated for her wound, Beth warns Farrell about Brett's plan to take over Bonanza Creek.

The Indians discover Paul's body, shot in the back by a .45. Along the trail, Harris and members of the gang set a trap and capture Farrell, but the Indians come to his rescue and kill his captors. Then they ride to Bonanza Creek and quietly go about killing Brett's men in the streets. The injured Harris makes his way back to town to warn Brett, who's holed up in the jail with Beth as his hostage. When Farrell and the Indians arrive at the jail, Brett uses Beth as a shield, but Beth breaks away. Farrell enters the jail alone and sees Brett is out of ammunition. He puts down his .45s and the two men fight. During the struggle, Brett goes for Farrell's guns and Farrell shoots him. Farrell walks out into the street and is embraced by Beth.

The novel takes place after the events of ''1634: The Galileo Affair, and 1635: The Cannon Law'' in which French Huguenot extremist Michel Ducos came close to assassinating Pope Urban VIII and forced to flee with his followers from Rome. The leaders of the French Huguenot group under Ducos settled in Scotland making plans to embarrass Cardinal Richelieu. Michel also has left strict instructions for several of his followers, led by Guillaume Locquifier, in Frankfurt to do nothing until he gives them new orders.

Meanwhile, Duke Henri de Rohan, the highest ranking Huguenot, has his own group of agents monitoring events throughout Europe. He also would like to see Richelieu removed from office, but he views the radical actions of Ducos as self-defeating. After having learning the events in Rome, Henri writes letters to his agents in Grantville, Frankfurt and elsewhere warning of the escape of Ducos and ordering them to notify him if Ducos appears. Rohan has two double agents working within the Ducos operation. Jacques-Pierre Dumais is one of the double agents working for the Duke, who works in Grantville as a garbage collector while secretly examining 20th century knowledge discarded by the American residents. Spymaster Francisco Nasi has also been trying to track down Ducos. His agents and others have been sending reports on activities in Grantville and elsewhere within the State of Thuringia-Franconia.

In the midst of this, the United States of Europe elections are taking place. Incumbent Prime Minister Mike Stearns is sure that his political party will lose, but figures that his opponent William Wettin will overextend himself and his respective Crown Loyalists party. Ducos' Huguenots in Frankfurt plan a demonstration and action in Grantville to vilify Richelieu by plotting assassinations on Grantville's powerful figures: Mayor Henry Dreeson and Presbyterian minister Enoch Wiley (as attempts on individuals such as Mike Stearns and Gustavus Adolphus remain impossible to do). The assassinations are successfully carried out during several manipulated demonstrations against vaccination and autopsies through down-timers and an anti-Semitic incident at Grantville's synagogue as covers for the assassination. In the aftermath, the results do not come out as the Huguenots had planned: Nasi, Stearns, and several others figure out the cause for the assassinations. They and other like-minded individuals are shocked by the provocative actions of the anti-Semites and decide to use the incident to justify the total eradication of all antisemitic forces in the area controlled by Grantville's allies.

The opera depicts Tesla's life as a series of reversals of fortunes. The two-hour work, sung in English, is in two parts and features a bass, a tenor, a bass-baritone, two sopranos, seven musicians (including a theremin player) and a large male choir. Also audible are clattering typewriters, pigeons (in later life Tesla was deeply affected by the death of a specific white pigeon), Morse code and fragments of Antonín Dvořák's New World Symphony. It also included two Tesla coil as props at its premiere. A warning was issued in the program to audience members who might be wearing "pace-makers, hearing aides, or any form of electric, magnetic, mechanical or metallic implant or prosthetic device".

Gus Bishop is a talented but failing New York painter who lacks the marketing savvy to make it in today's art world. After getting pick-pocketed in the subway, Gus' destiny is turned over into the hands of Deech—who promptly burglarizes his home and steals his paintings. To capitalize on his stolen goods, Deech generates interest in Gus' work by creating Geoffrey Boiardi, a fictional artist with a fascinating profile. Geoffrey becomes an overnight sensation while Gus is forced into the shadows of the ever-elusive rising star.

Jerry North (William Post Jr.) and his wife Pam (Gracie Allen) return home after a night away in a holiday spirit. The spirit soon vanishes when the body of a man falls out of their liquor closet. The corpse is identified as Stanley Brent, the estranged husband of Carol Brent (Rose Hobart), a friend of Pam's. As the clues are unearthed, it appears that some member of the North's social circle, who knew they would be away, gained entrance to their apartment, asked Brent to come there and murdered him. Pam tries to establish alibis for all of her friends, and in doing so inadvertently establishes who killed Brent.

Georg, the son of a wealthy colonel, is secretly married to the poor Helena, with whom he has a three-year-old son. Though he is happy with his marriage, he hides it from the rest of his family, afraid that they would react poorly to Helena's status. One day, Georg competes in a steeplechase and is on the verge of winning, but crashes into the final obstacle and is fatally injured. On his deathbed, he reveals his marriage to his father, who promises to care for them after Georg's death.

Four years later, Helena and her son have settled into the colonel's home. However, Georg's brother-in-law attempts to drive them out, viewing them as a disgrace to the family's reputation and not wanting to share the colonel's eventual inheritance. Helena eventually acquiesces and moves out with her son; they subsequently face financial difficulties and Helena accepts the colonel's offer to adopt her son. She struggles to deal with her resulting loneliness, and abducts her son one day when he is out with his nanny. During the ensuing manhunt, she attempts to drown herself and her son, but they are rescued. Helena is charged with attempted murder and sentenced to prison.

After another 14 years have passed, Georg and Helena's son celebrates his 21st birthday with his family; they are proud that he has become a colonel like his grandfather. He has only vague memories of his mother, who has just been released from prison. She has difficulty finding a job as a domestic worker and is driven away by the police when she tries to lie down on a park bench. Exhausted, she loses consciousness and collapses, and is mocked by schoolchildren. Her son, who is passing by, sees the incident and carries Helena to his house, unaware that she is his mother. Once they arrive home, she is identified as his mother and they joyfully reconcile, vowing to never again be separated.

A gardener (Sjöström) runs a farm, and his son (Gösta Ekman) has fallen in love with the daughter of one of the farm workers (Lili Bech). The gardener, who has an interest in the daughter himself, furiously runs the son out of the house. One day, the gardener rapes the worker's daughter and then sends her and her father (Gunnar Bohman) away, fearing discovery.

While on a boat on the way into the city, the two meet an old general (John Ekman) who gives the girl money and his business card. When the father later dies, the girl reaches out to the general, who lets her act as a hostess at his dinner parties. Soon after, the general suffers a seizure and upon his death, his family and friends kick the girl out.

The devastated girl returns to her home village. Distraught, she visits the greenhouse where she pulls out all the flowers and curses the gardener. The next morning, the gardener finds her dead among the roses.

Jillian Shanahan, a deaf woman, and an athletic trainer, is unaware that her client, Mickey O'Malley, has hidden a stolen rare coin in her pager. After Mickey gets arrested at Jillian's apartment by Lt. Brock, a corrupt police officer, he gets interrogated by him in the back of a police car under the bridge. After that, he returns to Jillian's apartment, only to find Jillian is not there. He later goes to a diner owned by his friend Ben Kendall and tries to call Jillian, but does not get a response. Soon after, he leaves the diner in Ben's car. He is killed when the car gets blown up on the bridge, and the car lands in the river below. Ben begins to suspect that Lt. Brock is behind Mickey's death as well as series of terrifying threats that Jillian begins to receive. After that, Jillian and Ben are being stalked by a killer who also wants the coin.

The story is all about the faces of life, in dealing with love, friendship, death and family. Starting with the relationship of Emily and Eric. Emily was just a maid at the household of the rich Amanda, the mother of Eric. But the two fell in love with each other. Of course, Amanda doesn't approve this. But still, the two got married. Amanda started to make Emily's life miserable, with the help of her friend Betsay and cousin Carol. Meanwhile, Lani, a very kind-hearted daughter, experiences hardships because of her status in life, and her father, who is a gambler. At least she had her friends Bebang and Inoy to comfort her, not knowing that Inoy has eyes on her, and Bebang has eyes on him. Emily and Lani will meet when Lani applied to be a maid at their household. Will the two overcome their hardships in life?

Two private bankers, Alistair (Scott) and Jamie (Mackenzie), who have the world at their feet get their kicks from playing a twelve-hour game of hunt, hide and seek with people from the margins of society. Their next target is Sean Macdonald (Pearson) a parentless teenager who lives with his sister on a housing estate on the outskirts of Edinburgh.

She's in debt, he's going nowhere fast. Sean agrees to play for cash. He soon realises he's walked into twelve hours of hell where survival is the name of the game.

In early December 1138, Abbot Heribert of Shrewsbury Abbey is summoned to a Legatine council in London and his authority is suspended. The Abbey's business is also postponed, with one exception: Gervase Bonel, who has ceded his manorial estate at Mallilie to the Abbey in return for a small house where his needs in retirement will be provided, is allowed to move his household before the charter is signed. All expect that Heribert or his successor will complete the agreement after the council.

Prior Robert is left in charge of the Abbey. He receives gifts meant for the Abbot, including a fat partridge which he shares with Bonel, having his cook send a portion with dinner. Bonel is taken ill immediately after eating it. Brother Cadfael the herbalist and Brother Edmund the infirmarer run to his aid but cannot save him. Cadfael recognises Bonel's widow as Richildis Vaughan, to whom he was informally betrothed over 40 years earlier. He realises that the sauce in which the partridge was served was poisoned by a liniment he made. Its active ingredient is monkshood (Wolfsbane), deadly if ingested.

The murder is reported to Shrewsbury Castle. Sheriff Prestcote sends the unsubtle Sergeant Will Warden to investigate. As Prior Robert ate the other half of the partridge without ill effects, suspicion falls on Bonel's household. Richildis was never alone with the partridge. Aelfric, who carried the dishes from the kitchen, bears a grudge as Bonel deprived him of free status and made him a villein. Neither the maid, Aldith, nor Meurig, an illegitimate son of Bonel who is apprenticed to Richildis' son-in-law master carpenter Martin Bellecote, have any apparent motive. Edwin Gurney, Richildis' son from her first marriage, was present at part of the meal, but stormed out after a quarrel before Bonel ate the partridge. He and Meurig had come separately from the Abbey's infirmary, where Meurig used the monkshood oil to massage his great uncle, the aged Brother Rhys. Edwin's motive for murdering Bonel is plain to the sergeant. Because the charter with the Abbey is not completed, Edwin will inherit Mallilie.

Warden fails to find Edwin. Late that night Edwin and his same-age nephew, Edwy Bellecote, meet Cadfael in his workshop. By pretending that Bonel was attacked with a sword or dagger, Cadfael establishes that Edwin does not know how Bonel died and is innocent of poisoning him. He disguises Edwin in a monk's habit and conceals him in one of the Abbey's barns. Cadfael suggests that Warden search for the vial which the murderer used to carry the oil. Warden reports that Edwin was seen to throw something glittery into the River Severn. Cadfael questions Edwin, who says that he threw a carved wooden reliquary, a gift intended for Bonel, into the river after their quarrel.

That night, Cadfael visits Richildis to ask if there are other legitimate heirs. If Edwin does not inherit, Mallilie would revert to Bonel's overlord. Richildis reminisces about her former relations with Cadfael. Brother Jerome, Prior Robert's sanctimonious clerk, is eavesdropping outside the door. At Chapter, Jerome betrays Cadfael's and Richildis' former relationship. Prior Robert forbids Cadfael, who is bound by his vow of obedience, to leave the Abbey's precincts.

The same morning, Edwin is discovered in the barn by Abbey servants, and flees on Bonel's fine horse. The boy on the horse is captured after a chase lasting all day. Summoned to give spiritual comfort to the boy, Cadfael finds Edwy Bellecote, who distracted the authorities while Edwin escaped. Deputy Sheriff Hugh Beringar allows Edwy to return to his family on parole. Cadfael sends his assistant, Brother Mark, to search around Bonel's house for any bottle which might have held the poison. Mark finds it in a place where Edwin Gurney could not have thrown it, further proving his innocence to Cadfael.

The Abbey's steward at Mallilie sends word that a brother at a remote sheepfold at Rhydycroesau in Wales has fallen ill. Cadfael realises that Mallilie's location near or within Wales alters motives. Before departing to tend the sick brother, he questions the aged Brother Rhys, uncle to Meurig's mother, about local customs around Mallilie. Beringar is absent, searching for the reliquary which Edwin threw into the river, and Cadfael does not confide his discoveries to the sceptical Sergeant Warden.

At Rhydycroesau, the ailing brother soon recovers. Cadfael visits the manor at Mallilie and then kinfolk of Brother Rhys. At the house of Rhys's brother-in-law, Ifor ap Morgan, he discovers Edwin in hiding. Sergeant Warden follows Cadfael from Mallilie, and takes Edwin into custody. Cadfael now has one chance to get justice for Gervase Bonel, at the Commote court at Llansilin the next day.

At the court, Meurig makes his claim for Mallilie, producing written proof of his paternity. The manor lies within Wales; under Welsh law, a recognised son, born in or out of wedlock, has an over-riding claim to his father's property. Cadfael intervenes, stating that Meurig cannot inherit as he murdered Bonel. He produces the vial and challenges Meurig to display his scrip (linen pouch) to show where the strongly scented oil leaked into it. Meurig flees. Cadfael asks the court to send word of Meurig's guilt to Shrewsbury and returns to Rhydycroesau.

As Cadfael expects, Meurig is waiting for him armed with a knife. Meurig does not take his revenge on Cadfael, but instead confesses to Bonel's murder. He knew from an early age that he would inherit Mallilie under Welsh law, but Bonel's agreement to hand it to Shrewsbury Abbey would put it out of reach. Wanting to gain the manor before the charter was signed, he took some of Cadfael's rubbing oil from the infirmary. Having overheard Aldith say that the partridge was a gift for Bonel, he added the oil to the sauce while briefly alone in the kitchen of Bonel's house. After Warden left the house to search for Edwin, he threw the vial out of the window of the house. Not wanting to take a life for a life, Cadfael tells him his penance is to live a long life, doing as much good as he can. He directs Meurig to escape on the horse at the sheepfold.

Three days after Christmas, Cadfael returns to Shrewsbury to find the monks eagerly awaiting Abbot Heribert's return. When Heribert arrives, he says he has returned as a humble brother to end his days there. He then dashes Prior Robert's hopes of succeeding him by introducing Radulfus, their new Abbot appointed by the Legatine Council. The new abbot lets Edwin declare Aelfric free, but the steward will run Mallilie until Edwin is of age to inherit it. Cadfael is content that Edwin and his mother will move there, and depart from his life.

Six youths ditch school for the woods, where some hotrodding on a stolen moped changes the fate of their day. They crash into Peter, a dishevelled drifter, who is delighted to have a group of teens to hang out with. First he gains their trust by joining in their games, but then his behaviour changes. Peter uses what he has learned about the kids against them, bullying the alpha boys, belittling the weaker ones and saving his worst for the only girl in the group. Realising too late that they are being held hostage, the kids are forced to embrace the dark side of human nature in order to survive the ordeal.

At Fort King, Florida, in 1835, Lieutenant Lance Caldwell is charged with the murder of a sentry. At his court martial, he recounts the story of the fragile peace between the settlers and the native Seminole and how that peace is threatened by the strict fort commander, Major Harlan Degan, who wants to wipe out the natives. Caldwell’s childhood sweetheart, Revere Muldoon, meets Osceola, a Seminole chief and old friend of Lt. Caldwell's. Through respect for Caldwell, Osceola comes to the fort under a flag of truce, but is imprisoned by Maj. Degan. Osceola dies while in captivity and Caldwell is accused of his murder and jailed. Eventually, the truth comes out and the Seminole rescue Caldwell from his prison.

In the film’s opening, in Alberta, Canada’s Jasper National Park, Omega wolf Humphery (Justin Long) and his Omega friends slide down a hill on a log. However, the plan goes entirely wrong as they try to maneuver the log down the mountain. Meanwhile, Alpha wolf Kate (Hayden Panettiere) practices her hunting skills on her younger Omega sister, Lilly (Christina Ricci), much to her annoyance. Humphery and Kate join each other mid air, excited to see each other again. However, Humphery begins to feel nauseated by their spinning, and the two fall onto the ground. As Humphery tries to join Kate, leader of the Western pack Winston (Danny Glover), stops Humphery in pursuing her. He reminds Humphery that Alphas and Omegas cannot marry according to pack law, and that Kate is going off to Alpha school until Spring. Humphery looks on, saddened by her departure.

Spring time comes around, and both Kate and Humphery mature. Humphery and his friends seem to master the ways of log boarding, but their fun stops short when they crash into a rock. They then see Kate on her first ever hunt, pursuing a herd of caribou. As Kate and her team close in on the caribou, they are interrupted by a group of two enemy Eastern pack wolves, which causes a stampede. As Kate saves the two Eastern wolves from getting trampled, the Western pack wolves start a fight. Humphery and his friends then break up the conflict. Later that night, Winston meets up with Eastern pack leader Tony (Dennis Hopper), as they discuss the pack’s food shortage. The two then agree that merging the packs together would end their conflict, and decide that Kate should marry Tony’s Alpha son, Garth (Chris Carmack). Kate, overhearing their conversation, agrees for the good of the pack.

During the Moonlight Howl (the howling between wolves), Kate and Garth finally meet. Garth tries to show off his howl, but Kate is unimpressed and excuses herself. She then runs into Humphery, but the two get tranquilized by park rangers and are taken to Sawtooth National Recreation Area in Idaho. The two meet golfing goose Marcel (Larry Miller) and his duck caddie Paddy (Eric Price). Kate and Humphery learn that they were relocated to repopulate the species, and agree that they must return home to Jasper Park before the two packs start a war. As the packs discover that Kate has gone missing, Tony warns Winston that if Kate doesn’t return, war will be inevitable. Lilly decides to show Garth around the Western pack’s territory until Kate returns, and the two fall in love.

As Kate and Humphery catch a ride on an RV, Humphery has to urinate and gets out while the vehicle pulls over at a nearby gas station. He then finds a cupcake and eats it, as the frosting covers his mouth. Two men mistake him for a wolf with rabies, and they attempt to shoot Humphery with a gun. Kate then leaps out to save him, and the two flee. Kate, disappointed that they missed their ride home, leaves Humphery out in the rain. Now traveling alone in the storm, Kate comes across a dangerous ravine, which has begun to flood. As Kate tries to cross it, she slips, and Humphery comes to her rescue. Flattered by his bravery, Kate begins to admire Humphery.

The following day, Marcel and Paddy find the wolves and direct them to a train heading to Jasper Park. Climbing over the snowy mountain, Humphery finds a grizzly bear cub, and the two play as Kate goes to scout a head. As Humphery throws snow at the cub, the cub begins to cry, which attracts an angry trio of grizzly bears. As the wolves slide off the side of the mountain, Humphery and Kate ride on a log and manage to board the train.

As the two joke about their encounter with the bears, Kate and Humphery begin to bond even closer. Back at home, Lilly compassionately teaches Garth how to howl. At the same time, Humphery gazes at the full moon and begins to howl, urging Kate to howl with him. Although it is against pack law for an Alpha to howl with an Omega, the two begin to howl, falling in love. As Lilly and Garth finish their howling, Tony catches them, and ultimately declares war on the Western pack. As the train passes by Jasper, Kate and Humphery’s exchange of feelings is cut short by the sight of the two packs at war. As they return, Kate announces that she will marry Garth to unite the packs. The day of the wedding, a distraught Humphery bids farewell to Kate, and decides to leave as a lone wolf, much to Kate’s disappointment.

During the ceremony, Kate backs out and declares her love for Humphery, as Garth subsequently declares his love for Lilly. Tony, enraged, declares war on the Western pack, and a large fight ensues. Their brawl is cut short by an oncoming stampede of caribou, and Winston and Tony get stuck between it. Humphery and Kate cross paths, and work together by log boarding down the mountain to save them. They succeed, but Kate gets struck by the caribou in the process. As the stampede subsides, Humphery tries to wake up Kate to no avail. Devastated, Humphery begins to howl, causing everyone to howl with him. Kate then awakens to everyone’s joy, and she and Humphery confess their love for each other, as Garth and Lilly confess theirs. Winston and Tony abolish the law against marriage between Alphas and Omegas, and accept a union of the two packs via marriage between Garth and Lily.

At the Moonlight Howl, the wolves celebrate the love of Kate and Humphery, and Garth and Lilly, breaking the social classes and traditions. The movie ends with Humphery and Kate howling a duet.

When Jack Mitchell (Peter Boyle), a married middle-aged salesman with children from Utica, New York, meets his old friend Larry Moore while on business in Chicago, he asks him if he knows any prostitutes Jack can date while in town. Larry gives Jack T.R. Baskin's phone number, and Jack invites T.R to visit him at his hotel. T.R. arrives at the hotel and is relieved when Jack is impotent and cannot have sex, and she begins to tell Jack about her time so far in Chicago, a story that unfolds via flashback.

After flying to Chicago from Findlay, Ohio, T.R. first checks into a room at the YWCA and eventually rents a studio apartment in a dilapidated building in a run-down area of the city. She finds employment as a typist in a large corporation where she meets and befriends Dayle Wigoda (Marcia Rodd), who arranges a double-date for them. The man she is set up with proves to be a bigot and misogynist. T.R. realizes she'd rather be alone than spend time with such a callous individual. T.R meets other individuals at her job and becomes more affiliated with the city but seems uninterested in her surroundings.

One night, after leaving a noisy bar, T.R. sees a man reading a book at the window in a café. She joins him at his table and learns his name is Larry and he edits and publishes books. The two become friendly and go back to his apartment to discuss their lives. Larry is divorced and misses spending time with his children, while T.R. confesses she always has felt like an outsider. The two have sex, and the next morning T.R. feels she finally has taken the first step towards an intimate relationship, only to discover Larry has put a $20 bill in her coat pocket and mistaken her for a prostitute. Feeling betrayed and humiliated, she rushes out and walks the streets of Chicago contemplating what just happened while a voiceover of her saying that something "clicked" in her mind about what she wants to do with her life. Once she arrives at home, T.R. calls her parents to apologize for leaving home without telling them and has a breakdown.

Back in the hotel, T.R. and Jack discuss their current situations; why Jack is cheating on his wife with a prostitute, and why T.R is one. T.R tells Jack that she was tired of working as a typist and needed more excitement in her life and the two agree they are glad they met. The film ends with T.R leaving the hotel debating about whether she should continue being a prostitute or not and what she should do with her life.

Wild West gunslinger and gambler John Wesley Hardin (Rock Hudson) is pardoned and released from Huntsville, Texas prison in 1896, after serving 16 years of a 25-year sentence.

He delivers a manuscript of his life, written during his incarceration, to a local printer, in the hopes of it being printed. The film's story is presented mostly as flashbacks, as the autobiography recounts Hardin's exploits outside the law.

It tells of an upbringing by his preacher father (John McIntire), and his first love Jane (Mary Castle); in his reckless youth he find solace from his complicated home life in gambling. However he is introduced to the outlaw life when he shoots a man (Michael Ansara) in self-defense during a card game, and is soon on the run when authorities, and the man's notorious brothers (Hugh O'Brian, Lee Van Cleef, Glenn Strange), come gunning for him. He finds aid from a saloon girl friend Rosie (Julie Adams) and his uncle John Clements (also played by McIntire). After Jane is killed in an accident outside his father's home, brought on by the pursuit and Hardin's desire to bring her with him, he and Rosie depart together. On the run across state lines and using aliases, they eventually wed and begin a normal life, and have a son just before he is finally tracked down, captured and sent to prison.

After his release, he returns home and reunites with Rosie and his now teenage son John (Race Gentry). His life as an outlaw has influenced his son, but on his release Hardin makes clear to the young man that a life of crime is no way to live.

Benjamin Reilly, a high school English-teacher in Staten Island, N.Y., witnesses a fight between two students.[http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6492575.html Web Exclusive Reviews: Week of 10/22] Publishers Weekly, October 22, 2007. This brings him back to childhood years of bullying by Terrence O'Connell, a popular jock he had a crush on at the time. Reilly decides to quit his job, track down his bully and wreak revenge on him. He visits his parents in Indiana, where he also engages in unsafe sex with a Hispanic man. In Manhattan, he meets with Terrence and they become friends. While on holiday in Vail, Colorado, he takes an HIV test - by the end of the novel, he learns he doesn't have AIDS. Terrence breaks up with his girlfriend and slowly admits to being gay, though he won't let Benjamin kiss him. Out of anger, Benjamin pushes Terrence down a mountaintop, sending him off to hospital for several weeks. Terrence proves to be understanding, and they both decide they are now even. Benjamin learns about the circumstances surrounding his sister's death and his brother's runaway streak as a teenager. Finally, Benjamin is invited to Terrence's same-sex marriage with an investment banker in Massachusetts.

Derrick Cabrera (Paul Rodriguez) has a dream of being sponsored and one day going pro. He is an up-and-coming street skateboarder from Chicago with all the talent but has the world against him. He and his fellow skateboarding friends Cash (Ryan Dunn), Reese (Terry Kennedy), and Troy (Rob Dyrdek), as well as filmographer friend Mikey (Adam Wylie), spend their days skating at spots around the city, being pursued by cops for skating where they shouldn't be, and planning how to make names for themselves. In Derrick's case, this means landing one special trick on-camera for a sponsorship video that has never been done before, affectionately dubbed the N.A.C. (Not A Chance) by his friends. Unfortunately, the handrail at the local university he needs to practice his trick on has been skate-proofed, preventing him from making that goal a reality.

At home, Derrick's passion has started interfering with his high school education, causing tension between him and his father (Yancey Arias). At the same time, Derrick's preppy, partying girlfriend Samantha (Jordan Valley) is starting to make him lose focus of his goals with her high-maintenance personality. After the stress between Derrick and Samantha comes to a boil and they break up, he joins his friends on a trip to Ohio to visit a skate park with the perfect rail to practice the N.A.C., and so they all can practice for the coming Tampa AM amateur skateboarding contest in Florida. However, when Troy notices Derrick gaining more attention from sponsors and professional photographers while practicing the N.A.C., his jealousy takes over and forces the group to pack up and leave before Derrick can successfully land his trick. Thankfully, before leaving, Derrick has the chance to meet well-renowned skater Eric Jones (Ryan Sheckler), and attractive older sister Taylor (C.C. Sheffield), and learns Eric will be competing in the Tampa Am contest as well.

When Derrick returns home to a furious father and the boring school routine, the only thing Derrick can think about is finally landing the N.A.C., so he comes up with a plan: taking an angle grinder to the welded knobs on the university rail, and skate it all night. To do this, he enlists the help and trust of his friends to watch for cops as he cuts the knobs off. All goes according to plan, until cops eventually show up, and Troy, who saw them coming, deliberately fails to inform the rest of the group, resulting in Derrick and Mikey getting arrested. This causes the tension and anger between Derrick and his father to reach a critical point, resulting in thrown fists and Derrick running away with his friends to Florida to compete in the Tampa AM.

Arriving in Tampa, the gang immediately gets into various shenanigans; Derrick plays a game of S.K.A.T.E. with some other skateboarders there for the competition, Cash and Reese cause a fiery explosion in the parking lot of their motel, and after dropping off their stuff in their room, head to the Ybor City strip to party. However, this quickly goes awry after Cash and Troy get too drunk on shots and cause a fistfight that ends with Cash being taken to jail for the night. Finally Derrick has had enough of Troy's ego and calls him out on his faults in front of the group, prompting Troy to confess to letting the cops arrest Derrick and Mikey back at the rail. In a rage, Derrick abandons the group, just in time for Eric and Taylor to find him and allow him a place to stay in their motel room. After having a talk with Taylor, Derrick calls his father to let him know where he is and that he's okay, and his father wishes him luck in the competition.

The next day, Derrick arrives at the Tampa AM with Eric and Taylor, where Mikey, Reese, and a freshly-out-of-jail Cash happily meet up with him. During pre-competition practice though, Troy makes it abundantly clear that he and Derrick are enemies here, shoulder-checking Derrick and knocking him off his board. As the competition begins, Troy appears to be faring better than Derrick, landing all of his tricks with Derrick only landing three. However, because Derrick's tricks were harder and Troy played it easy with more basic tricks, Derrick leaves Troy behind as he qualifies first place for the finals. Troy is initially furious, but finally Cash steps up and puts him in his place, as well as a headlock. With the dust settled, all of Derrick's friends wish him luck on his final run.

With the support of his friends carrying him, Derrick advances to the finals with full confidence. His plan here is simple: to land the N.A.C. in his final run. As he approaches his end goal he is certain of his ability to do so, but even at the last moment, Derrick fails once again trying to land it. However, even though the clock has run out and it won't count for the competition, the judges and fellow competitors want to see Derrick try again. With all of the skateboarding world watching, Derrick finally lands the N.A.C., with plenty of footage from Mikey for his sponsorship video. Derrick is instantly landed a sponsorship on the spot, and after trading phone numbers with Taylor, he hops in Troy's van with the gang to ride back to Chicago in victory.

The novel opens with an article in The Times of India, which names Ghote as the officer to escort fraudster A. K. Bhattacharya from Calcutta to Mumbai. Bhattacharya made a fortune selling wax fakes of ancient Indian statues as the real thing. An American professor exposed him with a cigar lighter but Bhattacharya escaped. He has never been photographed and only his description is known.

On the train Ghote finds himself in a compartment with a well dressed, charming Bengali. Ghote is reluctant to talk about his mission and his travelling companion begins trying to guess Ghote's profession and reason for travel; his guesses are ridiculous, possibly even insulting. Eventually he guesses that Ghote is the Inspector escorting Bhattacharya to trial.

Ghote notes the initials on his companion's luggage are A. K. B. and suspects the man may, in fact, be A. K. Bhattacharya. The stranger reveals that he had read the newspaper article about Ghote and introduces himself as A. K. Bannerjee.

The next day Ghote and Bannerjee are joined in their compartment by a pair of young backpackers travelling with an Indian Guru. The boy, Red, is British and the girl, Mary Jane, is an American. They are hippies. Ghote argues their right to be in the compartment without tickets, but the train moves off and it is impossible for the trio to disembark. Although Red is antagonistic towards Ghote, Mary Jane charms the inspector.

The next morning a telegram informs Ghote the prisoner in Calcutta is actually A. K. Biswas, wanted in Mumbai for gambling offences, not Bhattacharya.

Bannerjee discovers Red has used J. R. Kipling's novel "Kim" as the source for much of his journey across India. Ghote persuades Red to take Mr Bannerjee's photograph. Bannerjee convinces Red to wait until the next day.

The next morning Bannerjee oversleeps, then claims his unshaven face is unsuitable for photography. All the film proves to be missing from the camera and the luggage. Bannerjee blames thieves at the last station. Red suspects Bannerjee but can prove nothing.

At the next stop a Mr Ramaswami joins them. He explains his job consists of visiting each station on the railway to see that railway stationary and forms are only used for official purposes. Bannerjee suggests that Ramaswami falsifies his returns to save travelling so much.

Shortly thereafter Bannerjee questions the ethics of Ghote condemning a person to jail. Ghote insists that would be the job of the magistrates and judges. Bannerjee seeks to enlist the guru as a moral ally in his cause. The guru is unhelpful, saying that a man lives his life regardless of his surroundings and brings to everyone's attention Mr Bannerjee's use of hair dye. Bannerjee claims he dyes his hair from simple vanity, though he jokingly calls it a disguise.

Mr Ramaswami notices the initials on Bannerjee's suitcase and accuses Bannerjee of being A. K. Bhattacharya but relents, as it seems too far-fetched.

At the last stop before Calcutta, Bannerjee persuades Ghote to get a shave from one of the local barbers. The barber Bannerjee selects speaks no language Ghote knows. The barber is deliberately very slow. The train pulls out and Ghote has to run and jump to get on board. Ghote accuses Bannerjee of engineering the incident so that Ghote would be left behind. In a dialect that the backpackers do not speak Bannerjee blames Red and Mary Jane, claiming that they feared Ghote would denounce them for not having visas.

The train approaches Calcutta and Bannerjee notes that he feels as if A. K. Bhattacharya were on the train with them. He praises Bhattacharya at length and suggests that he is akin to the hippies, Red and Mary Jane, in that he breaks down the barriers of society that have become too rigid. In so doing Bannerjee inadvertently incites those present to break the law, which gives Ghote the opportunity to arrest him. As the train draws up to the platform "Bannerjee" refers to Bhattacharya's scheme being exposed with a cigar lighter, which is not public knowledge. Ghote exposes and arrests Bhattacharya.

Ghote travels in a private carriage on the return journey. He has been ordered to get a confession from Bhattacharya, since the authorities wish to avoid the expense of a full trial. Ghote must also escort Mr Biswas, the card sharp, back to Mumbai for trial.

At the last minute, Red and Mary Jane board the carriage, claiming to be concerned for Bhattacharya's well-being. Bhattacharya states his intention to escape during the journey and claims he has accomplices who will help him. Ghote suspects the backpackers of being Bhattacharya's accomplices.

As night falls, Ghote works on getting Bhattacharya to confess. Mary Jane argues that Bhattacharya is a force for good in society, as he boasted on the outward journey. Mary Jane believes this should be his courtroom defence.

Ghote sees Mr Ramaswami at a station and invites him to join the party in the private carriage. Bhattacharya tries to frighten Mr Ramaswami by claiming to be friends with Thuggee cultists, who murder travellers. Ghote rebuffs this and indicates that Bhattacharya can expect a thirty-year prison sentence. The length of the sentence horrifies Ghote's travelling companions and Ghote goes to sleep resolving to use a sympathetic approach to draw Bhattacharya into a confession.

The next day Ghote suggests the charges could be reduced if Bhattacharya pleas guilty. Bhattacharya in turn offers Ghote a partnership in exchange for the charges being reduced to a single, minor item. Ghote rejects this.

At lunch Red abruptly insists on taking Ghote's photograph. The train enters a dark tunnel and no one can see anything. Ghote finds the meal bitter and unpleasant but has a second helping to please the cook and notices the second helping tastes different.

Ghote realises that he has been drugged. He forces himself to get up and vomit in the toilet, then collapses. Waking, he overhears Mary Jane arguing with Bhattacharya. He asks for tea, which Mary Jane helps him to drink. By the time the train reaches the next station Ghote is well again. He decides to take no action against Red, who he is sure is responsible for the poisoning, out of respect for Mary Jane.

At the next station an old lady, Mrs Chiplanka, insists in joining their carriage. She claims to be a respectable pillar of the community who once worked with Mahatma Gandhi to achieve independence from the British. Ghote notes her spectacles are fitted with ordinary window glass. He searches her luggage but finds nothing. Although Ghote suspects her of being Bhattacharya's accomplice, he can do nothing without evidence.

That afternoon Ghote makes little progress in obtaining a confession, so he decides to wear down Bhattacharya by depriving him of sleep. Mrs Chiplanka objects to this as it is a form of torture. Angered, Ghote accuses her of being Bhattacharya's accomplice.

Mrs Chiplanka, embarrassed, admits that she wears the glasses for show. Many years ago Gandhi told her to wear spectacles when he saw her leaning close to her work. Rather than correct the great man's mistake or worry him, Mrs Chiplanka began wearing false glasses much like his own.

After this, Ghote realises there never were any accomplices and Bhattacharya says he will plea guilty. He makes a full statement, which Ghote takes down.

Red seems disillusioned by Bhattacharya's confession. Mary Jane comforts Red, who agrees to go with her to the United States of America.

Bhattacharya signs the statement, which is witnessed by Ramaswami. Tired from the long night, Ghote accepts Ramaswami's offer to guard Bhattacharya while Ghote sleeps.

An hour later Ghote is woken. Bhattacharya has escaped. Ghote gives chase. The train is in motion and Ghote searches the other carriages then climbs onto the roof. He finds Bhattacharya in the driver's compartment and takes him into custody. Moments later the train arrives in Mumbai and the novel ends.

A sexual harassment complaint was made against Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) in the previous episode, and she must take a sexual harassment training as a result. In addition, she cannot return to work until she is done with her training. Liz, however, cannot handle life without work, as she needs the stress. Her attitude changes when she meets one of her neighbors, Emily (Elizabeth Marvel). She understands how Liz feels because she was just like Liz and tells her there are better ways to live. Liz hangs out with Emily and her friends (Mary Catherine Garrison, Kerry Butler, and Christina Gausas), who spend the majority of their time getting spa treatments and going shopping. Liz gets so caught up in their lifestyle that she forgets to watch her show, ''The Girlie Show with Tracy Jordan'' (''TGS''). Not wanting to come back to work—as she is intrigued by her new friends' lifestyle—Liz sexually harasses her counselor, Jeffrey Weinerslav (Todd Buonopane). She goes back to hanging out with Emily and her friends, but soon discovers that they are a Girl Fight Club, which disappoints Liz. In order for her to get out, Liz needs to fight them.

Meanwhile, Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) informs Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski) that her unlicensed Janis Joplin biopic is hard to sell due to test audiences not liking it. They decide to up the PR by going to the Kids Choice Awards where Jenna discovers that she is dead. She is accidentally put in the memorial montage at the show, which Jack decides to use as an advantage for the film. He tells her that all she has to do is stay out of the public eye until he sells the movie. At the same time, all employees from the 30 Rock building need to disclose any inter-office relationships. NBC page Kenneth Parcell (Jack McBrayer) discloses that he fantasizes about marrying a ''TGS'' dancer, named Daphne (Danielle Flora), but discovers that "Dot Com" Slattery (Kevin Brown) is dating her. A minor conflict ensues between them, but ends when Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) decides to mediate this. As a result, Tracy fires Daphne, but this backfires when the other dancers refuse to work. This prompts Tracy to solve this problem by hiring new dancers.

Jack tells ''TGS'' producer, Pete Hornberger (Scott Adsit), to do an on-air tribute of Jenna on the show. On the ''TGS'' set, a huge poster of Jenna is hung with her real birthday and death date. When Jenna sees that her real birth date is displayed, she comes out of hiding and appears on stage to cover the poster. After witnessing this, Liz confronts Jenna and Tracy for their behavior, but is glad to be back at work.

Manfred Link is the president of the United States. He and the usually tipsy First Lady have a 28-year-old, sex-starved daughter named Gloria. The president is surrounded by a number of eccentric staffers and allies, including Vice President Shockley, Ambassador Spender, Press Secretary Bunthorne and a presidential aide named Feebleman. He also is advised by General Dumpston, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The administration needs the support of the (fictional) African nation of Upper Gorm for an upcoming vote and must deal with Longo, that country's United Nations ambassador. Unfortunately, it can find only one American who knows how to speak the Upper Gormese language, a man named Alexander Grade. As best they can understand it, the ruler of Upper Gorm wants, in exchange, a number of Americans sent to his land so that his country, like the United States, can know what it's like to have an oppressed minority. Gloria is kidnapped and Americans are transported to Africa like slaves.

Bobby, the fourteen-year-old narrator, is a thief and a hooligan. When his mother moves him and his young brother to a cottage near Ennis in County Clare his only thought is how to get back to a life of crime in Dublin. Eventually he steals a Skoda car and goes back, only to find things have changed and he has no place there. He reluctantly returns to the cottage and is given work by a local farmer.

The cottage they are living in is on a path between two fairy forts. The family is warned by the farmer’s mother to put out a bowl of milk every night, but they consider this a mere superstition. Being deprived of the milk, a little old fairy woman comes through the dog flap into the kitchen. Dennis, Bobby's brother, sees and accepts her, but for Bobby it is a baffling and rather frightening mystery.

The friendless Willy Gardner operates a run-down hotel called the Winchester. While cleaning out rooms for check-out time, he comes across an abandoned, empty trunk in room 303. He makes an off-hand wish that he had a nickel for every piece of luggage someone left behind. He attempts to move it but it has become too heavy. Willy opens it again to find it filled with nickels. Further experimental wishes are also granted whenever he opens the trunk.

Willy uses the trunk to get a tuxedo and all the desired furnishings for his apartment. Willy has a party and invites all of his longtime guests, freely granting them bottles of champagne. He talks with a woman named Candy who spells out for him that she will be his girlfriend if he buys her things. He tells her he wants someone who will love him for himself rather than his possessions. Willy then realizes he feels the same way about having friends and tells his guests to take whichever of his possessions they want and leave him alone.

Three hoodlums Willy invited return after the party, demanding to know where the money he has been flaunting is hidden. Willy gets away and runs upstairs to the room with the trunk. He makes a wish and hides inside the trunk. The hoodlums search the trunk but cannot see or hear him, and run off when they hear police sirens. Willy attempts to leave the trunk but finds he is locked in and still cannot be heard.

Later, a woman moves into an apartment and finds the trunk there. She receives a phone call from her mother and they talk about her recently being dumped. The woman vents "You don't think I want to find a decent guy to spend my life with? I wish!" She opens the trunk and, to her delight, inside is Willy Gardner, who is now clean-cut and well-dressed.

The series concerns the adventures of three London teenagers: Kate (Pamela Franklin), Johnny Martin (Teddy Green) and Mark Dennison (David Griffin), who use their unique talents to solve crimes in their neighbourhood. Kate, the youngest of the three, possessed a photographic memory and was a talented artist; as well as a sketch artist, she most often trailed suspects. Johnny was a technology student and often built surveillance equipment and other inventive gadgets. Mark (David Griffin) was the "nerdy" bookworm of the group, arguably the most intelligent of the three, and was the photographer.

Kate works part-time as a waitress at a café. She is approached by several suspicious men who wish to rent her attic room. The men offer to pay her at first, but then intimidate her until she reluctantly agrees to rent them the room. She befriends Johnny Martin, a mechanic who works at a nearby garage, and photography student Mark Dennison. Kate remains suspicious of her new tenants. With the help of her new friends, she exposes a real estate agent who was using the camera obscura in the attic room to spy on local tenants and blackmail them.

In their second adventure ("Mark Of Distinction"), Mark stops a purse snatcher who inadvertently leads the three friends to uncover a plan to steal a valuable stamp collection. While vacationing on the southern coast of England, the three friends are drawn into a naval plot after Mark snaps an odd-looking photograph. In their last adventure they start a band. Performing at the opening night of the "Big A" nightclub, they find out that someone is planning to steal a picture from the club as part of an art fraud scheme.

Parish Priest to St. Timothy's Church Father Mark Cassidy is raising funds to open a children's wing at a local hospital. Maggie, his housekeeper and cook, is concerned over his not eating or getting enough sleep. Moreover, he is haunted by visions of a red station wagon caught in a crash with a woman named Kelly trapped inside. Father Mark was also in the car but was thrown clear during the collision.

At the parish, Father Mark is visited by Monsignor Perrault. Not only was he concerned about the funds for children's wing, but Perrault also knows about Father Mark's visions. He feels Father Mark needs a vacation but he says he cannot leave until the fundraiser has reached its goal. His other duties, including religious education, also keep him busy.

The children's wing is fully funded and dedicated to Father Mark. Perrault says Father Mark is now free to take a vacation, and has been ordered by the bishop to do so. Perrault tells Mark that he has put St. Timothy's and the community back on its feet and it will stand on its own. Father Mark is unsure of what to do now that his mission is accomplished.

That night at the church Father Mark confesses to God that he believes he could have saved Kelly and failed to act out of cowardice, and that he does not believe he can be forgiven and wants only release from his pain. The next day, from his office Mark once again sees the station wagon with Kelly in the front passenger seat. He goes outside, enters the vehicle with Kelly, and drives away. The accident occurs. At the funeral for Father Mark, Kelly appears in black and puts a rose on his coffin. She smiles and walks off.

Suze struggles to continue her mediator activity with the presence of Paul Slater, who is now giving her mediator lessons. When Paul finds a way to time travel, another gift all shifters share, he tells Suze that he plans on going back to Jesse's time to save him from his murder, thus altering time so that Suze and Jesse will never meet, and allowing Paul to have Suze to himself.

When Paul finally "shifts" and travels through the fourth dimension, Suze follows him back to Jesse's time, and they hide in a nearby barn. The next morning, Paul binds and gags her before going to find Felix Diego, Jesse's murderer. Just when she gives up and convinces herself that Jesse deserves to live, the living Jesse stumbles upon her in the barn and unties her. Suze tries to convince him that she is a mediator from the future and that he is in danger, telling him that Felix Diego is out to kill him and explaining how they met 150 years after his death. At first, he thinks she is delusional and is angered by her accusations about Maria and Diego, but is convinced when Suze mentions his dream of becoming a doctor, something he had never told anyone. He asks why she traveled back to save him and, unable to confess her love, she simply says that what happened to him wasn't right. When Paul returns, he attempts to convince Jesse that Diego is dangerous and he should escape, but Jesse insists that he will stop Diego, prompting Paul to lose interest. Jesse again asks Suze why she is helping him, and she responds that his is a "special" case.

Diego arrives, and he and Jesse begin to fight; he takes Suze hostage, threatening to kill her. When Jesse drops his weapon, Diego throws Suze aside and lunges at him; however, Jesse throws Diego off a ledge, snapping his neck. Suze lands on a lantern during her fall, breaking it and starting a fire, and becomes trapped. Jesse jumps through the flames to Suze, despite Paul's protests, and tells her that they have to jump to safety. Paul shifts back to the present, and when Suze and Jesse jump, she shifts as well - only to accidentally bring Jesse back to the present with her, causing him to slip into a coma.

While Jesse's body lies comatose in the hospital, Father D shows up, and Paul and Suze explain what happened. Father D tells a guilt-ridden Paul to make amends with his grandfather, and tells Suze not to be too hard on him. He reminds her that Jesse would have had to leave her one-day anyway since he was a ghost, and that saving him in the past would have been a better option. As Suze begins to cry, Jesse's ghost returns. She explains how she went back in time and successfully prevented his murder, but since she accidentally brought him into the present, he will die again. Just as he leans in to give her a final kiss, his hand brushes his body's leg, and he begins to glow, before being sucked into the body and disappearing. Believing Jesse to be gone forever, Suze begins to weep. Father D begins to comfort her, when Jesse suddenly awakes from his coma, his body and soul having been reunited.

In the final chapter, Jesse, now alive and human in the 21st century, takes Suze to her winter formal. She reconciles with Paul, and Jesse and Suze share a dance. When Suze catches a glimpse of her father's ghost, she excuses herself from Jesse; he tells her to 'be good' before passing on to his afterlife. When Jesse comes and asks if he is gone, she realizes that he is now also a mediator, and they embrace.

Beginning in Universal Century 0085, Asuna Elmarit is a student from École du Ciel, a military school for training future MS pilots. Unexpected events occur, exposing Asuna and her classmates to the reality that is war. Along the way, the school council's real intentions are revealed.

In Paris in the early 1930s, American Michael Trevor poses as a novelist but is actually a former newspaper man who took the blame for some scam in the United States and had to flee the country. Embittered, he now prints a weekly scandal sheet and blackmails expatriates to keep their names out of his rag. While extorting $2000 from the wealthy Harry Taylor (a scam done so smoothly that Harry thinks Michael has done him a big favor), Michael meets Harry's niece, Mary Kendall, and the two feel an instant mutual attraction. Mary has a boyfriend, Frank Reynolds, but she is not passionate about him. Michael's partners in crime are Irene Hoffa and Fred. Irene is a former flame who is still not over Michael. She needs money to keep her brother out of prison and proposes that they extort more money from Harry by embroiling Mary in a scandal. Michael resists - he has a rule never to target women - but then reluctantly agrees.

While Frank is away on business, Michael spends time with Mary and they fall in love. She tries to end it in a letter to Frank, but is unable to finish it. Michael tells Irene that he is done being a criminal because he is in love with Mary, which causes Irene to become jealous. She threatens to tell Mary all about who he really is so Michael decides to tell Mary himself. Mary says that it is all in the past; they love each other and nothing else matters.

Michael tells Irene that he and Mary are going to be married and that she now knows the truth about him and loves him nonetheless. Irene says that someday his past will come out, and Mary will then be the wife of a known criminal. These words weigh on Michael and he realizes that, for Mary's sake, he cannot marry her.

Michael tells Harry that he was behind the earlier scam and demands a further $10,000 or he will print a piece about his planned wedding to Mary. Harry is angry and Mary is hurt and confused, but Michael is determined to go ahead with his scheme. Harry pays him off with a check, which Mary herself hands to him with a slap across his face. After seeing how much Michael cares for Mary, Irene decides to instead get the money needed for her brother by selling her jewelry. She also tells the police that Michael is behind the scandal sheet; they give him 24 hours to leave France. Mary and Frank sail back to Pittsburgh, a conspicuous engagement ring on her hand. Michael heads to Cape Town, and agrees to let Irene come along. Aboard ship, he tears up the $10,000 check.

The play, which begins in Rome, starts out in an atmosphere of peace and happiness. The Roman Horatii family is united to the Alban Curatii family. The young Horace is married to Sabine, a young Alban woman whose brother, Curiace, is engaged to Camille, the sister of Horace.

But the fratricidal war which breaks out between the two cities destroys this harmony. To finish it, each city designates three champions to fight in single combat to determine who will win. Contrary to expectations, fate chooses the three Horatii brothers for Rome and the three Curiatii brothers for Alba Longa. Horace, astonished, did not expect such a great honor. The friends once again find themselves face to face, with their consciences resolved for different reasons. While Horace is motivated by his patriotic duty, Curiace laments his cruel fate.

The people are likewise moved to see these six young men, nevertheless closely knit, fighting for the good of their country. However, their fate has been decided. During combat, two Horatii are quickly killed, and the last, the hero of the play, must then confront the three injured Curiatii alone. Filled with cunning and bravery, he first pretends to flee to avoid facing them all together. Then, when he attacks, he kills them one by one and thus achieves victory.

After having received the congratulations of all of Rome, Horace kills his sister, who blames him for the murder of her beloved. The trial which follows includes a scene of a rousing plea from the father Horatius, who defends honor (a value very dear to Corneille), and thus Horace, against the romanticism represented by Camille. Horace is acquitted despite the indictment of Valère, a Roman gentleman who was also in love with Camille, much like Curiace.

Major Howell Brady (Jeff Chandler), a cavalry officer, is sent from Washington, D.C. to Fort Clark, Texas, to subdue a Kiowa uprising that has been raiding both white settlements and villages on Seminole reservations. Brady requests that the post commander Colonel Meade (John McIntire) send his troops out in fast moving small units to engage the Kiowa but the Colonel fears his men would be slaughtered in piecemeal actions and only feels the Kiowa are impressed by large numbers of troops.

Together with his two sergeants, Brady enlists the help of the Seminole chief, Maygro (Henry Brandon), by giving him $500 and promising his people food and land. The three of them arm 25 Seminoles with state of the art Henry repeating rifles and train them as counter guerrillas; luring the Kiowa in then ambushing them. Col. Meade and his officers resent Brady's interference and mistrust the Seminoles.

At Fort Clark, Brady meets and falls in love with Elaine Corwin (Maureen O'Hara), the widow of a cavalry officer. However, when "Brady's Bunch" of Seminoles successfully repel a Kiowa attack, Brady spots a white man with the Kiowa. Although he does not get a good look at him, he recovers his sabre. The engraved sabre turns out to belong to Captain R. G. Corwin, the supposedly deceased husband of Elaine. The Seminoles confirm Corwin is still alive through torturing a Kiowa prisoner.

Meanwhile, Meade fails to deliver promised food to the Seminole so Maygro leads his people from the fort. Brady steals the food from the fort and delivers it himself to Maygro, for which Meade jails Brady. Brady is freed by Elaine and some of the Seminoles.

Brady discovers the Kiowa are preparing to attack the fort that is defended by only 20 men due to Meade's forces being away pursuing the elusive Kiowa. He returns to warn Meade, but he ignores him. He is about to throw Brady back in jail when a cavalry patrol returns with the same news that the Kiowa are preparing to attack. A fierce battle ensues and the Kiowa are defeated. Amongst the dead is the traitor R. G. Corwin, whom it turns out has been collaborating with a group of Mexicans to incite war.

The Auteur is rehearsing a production of the ancient Greek tragedy ''Medea'', for the "Euripides festival". He has set the play as a serious commentary on contemporary gay issues.

Things start to go wrong when Paul (playing Jason, the hero of ''Medea''), who has not been attracted to women since kindergarten, falls in love with leading lady Elsa (playing Medea, Jason's lover), a straight feminist. The two, disappointed with what they consider a sexist portrayal of Medea as a muse and victim of Jason's ambitions in both the original and the Auteur's retelling, conspire to rewrite the play to promote a feminist agenda. This upsets the Auteur, who is hostile to feminism, and "grosses out" the rest of the cast, each of whom has their own reason for resenting the pair's unlikely off-stage relationship.

On opening night the play falls completely apart, as the cast members revolt against the Auteur's direction. A theater critic from ''Time Magazine'' gives the play a glowing review, believing that the chaos was intentional. However, the audience of the play (as attributed by the actors to the real-life theater audience), knows that the play is a failure, both in performance and in its failure to present a coherent commentary on gay issues.

In 1220, Sir Guy of Devon (David Farrar) and a small band of English crusaders arrive at Samarkand in Central Asia. The city and its ruling princess Shalimar (Ann Blyth) are threatened by Genghis Khan (Marvin Miller) and his hordes. Shalimar hopes to defeat the conqueror by guile, whilst Sir Guy prefers to put up a brave (if ultimately futile) fight. Despite the mutual attraction between Shalimar and Sir Guy, their differing methods threaten any hope either may have of victory.

The switchboard operator Anna Mirelle (Frances Drake) in an apartment building falls in love with businessman Julian De Lussac (Cary Grant), who lives in the building, whom she has gotten to know only over the phone. When she discovers that the man's current girlfriend Marguerite (Rosita Moreno) is actually part of a scheme to swindle him out of an option of a nitrate mine concession in Chile he bought, she devises a plot to save him and expose the con artist, Marguerite's husband Ramon Cintos (Rafael Corio).

De Lussac's friend Paul Vernet (Edward Everett Horton), who is in love with millionaire's daughter Susie Flamberg (Nydia Westman), has to face a great jealous rage, as Susie has fallen in love with De Lussac and has brought in her father to force him into marrying her. He will come out of it by giving Vernet a lesson on how he should act with Susie to impress her. De Lussac gets rid of Marguerite and ends up with Anna.

Ace Corbin (Cary Grant) a charming Chicago gangster is acquitted of murder charges, which was framed by Pete Manning (Jack La Rue) decides to reform and begin a new life in California. On the train, he falls in love with Eleanor La Velle (Benita Hume) a gambler's girlfriend. They both conceal their true identities and have adopted new aliases. In Southern California, Eleanor discovers that her lover, Joe Burke owner of the Casino Del Mar steamer, which operates legally outside the three-mile limit from the harbor is in debt for $9,000. Because Pete Manning's thugs are ruining his business.

Eleanor chooses to remain loyal and help Joe with his business, rather than desert and leave him for Ace. Joe and his right-hand man Blooey (Roscoe Karns) offer to turn over the casino to Ace, so he can improve the business and seek vengeance on Manning. Ace resists becoming involved until Manning's men threaten him. When Ace runs the casino he thwarts Manning's customers by commandeering the water taxis over to his steamship instead. The first evening, Ace encounters Eleanor on board the ship and she discovers his true identity. Eleanor who is still in love with Ace remains on the ship, even after Manning's men cause an explosion and fire on board.

When the customers have left the ship safely and the fire is out, Ace and Eleanor remains on board for the night. In the morning, the district attorney questions them both and Ace discovers Eleanor's real identity, including her relationship with Joe. Also in attendance is Joe, who likewise discovers Ace and Eleanor's relationship. Back aboard the casino steamship, during a storm Joe and Ace accuse Eleanor of being a two-timer and lying to them both. Meanwhile, Manning and his man sneak on board the ship and kills Joe. Blooey releases the anchor and the crashing waves wash Manning and his man off the deck. Ace, Blooey, and Eleanor jump to safety with life preservers. later, on a train Ace and Eleanor are married.

Derek Thompson is a minor league ice hockey player, nicknamed the "Tooth Fairy" for his habit of knocking opposing players' teeth out. One night, Derek steals a dollar from his girlfriend Carly's six-year-old daughter Tess that had been left for her lost tooth, and tells her that the tooth fairy doesn't exist. He receives a magical invitation under his pillow, which causes him to grow wings and transports him to the realm of tooth fairies. He meets his caseworker, Tracy, and the head fairy, Lily. He has an adversarial relationship with them. Lily tells Derek that he is a "dream crusher," due to his unsympathetic dealings with children like Tess. He is sentenced to serve two weeks as a tooth fairy. Later, he meets Jerry, who gives him his tooth fairy supplies, which include "Shrinking Paste," "Invisible Spray," and "Amnesia Dust."

Carly's 14-year-old son, Randy, dislikes Derek. Randy wants to grow up to be a heavy metal star. When Derek defends Randy against a bully, he begins to win Randy over, and Derek begins teaching Randy to play his electric guitar better so he can win a talent show.

Derek visits several children and tries his best to be a good tooth fairy, but ends up causing more harm than good. Lily says that he is the worst tooth fairy ever and denies Derek any more supplies from Jerry for the remainder of his sentence, criticizing his lack of faith in children. Afterward, he is approached by a fairy named Ziggy who provides him black market supplies. Later that night, the items malfunction and Derek is seen by a child's mother and arrested. While behind bars, Tracy tells Derek that Lily extended his duty to three weeks. However, he offers to give Derek proper supplies if he will start acting like a tooth fairy. Carly bails Derek out.

Derek works on improving his tooth fairy skills and bonding with Tracy and Randy, but when Derek can't score a goal at a hockey game, he takes his frustration out on Randy, telling him that he will never become a rock star. With his dreams crushed, Randy tearfully smashes his guitar and a disappointed Carly breaks up with Derek, telling him his biggest flaws are his inability to be optimistic and that he can't say "what if".

Later, Tracy comes to Derek's house, much to Derek's annoyance. He announces that he is a tooth fairy-in-training, but that Derek's dream crushing reputation hurts himself more than others as Derek orders him to get out of the house. At the next hockey game, Derek gets back on the ice and sees Tracy. Tracy wants to teach Derek the importance of dreams, encouraging Derek to score a goal and go get Tess' tooth. With a renewed spirit, Derek scores the goal, gets into his tooth fairy costume, and flies away, while Tracy spreads Amnesia Dust on the audience to cover up the event.

At Carly's, Tess sees Derek taking her tooth, but she promises to keep it a secret. Derek apologizes to Randy and encourages him to keep pursuing his dreams, using his magic wand to grant Randy a new guitar. Downstairs, Carly sees Derek as a tooth fairy, but assumes that he rented a costume for Tess' sake, causing her to forgive him. Derek flies Randy to the talent show throwing Amnesia Dust on him when they arrive.

Derek heads back to the fairy realm to give Lily the tooth, and is told that because of this job, as well as for reaffirming Tess' belief, he has been relieved of his fairy duties. Lily explains that he will never see the tooth fairies again and will have Amnesia Dust thrown on him. Before departing, Derek says a friendly goodbye to Tracy. Lily throws Amnesia Dust on Derek and transports him back to the talent show. There, Randy outperforms everyone and ends up forming a band. Derek proposes to Carly, and she accepts.

Ultimately, Derek is seen playing left wing for the Los Angeles Kings, and when he sees Lily and Jerry in the crowd, he doesn't recognize them. Jerry secretly helps him score a goal.

Living on City Island, in the Bronx, Vince Rizzo, a prison guard, is the father of a dysfunctional family whose members all have secrets. Vince discovers that his secret illegitimate son is now the 24-year-old prison inmate Tony Nardella who is being held in the same prison where he works. Without revealing this truth to his family, Vince consequently gets Tony out of prison and employs him as hired help at his own home in order to become closer with his unknowing son. Vince has also been secretly taking acting lessons, taught by Michael Malakov, and begins to form a platonic bond with Molly, an aspiring actress.

Meanwhile, Vince's 20-year-old daughter Vivian (played by the real-life daughter of her on-screen father) has not told her family that she has been suspended from college, lost her scholarship, gotten breast implants, and become a stripper to try to pay for her next semester; their youngest teenage child, Vinnie, has a secret sexual fetish for feeding large women, and fantasizes about their fat next-door neighbor; and Vince's wife, Joyce, thinking she has lost all marital intimacy, sexually pursues Tony without realizing that he is her stepson.

Vince successfully auditions for a part in a Martin Scorsese film, while his wife and Tony seek each other's sexual attention. Vince, Jr. befriends the neighbor, who helps to bring him closer to an overweight girl whom he has been attracted to at school.

Tensions rise as the family's many dysfunctions come to a head. Tony, finally deciding to escape the insanity of the Rizzo household, steals their car but finds Vivian working at the strip club. Just before the group is nearly torn apart in a violent outburst, Vince reveals the truth about everything, with Tony discovering in amazement that the dysfunctional family he sought to escape is actually his own. Vivian and the others admit their faults and Vince acknowledges the family's problems with the desire to work them out. The finally relieved group reunites in forgiveness toward one another, welcoming the overwhelmed Tony as a new member of their bizarre but loving family. Vince lands the film role.

Like the play, the film is divided into three acts, all set in Suite 719 of New York City's Plaza Hotel. The first focuses on not-so-blissfully wedded couple Sam and Karen Nash, who are revisiting their honeymoon suite in an attempt - by Karen - to bring the love back into their marriage. Her plan backfires and the two become embroiled in a heated argument about whether Sam is having an affair with his secretary, Miss McCormack. Sam eventually walks out, allegedly to attend to urgent business, and Karen is left to reflect on how much things have changed since they were newlyweds.

The second act involves a meeting between Hollywood movie producer Jesse Kiplinger and his old flame, suburban housewife Muriel Tate. Muriel - aware of his reputation as a smooth-talking ladies' man - has come to the hotel for nothing more than a chat between old friends, promising herself she will not stay too long. Jesse, however, has other plans in mind and repeatedly attempts to seduce her.

The third act revolves around married couple Roy and Norma Hubley on the wedding day of their daughter Mimsey, who has locked herself in the suite's bathroom and stubbornly refuses to come out. The segment is filled with increasingly outrageous slapstick moments depicting her parents' frantic attempts to cajole her into attending her wedding while the gathered guests await the trio's arrival downstairs.

In a rough area in Los Angeles, an aspiring poet has spent six months without leaving his apartment because of his obsessive delusions concerning cruel doctors, rappers, and spiders. Meanwhile, a woman who appears to curse things by wanting to help is dumped by her boyfriend and finds herself flat broke on the streets of LA. Soon she runs into a local gang. Due to a telephone glitch, our hero calls her at a phone booth trying to dial a "talk line" and invites her to his place. There they are forced to aid each other in overcoming their particular problems.

The movie starts with the Ingalls family leaving their little house in the Big Woods and starting for West. After long and adventurous journey they stop in the Indian Country. Charles builds a house, starts farming, they have Indians visit them and for the first time meet Mr. Edwards. After a year, they are visited by the soldiers and learn they have to leave. After having packed everything, they set off on a new journey.

In 1860, Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill Hickok join forces to establish a mail route from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California. On the way, they battle the weather, hostile Indians and California secessionists intent on shutting the operation down to encourage California to secede from the Union.

Emotionally uprooted after the recent death of her husband, Esther Kern (Diane Hruska) is trying to return to normal life after completing her ''shiva''—a weeklong period of family mourning mandated in the Jewish religion. Mrs. Kern's children—a successful ophthalmologist and the wife of a busy businessman—have long since moved away to start families of their own, setting aside the traditions of the Jewish faith which she so cherishes for the concerns of daily life.

Tentatively embarking upon her reentry into the world, Mrs. Kern is visited by a cable repairman (Scott Bate), who has come to her house to fix a problem with her reception. Deprived of her lifetime role as both wife and mother, she tries to forge an emotional connection with this stranger—telling stories about her family and bringing him cake and coffee—all in an effort to fill the void left by her recent loss. But unsure of what to make of this unexpected situation, the repairman is at once taken aback and drawn in by the residue of the tragedy that lingers in the home.[http://www.shortfilmtexas.com/2009/austin-texas-writer-director-craig-whitney-talks-about-his-short-film-harvest-home-and-his-journey-to-the-cannes-film-festival/ "Austin, Texas Writer / Director Craig Whitney Talks About His Short Film “Harvest Home” and His Journey To the Cannes Film Festival"]. Shortfilmtexas.com. Retrieved on 2009-07-20.

An old psychic woman enters a hospital in Osaka and asks surgeon Dr. Ukyo Rettsu to remove a large cancer growth that is killing her. Dr. Rettsu discovers that the cancer is in fact a demon messenger, heralding that a prophesied demonic invasion from 5,000 years ago is coming soon, which tells the surgeon that he is, in fact, the man prophesied to halt the it. Although the old woman dies, her glowing spirit imbues Dr. Rettsu with powers including superhuman toughness, strength and speed. In order to stop the invasion as predicted, Rettsu and his lover Fuyuko Asahina start investigating Japan's past, which leads to an ancient temple where Rettsu has to kill a giant demon.

They next go to Kyoto University to consult Rettsu's old friend Dr. Takase, who redirects them to the old ruins of the Jomon period under suspicions the ancient demon civilization might have been located there. In another expedition with Asahina, Rettsu explores the place and finds a portal that takes him back five millennia into history, meeting in the process five nun spirits known as the Five Goddesses who promise to help him. In the Jomon period, Rettsu allies with human natives and protects them from the demons, and ultimately infiltrates the demon civilization in its underground realm, finding out that they intend to travel forward to the future and exterminate humans to save their own race from extinction at their hands. Before most of them can cross a portal opened by their unseen demon queen, Rettsu destroys them with their own explosives and finishes the job back in the present.

After reuniting with Asahina, Rettsu plans to marry her, but is warned by the Five Goddesses that the demon race is not extinct yet, as the queen is still alive. Taking Rettsu to a secret catacomb, Asahina then reveals that she is the demon queen herself, who assumed human form after the destruction of her civilization. Through history she seduced men to spawn demons and send them back in an attempt to rebuild her race, but they were constantly killed by the Five Goddesses, and now she asks Rettsu to die with her, as she had fallen in love with him. Hearing his rejection, the queen attacks and dominates Rettsu, but he is saved by the goddesses, who help him defeat her. Asahina dies proclaiming her love for him, after which Rettsu returns to his life, with the curse finally destroyed.

A failed playwright, Henry Harrison, develops an odd mentor relationship with Louis Ives, a troubled, cross-dressing, aspiring writer to whom Henry sublets a room in his New York apartment. Henry teaches Louis the art of being an "extra man", accompanying and entertaining wealthy older women in their fanciful social lives. Along the way, Louis encounters an environmentally conscious co-worker, Mary Powell, and a jealous, eccentric neighbor, Gershon.

In 1915 Vahan Kenderian is living a life of privilege as the youngest son of a wealthy Armenian family in Turkey. This secure world is shattered when some family members are whisked away while others are murdered before his eyes.

Vahan loses his home and family, and is forced to live a life he would never have dreamed of in order to survive. Somehow Vahan’s incredible strength and spirit help him endure, even knowing that each day could be his last.

For the past year, photographer Shawn Burnett (Andrew Bowen) and his wife Helen (Maxine Bahns) have been grieving the loss of their first child, which died in Helen's womb before it could be carried to term. They're hoping that a move to the country will help them both heal and move on with their lives. Shawn is somewhat irritated that the move involves him taking charity from Helen's brother Frank Higgins (John Schneider), but he's willing to do whatever he can if it will give Helen solace. Frank promises that he will build the two of them a brand new house, but until the construction is done they must stay in an older house with a decrepit cabin in the backyard. Shortly after they move in, Helen becomes pregnant again.

Shawn is fascinated when he discovers via some neighbors that the cabin is reported to be haunted by the ghost of a witch that curses anyone trying to get pregnant, seeking revenge against a husband who murdered her own child years ago. While investigating the legend, Shawn injures himself on a tooth left in the cabin and develops a severe infection. As the infection worsens Shawn begins to experience strange visions and events, unsure if they are real or delusions triggered by the infection and a possible latent mental illness, as his own father murdered his wife and then killed himself. This worries Shawn as either way this poses a potential threat to Helen, either by the witch's hand or by Shawn's possible mental illness, and he decides that he will get Helen out of that place. This puts him at odds with Frank, who believes the land to be completely safe.

As things grow more strange and Shawn becomes more unstable, things culminate in a chase scene that ends with Shawn firing a gun at his wife. Authorities are called to the scene and Shawn tries to explain the story of the witch, only to be told that there is no witch and that the neighbors (who had told him the story) never existed. He's then taken to a mental institution, leaving Helen to live in the house by herself. The film ends with Helen listening to a phone message from Shawn and then turning to the camera with a malevolent look, leaving it up to the viewer to decide if the events in the film are the result of Shawn's psychosis or if there actually is a witch and that she has possessed Helen at some point during the movie.

One night at a party, three teenagers start a friendship that becomes the most important of their lives. As they grow closer to each other, we begin to see the root of each of their hurts. Stevie's father refuses to deal with the suicide of Stevie's mother and ignores Stevie's need to deal with it. Darla is forced to deal with surviving on her own after her mother abandons them and her sister commits suicide. Boy's heroin addicted father tries to force Boy into procuring his drugs at any cost. These ever-escalating problems push Stevie, Darla and Boy into a darker corner than they've ever been. They decide to fight their way out together.

Dr. Jeremy Sinclair, a psychiatrist at a mental hospital, is referred to an elderly bachelor named Edgar Witherspoon. Witherspoon spends all his time frantically scavenging for assorted items such as baby bottles and doll heads, rooting through garbage and even stealing to acquire them. Witherspoon has holed up in his apartment, refusing to let anyone else inside. Sinclair visits his apartment. Witherspoon is irritable, ill-mannered, and shows obvious signs of manic obsession, but also appears harmless. His niece insists that he is becoming a danger to himself and others, and implores Sinclair to examine him more closely.

On his second visit, Sinclair uses threats to get Witherspoon to let him inside. The apartment is dominated by a gigantic, haphazardly designed contraption made up of numerous clocks and odds and ends. Witherspoon recounts how after he retired from his job as an engineer, he found his life had become purposeless. At the peak of depression, he began hearing a voice which instructs him on the items which need to be added to the contraption. He compares the world to a clock that needs small adjustments in order to continue; adding items keeps the world from falling apart. Recognizing a textbook case of a person trying to fill a void of purpose in their life, Sinclair has Witherspoon taken in for observation. Witherspoon struggles, claiming that he cannot leave his machine alone. Sinclair accidentally dislodges a few paper clips from the device. As mental hospital affiliates lead Witherspoon away, he shouts that the island Tattua has ceased to exist because of the disruption, and tells Sinclair to check the time: it is 3:17.

Back in his office, Sinclair hears a news bulletin announcing that Tattua was destroyed by a tsunami at 3:17. Sinclair runs out and orders Witherspoon's release. Sinclair stops the landlady from dismantling the machine, claiming that he needs to observe it to better understand Witherspoon's delusions. The landlady is reluctant to let it stand, so Sinclair offers to rent the apartment himself.

Witherspoon returns, and says that the voice has suggested he move to Miami to retire. Sinclair protests that the machine cannot be abandoned again—it already needs adjustments, which he himself makes by adding water to a set of scales. Witherspoon smiles and says that his time protecting the planet has ended, and the mantle has passed to Sinclair. He leaves, and Sinclair responds to a voice only he can hear: a tambourine needs to be added to the device immediately.

Part I (Issue #26)

The arc picks up following from the story of "Predators and Prey", with Slayers on the run in the new pro-vampire society. The issue begins with Willow transporting Buffy to their new base, using heavy amounts of magic; a glamour makes the base invisible, and makes Buffy and Willow appear like a fish and a seagull, while layers of magical force fields and protections surround the base. At the base, flushed out from their regular bases, are Slayers from around the world such as Satsu and Kennedy. Meanwhile, Faith and Giles are forced from their underground bunker in Berlin by demonic assault, and vow to make their way to Buffy and co. Similarly, Andrew and his Slayers are hiding out underground when they encounter Warren, who attempts to distract Andrew while Amy has summoned goatmen demons. They too, vow to escape to Buffy's base.

At the headquarters, Buffy allows her friends entry and is tearfully reunited with Giles. The base soon comes under heavy attack from the local demon population, and the group is forced onto the roof to repel their advances. Magical barriers fall to the demons and their use of conventional modern warfare. There are heavy casualties as Slayers fall to demon attack. Slayers who are also witches become overwhelmed by the pressure of supporting the magical barrier, and at least one has her brain fried by the struggle. After interrogating a demon that Satsu has captured, Willow informs Buffy that their heavy use of magic revealed their location to Twilight. The entire Slayer army is forced to retreat via the submarine Satsu commandeered in "Swell". On board, Giles expresses his concerns to Buffy about Willow's extremely heavy use of magic; Buffy admits her concerns and relates her altercation with an evil Willow in the future ("Time of Your Life"). Buffy realises that Willow going on a magic ban however would not be sufficient, as every Slayer is magical by nature, but remembers that she knows someone who learnt how to suppress magic. Buffy has Willow do one last spell, and the submarine appears in the hills of Tibet. Oz looks on, and simply says "Huh."

Part II (Issue #27)

At Twilight's headquarters, Amy's spell erroneously indicates that Buffy and her friends all drowned when their submarine was sunk. One of Twilight's workers says that Willow's teleportation spell sent them to Mongolia but Riley tries to persuade Twilight that it is probably a mistake of the scanning technology. Riley, Amy and Warren are intrigued when Twilight lets slip that he "knows" Buffy. Twilight has them teleport to Mongolia along with some soldiers, but upon arrival there and not finding the Slayers there, he opts to bide his time until they slip up and make their location apparent.

Meanwhile, Oz introduces his partner Bayarmaa and their son Kelden and explains how through communing with nature and not "caging" the wolf within they are able to overcome their lycanthropy by having the Earth "absorb" the demon on the night of a full moon. However, he relates that some werewolves have formed a splinter group with an ideology similar to that of Veruca; werewolves like Oz and Bay now carry knives for protection. While he is unsure how their methods will work for witches and Slayers, he offers to help despite the risk to his family Buffy has brought with her. As a first order, the Slayers have been recommended physical exertion and are asked to start burying the submarine.

Part III (Issue #28)

Andrew knocks on Giles' door to announce he suspects there is a spy in their midst, and that anyone is a possibility. Rather than arouse suspicion, Andrew uses a camcorder to secretly interview Oz's family and the Slayer organization in a callback to the Season Seven episode "Storyteller" (2003). This acts as a framing device to shift between several plot threads and sets of characters.

In his documentary, he hears more from Bay about how "redirecting" magic works and learns that some Slayers have been acquiring high-tech weapons in lieu of their magical strength; he hears from "malcontents" Willow, Satsu and Kennedy regarding their displeasure with Buffy's tactics; he overhears Buffy and Faith reconnecting, while Buffy confesses her desire to "not to stand over people anymore". Dawn and Xander talk about the chance to have a life and to "go for what [he] want[s]." Buffy and Xander share a tender moment where they discuss Buffy's feelings of contentedness and connectedness in their new situation, her increased ability to feel, and Buffy killing Dark Willow in the future; Xander convinces Buffy to tell Willow and then to come see him afterwards. On the discovery of Future Dark Willow, Andrew confronts Giles about the possibility of Willow becoming compromised; Giles accepts Andrew's concerns, and instructs him to follow her. Andrew surveys as Willow and Oz disagree about her possibilities for a normal life, and she expresses her resentment of him for settling down and denying his nature, although she is touched that he trusts her with Kelden. Buffy finds Willow with Kelden, where she is feeling optimistic about her chances for a family of her own one day, and is unfazed by Buffy's confession of having killed the future her because she feels that particular future is not set in stone. When she hears Buffy is going to see Xander, Willow reminds Buffy that he is "a good guy" and that even Buffy can have a future. After changing her clothes, Buffy wanders into Xander's room but is stopped "still as a grave" when she sees him kissing Dawn. She orders Andrew to shut off the camera, ending the film.

Andrew makes a confession of his own to the Slayers and to Willow, that he had suspected a spy amongst them but was wrong. The cat on Leah's lap (which had appeared in most scenes from Andrew's documentary) suddenly teleports away and Xander deduces it must have been Amy spying on them, from which Willow surmises Twilight has found them. Buffy faces away from Xander and Dawn and declares they're about to come under attack.

Part IV (Issue #29)

Buffy and her companions begin preparations for the imminent military assault by Twilight's forces. Xander and Dawn give the Slayers a crash course in the use of firearms, grenades, mines, and radar. Willow is distraught, no longer able to hide her despair over having sacrificed her powers, and at the fact that she is apparently destined to become evil in the future and be killed by Buffy. Buffy herself declines to use a gun, and tells Giles that she has an idea... to create special visual effects that may deceive Twilight's forces into thinking the Slayers and Wiccans still have their powers. Buffy is distracted by the ongoing signs of romantic affection between Xander and Dawn, but is able to keep her mind on the more pressing matters of defense. The first sign of Twilight's attack is the appearance of a military aircraft, which is shot down by the Slayers using shoulder-mounted missiles. This is quickly followed by an incoming tank assault. Monroe, the leader of the renegade werewolves Oz and his companions have been battling, arrives and unexpectedly offers help to Buffy and her group, stating that he opposes Twilight's agenda of eliminating magic from the world.

The battle begins, and the Slayers quickly make a move by sending a torpedo, salvaged from the submarine, into the midst of the enemy tanks, destroying many of them. Buffy realizes, however, that they have no chance of winning the battle without supernatural help. Oz appears from the battlefield carrying Bay, who has been injured. Buffy urgently asks Bay what happened to the magical powers that the Slayers and Wiccans surrendered. Bay responds that the three "Wrathful Goddesses" of Tibet, Remati, Vajrayogini and Ekajati took their powers in return for their protection. She says that, with the use of a group of magical scrolls, the goddesses can be summoned through anger. Buffy and Willow perform the required ritual, causing the earth to crack open and the three giant goddesses to appear.

Part V (Issue #30)

The three goddesses appear and start to wreak havoc. Buffy uses this momentary distraction to flip over a jeep to go retrieve something from the middle of the battlefield. However, it soon becomes apparent that the goddesses are indiscriminately killing, despite being summoned by Buffy and her army. Bay says that the goddesses have been away from humanity too long, and no longer recognize the people they are supposed to protect. The Slayer army retreats back to the temple.

Twilight's military commander wants to withdraw his men to save them from the slaughter, but Twilight orders them to fight on.

Buffy retrieves a badly injured Riley from the battlefield, who has apparently been working undercover for her all along. Riley is unable to give Buffy a way out, and they realise that they are fighting a lost battle. Buffy gathers the remaining troops and instructs them to collect all the injured into the temple, including the soldiers of Twilight. On their way to collect the injured, Satsu pushes Buffy out of the way of a sniper's bullet, but Buffy is then picked up by the blue Goddess, Remati, who looks her in the eye, then drops her to the ground from what should be a deadly height.

Five hours later, Twilight's army has the Slayers at gun point. Buffy wakes up where she was dropped, partially covered in snow, and sees the survivors of her defeated army being ushered into some transport vehicles. She closes her eyes to clear her mind, and when she opens them again she finds herself floating a long way above the ground. Somehow, Buffy has acquired the ability to fly.

Widower Roger Leeds lives in an assisted living residence but refuses to interact with the other tenants. He is tormented by the loss of his wife and by a recurring nightmare in which a woman begs him to prevent something from coming through a door. Roger's friend Frank, a retired psychiatrist, tries to get him to open up and socialize more, with little success.

A woman named Laurel Kincaid moves in. Roger recognizes her as the woman in his nightmares, but Frank tells him she has been catatonic since her husband died ten years ago. Frank finds a restless Roger one night, and they reminisce about Roger's wife for the first time. It brings Roger to tears. After going up to bed, Roger has the nightmare. While he is struggling to get away from Laurel, she shoves him into a lit candle. He wakes up with a burn mark.

Roger confronts Laurel about the nightmares, but she is unresponsive. He talks about how much pain his wife was in when she died. Roger tells Laurel that he cannot protect her from whatever is behind the door because he could not save his own wife. That night, he has the nightmare but this time tries to keep the door closed. He abruptly intuits that Laurel is not keeping something out, but keeping something trapped in, so Roger busts the door open. Laurel's dead husband comes in and tells her she must accept his death. He says that it was he who was calling for him, not Laurel. Roger asks why, and he says "I think you know."

Roger awakens and goes down to talk to Laurel. She begins talking, apologizing for his burned hand. He invites her to breakfast. They smile at each other and go inside.

Three little squirrels, after reading a book about Robin Hood, decide to act out the part of the legendary medieval outlaw. The smallest of the three declares that he will be Robin Hood, prompting the middle squirrel to breathe down his neck and demand, "''Who's'' gonna be Robin Hood?", prompting an intimidated reply of "''You're'' gonna be Robin Hood!" In turn, the biggest squirrel bullies the middle one, "''Who's'' gonna be Robin Hood?" "''You're'' gonna be Robin Hood!".

That decided, the Robin Hood squirrel names the middle squirrel as Little John, leaving the grumbling smallest squirrel to play the unwanted role of the Sheriff of Nottingham. The small squirrel trudges off to await the inevitable song-and-dance attack of Robin Hood and Little John, while a fox, lurking on the side, sees them as his dinner and devises a ruse through which he pipes up, in a falsetto voice, claiming to be Robin's sweetheart Maid Marian in trouble. Robin and Little John follow the bait into the fox's cabin, whereupon the fox drops his pretense and his falsetto and hangs the two up by their breeches on the wall, declaring his intention to make a stew out of them.

The smallest squirrel, looking in from the outside of the cabin, devises a plan to save his friends. By means of voice imitations and sound effects, he makes the fox believe that hunters are after him. After he literally turns yellow and panics, in fear of his life, he runs away at maximum speed, beating the cabin door which accompanies him upright on his flight from reality. After being rescued, the two exit the cabin, only to be greeted by the smallest squirrel, who asks them with a grin, "''Who's'' gonna be Robin Hood?"

Act one

Amy and Chris who are both studying at university and have recently moved in together. ("Love Is") A new girl moves in next door, Kerry, who is loud, friendly and sensual, everything that Amy isn't. ("The Girl Next Door") Amy is studying feminism and is a bit of a prude, but she befriends Kerry and takes her out shopping, along with Chris's grandmother, Jo. Jo and Kerry have very similar taste in clothing and in the beauty of being female. ("Yes I Know") Amy is against the flaunting of women's sexuality in advertising.

Chris's mum, Sue is recently separated from her husband and is trying to cope with being alone. ("Never Going To End") Her ex is demanding a divorce hearing so that they can split up their assets. What she doesn't know is that he has already moved on with someone else. Chris doesn't want to tell his mother, as he knows she won't cope with this.

Chris and Amy talk about what's going on in their life. ("How’s Life") Chris tells Amy that he's been accepted to study in London, which is a huge opportunity for him, but Amy doesn't want to go and doesn't believe that Chris wants her there anyway.

A few weeks later they go out for a two-year anniversary dinner but Chris is running late. ("Mobile Phone Quartet") This forces Amy to see that they are on two different paths and that he doesn't seem to want her in his life. They break up. ("Never Going To End") Sue discovers that she has breast cancer and doesn't want to tell her son, even though Jo is telling her that she needs his support. Kerry is now working in a call centre and seeing someone new. The Act finishes with the company singing. ("Overcome")

Act two

The act opens with, ("Got to Get to"). Six months have passed and Chris has stayed in Australia and moved back in with his mum to help her out. Jo is looking after her daughter and gets frustrated when Chris doesn't pull his weight. Chris has finished university, but is working in a café. This has made him angry, frustrated and selfish telling everyone that he put his life on hold for this.

Amy and Kerry have become good friends and spend many nights together drinking and going out on the town. ("A Girl Like Me") Amy is working in an office and has a brief relationship with the photocopy boy. She starts to do things because she wants to, not because her parents like it, such as joining the young labour party. Kerry is still her outgoing self and is a good influence on Amy.

After a big night on the town we see Kerry at a café that Chris works at. He asks about Amy and she tells him that she always liked him. Amy turns up and she talks to Chris about how he's behaving. She's worried about him, but he is too angry to care. ("As Night Descends")

Sue is going through chemotherapy and is not strong enough to go to Chris's graduation, so Jo goes in her place. The first signs that Sue isn't coping with her illness start to come through. ("Dignity")

After another bust up with his grandmother he goes to Amy's apartment and tells her that he misses her. ("The Best Thing")

Kerry asks Jo how Sue is doing and what it's like to be a mother. ("Love Is") This is when we find out that Kerry has had an abortion, which is why she left home and why she thinks her family don't love her anymore. Kerry gets an amazing job as a personal assistant to a music company head, but is reluctant to take it. With a little convincing from Jo and Amy she jumps at the opportunity, even though it means going to Spain. She takes a leap of faith and organises to spend a week home with her family, who are excited to see her. Meanwhile, Sue's cancer has spread.

The story ends with Chris, Jo and Sue having a picnic together. Chris is finally getting back on track, but Sue is very ill. When Jo leaves to pack up the car Sue and Chris get some alone time and they talk about how scared they are and she talks about how she would like to be remembered. ("Invitation")

A British soldier (Ian Hunter) goes off to fight in the First World War, with his girlfriend (Gracie Fields) waiting and worried at home. He is soon wounded in battle and crippled. He comes to the conclusion that she would be better off believing that he has been killed so she can get on with her life. She gets the news and is devastated. Several years later she is still grieving for him, but he has now been cured and goes looking for her.

Gracie (Fields) and Laurie (Dolman) are lovers who together form a musical act. Gracie sings and Laurie writes the songs, but when Laurie gets a taste of fame, he runs off after a glamorous actress.

Gracie Pearson (Fields) is a singer/comedian who returns home to enjoy a little holiday, but there is trouble brewing. First, she has to use all of her hard-earned money to pay for part of what her brother owes to a money lender. Then when they go to see their father, they find he has collapsed due to the Plumborough Market (where he has a stall) is threatened with demolition to make way for a department store. She receives a telegram offering a West End singing job, but decides to try to save the market instead.

As time runs out, Gracie rallies the stall keepers together through a series of ever more hilarious schemes in their attempts to save their livelihoods.

Grace Perkins (Gracie Fields) is an ordinary working class seamstress who is mistaken as a rich patron of the arts. When she's asked to back a new show she plays along with the charade, hoping that she can become the production's leading lady. When the show opens Grace is a huge hit and goes on to become a glamorous star.

In 1937 London, struggling vaudeville actress Molly Barry grows tired of searching for roles and applies for a job as housekeeper for upper class gentleman John Graham. She informs her friends and fellow actors, Lily and Julia, about her plans, and persuades former exotic dancer Kitty Goode, who has married into the peerage, to provide a fake reference.

Graham's butler, Peabody, interviews Molly. But when Kitty shows up, Peabody recognises her, as he himself is really former actor Harry Phillips. Harry had given up acting because of a drinking problem, which he has since conquered. He does not want another former actor in the household. Desperate, Molly persuades Peabody to join a party at a pub, where he falls off the wagon. She brings the half-unconscious man back to the Graham house, occupies the housekeeper's room, and in the morning informs Mr. Graham that Peabody has hired her. Peabody has no other alternative but to go along.

Graham's old friend, Jamie McDougall, asks him to stand again for Parliament. Graham is reluctant to do so and shows an old newspaper clipping to McDougall, reminding him that Graham ended his political career to avoid public disgrace after his wife ran off with a "sportsman." McDougall burns the clipping in the fireplace and tells Graham it all happened 15 years ago and will not be remembered.

Graham is convinced to travel to Suffolk to meet a man who could be of great help in his election bid. While they are gone, Molly discovers that the domestic staff all steal from the household. When she confronts them, they threaten to quit en masse, but she sacks them instead. Molly puts the house in order by herself. From a fragment of the clipping she finds, Molly learns the truth about Graham's ex-wife, who went abroad because of the scandal.

That night, Graham's teenage son Jimmy unexpectedly returns home from prep school. Jimmy suffers from a fever and Molly takes care of him. Jimmy confides in Molly his difficulties with his father. While he was young, Jimmy was told that his mother died and is convinced that Graham does not like him because he is a constant reminder of it.

The next day, Peabody sends Molly a telegram telling her to prepare a formal dinner to which influential Sir Arthur Burroughs, publisher of a big London newspaper, will be a guest. Unable to find professional help on short notice, Molly hires her theatre friends. Despite their numerous mistakes, the dinner is a success. The new staff celebrate in the kitchen, particularly pleased that the common English fare Molly improvised for dinner impressed Sir Arthur much more than food "of subtlety and distinction".

Graham goes to the kitchen to congratulate them, but overhears Jimmy imitating his gruff pomposity and sour outlook. He sends Jimmy to bed and sacks the staff, including Peabody, when he learns from Molly that they are former entertainers. Molly then scolds Graham for being a poor father to his teenage son. By the next morning, Graham has reconsidered and gives his son permission to re-hire the staff.

The former Mrs. Graham resurfaces to try to extort £1000 from her former husband. Molly tells her he is asleep, but promises to inform him of the sum she wants. Molly tells Graham that "something has happened," but before she can go into detail, he assures her that he has full confidence in her ability to fix any problem. Molly uses her friends to fool Mrs. Graham into thinking that she has been a participant in a shooting death. Mrs. Graham flees the country.

Later that same evening, Graham and Jimmy return home after attending a theater performance. Graham later remarks that he has been spoiled by Mrs. Barry’s late night snacks and wonders if she could fix him another one, preferably in the kitchen. They sit down together, happily singing a song.

Issue 1

'''Date of Publication:''' ''22 April 2009''

Egil and Finn kill a group of Vikings led by a man named Knut, stealing their cache of weapons for their own purposes, leaving one messenger alive to tout their bravado. Upon reception of his message, this messenger is put to death by Aki and King Bram.

Princess Annikki meanwhile practices her archery in the woods as her father looks on. A large bear trundles from the woods and curiously inspects her. King Bram means to kill it for threatening his daughter, but is stopped by Annikki, who escapes the situation with little more than a series of scratches along her left cheek where the bear pawed her during its inspection.

The brothers Egil and Finn sell their ill-gotten goods to Bork the merchant, and visit their grandfather, Ozur, whereupon they take their younger brother Ketil out for a day of family recreation.

The boy recklessly charges about playing at being a raider, when the three brothers are set upon by another group of Vikings. This is the murdered Knut's brother and his men, who stab Ketil and begin savagely beating Egil. Finn charges into the fray as he draws his weapon, ending the first issue of the series.

In 1989, Kevin Flynn, who was promoted to CEO of ENCOM International at the end of the first film, disappears. Twenty years later, his son Sam, now ENCOM's primary shareholder, pranks the corporation by releasing the company's signature operating system online for free. ENCOM executive Alan Bradley, Flynn's old friend, approves of this, believing it aligns with Flynn's ideals of open software. Nonetheless, Sam is arrested for trespassing.

Alan posts bail for Sam and tells him of a pager message originating from Flynn's shuttered video arcade. There Sam discovers a hidden basement with a large computer and laser, which suddenly digitizes and downloads him into the Grid, a virtual reality created by Flynn. He is captured and sent to "the Games", where he must fight a masked program named Rinzler. When Sam is injured and bleeds, Rinzler realizes Sam is human, or a "User". He takes Sam to Clu, the Grid's corrupt ruling program, who resembles a young Kevin.

Clu nearly kills Sam in a Light Cycle match, but Sam is rescued by Quorra, an "apprentice" of Flynn, who shows him Flynn's hideout outside Clu's territory. Flynn explains that he had been working to create a "perfect" computer system, and had appointed Clu and security program Tron as its co-creators. The trio discovered a species of naturally occurring "isomorphic algorithms" (ISOs), with the potential to resolve various natural mysteries. Clu, considering them an aberration, betrayed Flynn, killed Tron, and destroyed the ISOs. The "Portal" permitting travel between the two worlds closed, leaving Flynn trapped in the system. Clu sent the message to Alan hoping to lure him into the Grid (though Sam serves his purpose just as well) and reopen the Portal for a limited time. Since Flynn's "identity disc" is the master key to the Grid and the only way to traverse the Portal, Clu expects Sam to bring Flynn to the Portal so he can take Flynn's disc, go through the Portal himself, and impose his idea of perfection on the human world.

Against his father's wishes, Sam returns to Clu's territory to find Zuse, a program who can provide safe passage to the Portal. At the End of Line Club, the owner reveals himself to be Zuse, then betrays Sam to Clu's guards. In the resulting fight, Flynn rescues his son, but Quorra is injured and Zuse gains possession of Flynn's disc. Zuse attempts to bargain with Clu over the disc, but Clu betrays him and destroys the club along with Zuse. Flynn and Sam stow away aboard a "Solar Sailer" transport program, where Kevin restores Quorra and reveals her to be the last surviving ISO.

The transport is intercepted by Clu's warship. As a diversion, Quorra allows herself to be captured by Rinzler, whom Flynn recognizes as Tron, not killed by Clu but rather reprogrammed. Sam reclaims Flynn's disc and rescues Quorra, while Flynn takes control of a Light Fighter. Clu, Rinzler, and several guards pursue the trio in Light Jets. Rinzler remembers his past as Tron and deliberately collides with Clu's Light Jet, then falls into the Sea of Simulation below. Clu confronts the others at the Portal, where Flynn reintegrates with his digital duplicate, destroying Clu along with himself, while Quorra - having switched discs with Flynn - gives Flynn's disc to Sam and they escape together to the real world as the resulting explosion levels the Sea of Simulation. In Flynn's arcade, Sam backs up and deactivates the system. He then tells a waiting Alan that he plans to retake control of ENCOM, naming Alan chairman of the board. Sam departs on his motorcycle with Quorra, and she witnesses her first real sunrise.

The film begins with on-screen captions explaining that a medical breakthrough in 1952 has permitted the human lifespan to be extended beyond 100 years. It is narrated by 28-year-old Kathy H as she reminisces about her childhood at a boarding school called Hailsham, as well as her adult life after leaving the school. The film first depicts the young Kathy, along with her friends Tommy and Ruth, spending their childhood at Hailsham in 1978. The students are encouraged to create artwork, and their best work gets into ''The Gallery'' run by a mysterious woman known only as Madame. One day, a new teacher, Miss Lucy, quietly informs the students of their fate: they are destined to be organ donors and will die, or "complete", in their early adulthood. Shortly afterward she is fired by the headmistress, Miss Emily, for sharing this revelation with the children. As time passes, Kathy falls in love with Tommy, but Ruth and Tommy begin a relationship and stay together throughout the rest of their time at Hailsham.

In the second act, Kathy, Ruth and Tommy, now teenagers, are rehoused in cottages on a farm in 1985. They are permitted to leave the grounds on day trips, but are resigned to their eventual fate. At the farm, they meet former pupils of schools similar to theirs, and it is revealed that they are all clones. They also hear rumours of the possibility of "deferral"—a temporary reprieve from organ donation for donors who are in love and can prove it. Tommy becomes convinced that ''The Gallery'' at Hailsham was intended to look into their souls and that artwork sent to ''The Gallery'' will be able to confirm true love where it is present. The relationship between Tommy and Ruth becomes sexual, and Ruth confronts Kathy, telling her Tommy never thought of her as more than a friend. This causes Kathy and Ruth to end their friendship. The lonely Kathy leaves and becomes a "carer"—a donor who is given a temporary reprieve from donation as a reward for supporting and comforting donors as they are made to give up their organs. Tommy and Ruth's relationship ends but Kathy has already begun her training.

In 1994, Kathy is still working as a carer, and has watched many donors gradually die as their organs are harvested. Kathy, who has not seen Ruth or Tommy since the farm, discovers Ruth, frail after two donations. They find Tommy, who is also weakened by his donations, and they take a drive to the seashore, where Ruth admits that she did not love Tommy, and only seduced him because she was afraid to be alone. She is consumed with guilt and has been searching for a way to help Tommy and Kathy. She believes that the rumours of "deferral" are true, and has found the address of the gallery owner, Madame, who she thinks may grant deferrals to couples in love. Ruth dies on the operating table shortly afterward.

Kathy and Tommy finally begin a relationship. Tommy explains to Kathy that he has been creating art in the hope that it will aid deferral. He and Kathy drive to visit Madame, who lives with the headmistress of Hailsham. The two teachers tell them that there is no such thing as deferral, and that Tommy's artworks will not help him. They explain that the purpose of ''The Gallery'' was not to look into their souls but to investigate whether the "all but human" donors even have souls at all; Hailsham was the last place to consider the ethical implications of the donor scheme. As they take in the news on their return journey, Tommy explodes in rage and frustration, and they cling to each other in grief. Tommy completes his final donation and dies on the operating table, leaving Kathy alone, waiting for her donations to begin in a month. Contemplating the ruins of her childhood, she asks in voice-over whether her fate is really any different from the people who will receive her organs; after all, "we all complete".

During the events of the ''Reign in Hell'' miniseries, Hell is thrown into a massive conflict as Neron and his generals are confronted with a rebellion led by Blaze and Satanus, the rulers of Purgatory. Neron soon discovered that the rebel demons were offering the damned ''"hope to the hopeless"'' and redemption for them, which had ''never'' happened before, and that this was a powerful spur. Realizing what would happen if the damned ever rose up against him, Neron has his consort Lilith, the ''"mother of all Earthborn fiends"'', summon all of the vampires, werewolves, ghouls and infernally powered humans to Hell to fight on his side.

This unrest in the infernal realms attracts the attention of Earth's magical superheroes, who are concerned about the outcome and the possible repercussions of the war. Many of them descend into Hell and take sides in the conflict (all for reasons of their own), including Giovanni "John" Zatara, his daughter Zatanna Zatara, Jason Blood a.k.a. Etrigan the Demon, Randu Singh, Doctor Fate V (Kent V. Nelson), the Ragman III (Rory Regan), the Creeper II (Jack Ryder), Detective Chimp, the vampire Lord Andrew Bennett, Acheron, the angel Zauriel, the Enchantress, Deadman, the Phantom Stranger, Sargon the Sorcerer II (David John Sargent), Ibis the Invincible II (Daniel Kasim "Danny" Khalifa), the Nightmaster, Nightshade II (Eve Eden), the Midnight Rider, the Warlock's Daughter, Black Alice, Blue Devil, Red Devil and the fallen angel Linda Danvers. In the miniseries' backup story, Doctor Richard Occult, aided by the Yellow Peri, also descends into Hell, but separately from the others and with his ''own'' ulterior motive-to free the soul of his beloved, Rose Psychic, from damnation.

Lobo, who, at this time, is confined to the Labyrinth, Hell's only prison (due to the deal that he had earlier made with Neron during the ''Underworld Unleashed'' crossover event) and whose suffering alone is enough to power Neron's entire palace, is freed from his torment as a result of the titanic battle between Etrigan the Demon and Blue Devil, a battle which results in Etrigan the Demon's (temporary) death at Blue Devil's hands. Lobo then tears apart the soul of Zatara, which forces Zatanna to destroy his soul and banish it to the Abyss (a place that even Hell cannot touch) at his request, rather than to consign him to an eternity of pain and torment (later, in the 16-issue miniseries ''Zatanna'' (vol. 2) (July 2010–October 2011), Zatara's soul is shown to have been saved from destruction by a demon who owes him a favor).

Despite all of this and ''just'' when Neron seems to be victorious, Satanus finally reveals that he used the war as a cover in order to spread a modified viral version of DMN, the anagogic drug that changes humans into monsters and that he had used once before in order to destabilize Metropolis and confound Superman. This variation of DMN is airborne and, when combined with the speaking of the magic word ''"Shazam"'', it transforms Neron and all of Hell's demons into soulless humans, all except Lilith, who was ''not'' a true demon. It also causes all of the demonic entities that Neron has consumed over the millennia to be cast out of him. Satanus then beheads Neron and takes the throne of Hell for himself.''Reign in Hell'' #7 (March 2009) The damned then turn their rage upon the now-human and powerless demons, slaughtering them wholesale and thus damning themselves anew.

Blaze later takes advantage of her brother's momentary weakness during a moment when he allows Black Alice to touch him and sample his powers; this action shatters Black Alice's psyche and allows Blaze to drain Satanus' power and take the throne for ''herself'', thus winning the war. Near the end of the miniseries, the ''Unspoken Principium'' of Hell is revealed by Doctor Occult to be ''"You can leave whenever you want"''.

In 1875, near Durango, Mexico, a group of renegade Comanche attack a peaceful village and kidnap the daughter of a Spanish aristocrat. They escape the Mexican Army by crossing into US territory. Jim Read (Dana Andrews), a frontier scout, is sent to investigate and ease tensions between the Mexicans and the Comanche. But long standing hatred and the profitable business of scalp-hunting does not help in resolving the conflict. Read is sent to negotiate with the Comanche chief, Quanah (Kent Smith). Whilst searching for Quanah, Read sees Art Downey (Stacy Harris), a local scalp-hunter, shoot and injure a Comanche. Read rescues him and takes him to Quanah. Read however is himself accused of the shooting by Black Cloud (Henry Brandon), the renegade leader, until the injured brave recovers enough to clear his name. Read reveals to Quanah that they are cousins and that his mother was the sister of Quanah's mother. Quanah swears loyalty to his white friend. Read leaves to fetch government officials to a peace council, but discovers a cavalry detachment that has been massacred by Black Cloud and his renegades. The Government official, Commissioner Ward (Lowell Gilmore), has ordered the cavalry to subdue the Indians, by force if necessary. Black Cloud attacks a column of cavalry troopers and captures Ward. Quanah and a large force of loyal Comanche intervene and threaten to attack Black Cloud. Vengeful Black Cloud kills Ward. In the ensuing battle, Read kills Downey and Black Cloud and peace is restored.

In first grade, all students receive an inoculation. A small percentage of these inoculations includes a nano capsule which via radio-control will kill the receiver somewhere between the ages of 18–24. The government believes that the threat of unexpected death will increase prosperity and productivity in its citizens. And indeed this increased prosperity is evident, but at a great cost: innocent lives. Citizens who do not agree with the National prosperity law and who publicly voice their opinions are accused of "thought crime."

Kengo Fujimoto (Shota Matsuda) has been recruited by the government as an Ikigami delivery man. Whilst undergoing training he witnesses the "arrest" of a man (also undergoing training to become a deliverer) who commits a thought-crime when he yells to the entire room that the law is wrong and that his older sister died from the ikigami. The film follows Kengo as he delivers Ikigami to three citizens: a rising musician (Yuta Kanai) debuting in the music industry but struggling with leaving his friend behind as a busker, a shut-in (Kazuma Sano) who is the son of a council woman (Jun Fubuki) who supports the law whole-heartedly and attempts to use her son's upcoming death to gain sympathy votes, and a working-class debt collector (Takayuki Yamada) who is about to take his blind sister (Riko Narumi) out of the orphanage she lives in now that he is finally financially secure.

During the film we discover that thought-crime criminals are most likely brain-washed and then returned to society, strongly believing in the national prosperity law when they return. Throughout the film Kengo struggles not to commit thought-crimes publicly as he feels that the law is wrong. Towards the end of the film Kengo walks past a school where the year ones are entering; there are nurses encouraging children to have their inoculations. Kengo sees the man who was taken from his Ikigami deliverance training, standing in a lab coat encouraging the children to get their inoculations, supporting the brainwashing theory.

A spider who takes shelter from a snowstorm in a toyshop finds the merchandise comes to life when the store is closed.

In the film, a spider wanders down into an Egyptian tomb. His entrance is seen as if following the spider and is certainly a notable technique in animation of the period. Once inside the tomb, the mummies begin to dance and the hieroglyphics come to life.

Recently widowed Michele O'Brien moves into a Greenwich Village brownstone with her infant son John Thomas. Her neighbor, Harley Rummel, a bohemian who earns a living by making nudie films in his apartment, becomes interested in her, but Michele believes her boss, wealthy psychologist Philip Brock, is a better prospect as a new mate.

Although he is an authority on children, Philip actually despises them, so Michele decides to keep John Thomas a secret for the time being. Unbeknownst to her, Harley is using the baby in his movies. When John Thomas is admitted to Philip's clinic for observation, Harley sneaks into his room to complete a film, but his surreptitious activities are captured by a hidden camera recording the baby's behavior. Michelle is furious but, when he saves John Thomas from a potentially dangerous situation, she forgives Harley and decides he may be the better choice for a father after all.

Although the short film is loosely based on the Hans Christian Andersen 1843 fairy tale "The Ugly Duckling", the only real similarities are one bird getting confused for another and his unique abilities enabling him to become something special.

In this version, a hen is asleep when her eggs hatch. Six female chickens hatches to her delight. However, the last egg reveals a duckling who has gotten mixed in among the farmyard chickens. The hen and the chicks walk away from him. Despite the duckling's best attempts to fit in with his chick sisters, things don't work out. He tries to go to a dog, a cow and even a frog, but to no avail, leaving him to lament his "ugliness" after he mocks his reflection. Soon, the cow's mooing informs everyone to take shelter at once because there's a tornado coming their way. The hen and the chicks quickly run inside the hen house, but the duck has to go under the home due to them not accepting him.

However, when the hen's chicks are threatened by a waterfall, due to them being dropped off in a river after the hen house was caught up in the tornado, the little duckling swims to the rescue having gone through various debris to get to them. The hen cries out in fear for her daughters' lives. The duck gets into hen house, but once the first tree gets through, the duck and his chick sisters are on it. He quickly tells them to run back in the hen house saves them and a second tree comes through destroying it. This time, the duck orders his sisters to run to the fireplace blower which he jumps hard on it a few times to take hem to safety. He is lauded as a hero by his sisters. The hen picks the duckling up, recognizing him as her son and hugs him to his delight.

About eight years later, in 1939, the film would be remade and would follow the original Andersen story much more faithfully. This gives ''The Ugly Duckling'' the unique distinction of being the only Silly Symphony to be made twice. This film was then sold to reach about 4,000 dollars per month at the most profit, because it slowly climbed up the scale of growth.

King Neptune is holding court at the bottom of the ocean, being entertained by his various sea creature subjects. His favorites are a gaggle of mermaids (all brunettes with the exception of a single strawberry-blonde) who appear hand-sized next to the larger-than-life king. Once dismissed from the king's presence, the mermaids surface to lounge on a rock and relax. They are spotted by a band of lecherous pirates who attempt to capture them using a lasso. The mermaids all escape apart from the strawberry blonde who is lassoed and pulled onto the ship of jeering pirates. The frightened young mermaid is then attacked by the cruel pirates, jumping on her and pulling her hair, though she does a good job of fending them off. Enraged that one of his most beloved subjects has been taken hostage and suffering, King Neptune launches an assault on the pirates and a fantastic naval battle ensues. The sea creatures work together to mimic such war machines as airplanes and bombs, submarine torpedoes, and other such modern equipment. During the attack one pirate drags the mermaid and puts her into a treasure chest to keep as a valuable. The pirates do a fair job of fending off their attackers, so Neptune rises to the surface and summons a storm while stirring up huge whirlpools with his trident. In the end, he jumps on top of the pirate ship, plunging it straight to the bottom of the ocean.

There is no trace of the pirates except a single chest that begins to jump around on its own. The ginger mermaid pops out of it, decked in gold and pearls. Her friends hurry to festoon themselves with jewelry and they perform another beautiful water ballet for King Neptune's pleasure.

''Singin' and Swingin''' opens shortly after Angelou's previous autobiography, ''Gather Together in My Name''. Marguerite, or Maya, a single mother with a young son, is in her early twenties, struggling to make a living. Angelou writes in this book, like her previous works, about the full range of her own experiences. As scholar Dolly McPherson states, "When one encounters Maya Angelou in her story, one encounters the humor, the pain, the exuberance, the honesty, and the determination of a human being who has experienced life fully and retained her strong sense of self". Many people around Angelou influence her growth and—as critic Lyman B. Hagen states—"propel Angelou ever forward". The book's opening chapters find Maya concerned with, as Hagen asserts, "apprehension about her son, a desire for a home, and facing racial conflicts, and seeking a career".Hagen, p. 87. Maya is offered a job as a salesgirl in a record shop on Fillmore Street in San Francisco. At first she greets her white boss' offers of generosity and friendship with suspicion, but after two months of searching for evidence of racism, Maya begins to "relax and enjoy a world of music". The job allows her to move back into her mother's house and to spend more time with her son.

While working in the store, Maya meets Tosh Angelos, a Greek sailor. They fall in love, and he is especially fond of her son. Against her mother's wishes, Maya marries Tosh in 1952. At first, the marriage is satisfying, and it seems that Maya has fulfilled her dream of being a housewife, writing "My life began to resemble a ''Good Housekeeping'' advertisement." Eventually, Maya begins to resent Tosh's demands that she stay at home; she is also bothered by her friends' negative reaction to her interracial marriage. Maya is disturbed by Tosh's atheism and his control of her life, but does little to challenge his authority. After Tosh tells her son Clyde that there is no God, Maya rebels by secretly attending Black churches. After three years the marriage disintegrates when Tosh announces to Maya that he is "tired of being married". She goes into the hospital for an appendectomy, and after the operation, she announces her desire to return to her grandmother in Stamps, but Tosh informs her that Annie died the day of Maya's operation.

A single mother once again, Maya begins to find success as a performer. She gets a job dancing and singing at The Purple Onion, a popular nightclub in San Francisco, and—on the recommendation of the club's owners—she changes her name from Marguerite Johnson to the "more exotic" "Maya Angelou". She gains the attention of talent scouts, who offer her a role in ''Porgy and Bess''; she turns down the part, however, because of her obligations to The Purple Onion. When her contract expires, Maya goes to New York City to audition for a part opposite Pearl Bailey, but she turns it down to join a European tour of ''Porgy and Bess''.

Leaving Clyde with her mother, Maya travels to 22 countries with the touring company in 1954 and 1955, expressing her impressions about her travels. She writes the following about Verona: "I was really in Italy. Not Maya Angelou, the person of pretensions and ambitions, but me, Marguerite Johnson, who had read about Verona and the sad lovers while growing up in a dusty Southern village poorer and more tragic than the historic town in which I now stood."

Despite Maya's success with ''Porgy and Bess'', she is racked with guilt and regret about leaving her son behind. After receiving bad news about Clyde's health, she quits the tour and returns to San Francisco. Both Clyde and Maya heal from the physical and emotional toll caused by their separation, and she promises never to leave him again. Clyde also announces that he wants to be called "Guy". As Angelou writes: "It took him only one month to train us. He became Guy and we could hardly remember ever calling him anything else".

Maya is true to her promise; she accepts a job performing in Hawaii, and he goes with her. At the close of the book, mother and son express pride in each other. When he praises her singing, she writes: "Although I was not a great singer I was his mother, and he was my wonderful, dependently independent son".

Various sweets and goodies of Cookietown are preparing to crown their new cookie queen. A parade of potential candidates passes by, all based on various cakes and sweets. Far from the parade, on what would appear to be the wrong side of the peppermint stick railroad tracks, a gingerbread man overhears a sugar cookie girl crying. Upon hearing that she can't enter the parade, because she doesn't have any clothes that are nice enough to wear for it, he hurries to remedy her situation by concocting a ballgown of cupcake wrappers, colored frosting, and candy hearts. He covers her brown hair with golden taffy ringlets and adds a large, violet bow to her dress as a finishing touch. Thus attired, she is entered as the final contestant in the parade: Ms. Bonbon.

The judges, who have thus far been disappointed in the candidates, all promptly declare Ms. Bonbon the cookie queen on sight. The gingerbread man is practically trampled in the sudden surge of the crowd as they carry Ms. Bonbon to her throne, where they place a golden crown on her head. Then she is presented with a large layer cake, which appears to be a carousel of different vaudeville acts. Every queen needs a king, so the newly crowned cookie queen has to choose a husband from those featured.

After being presented with a duet of tap-dancing candy cane kids, a pair of old-fashioned barbershop cookies, a pair of effeminate angel food cakes, two scat-singing devil food cakes, two acrobatic upside-down cakes, and three tipsy rum cookies, the queen refuses all of them with a giggle and a shake of her head. The judges, with no other suitors to present to her, offer her to marry one of them or all three of them.

At that moment, the gingerbread man, who has been attempting to gain a closer vintage point, sneaks up onto the dais. He is accosted by the guards who split his cupcake paper hat and tear off a piece of the red jelly roll carpet he was hiding under, so that he looks like he is wearing a crown and an ermine-lined cloak. The cookie queen tells the guards to stop and declares the gingerbread man as her king. He is immediately released, and the new king takes his place beside his beloved sugar cookie queen. Their closing kiss melts the lollipop intended to screen them from view.

Youngman Duran, a deputy on a Hopi Indian reservation in New Mexico, investigates a series of mysterious cattle mutilations. Abner Tasupi, an ancient and embittered medicine man who raised Youngman after his parents died, reveals that he has woven a spell to end the world that very night. However, Youngman assumes Tasupi is simply babbling while under the influence of datura root. The following morning, Youngman finds Abner's bloodless body on the floor of his shack, and nearby he discovers a dead shepherd and most of his flock.

Tribal Council chairman Walker Chee has discovered a stratum of oil shales in Maskai Canyon, the most sacred ground in the tribe's domain. Walker is dynamiting the caves in an effort to unleash oil, and is planning to sell the rights to process them to tycoon Roger Piggott of Peabody Oil. Walker is desperate to keep word of the attacks from leaking to the media before he completes the deal.

Although common sense tells him otherwise, Youngman's faith in tribal beliefs and superstitions leads him to suspect the unexplained deaths may be connected to Abner's spell. British scientist Philip Payne is certain they are the work of vampire bats infected with bubonic plague. As bats spread throughout the area, swarming through a missionary group's campsite and infecting everyone in their path, Philip and Youngman join forces with Anne Dillon, a young white medical student who runs a ramshackle clinic on the reservation and is in love with Youngman. They track the bats to their lair and eventually destroy them.

Levy Yitzchok is an orphaned yeshiva student. Restless and distressed, he leaves his study hall in search of "real Jews" and wanders through the Belorussian countryside. He eventually settles in a small village, where the only Jews are two peasant families: Dovid-Noich, his wife Rochel, their two sons, Hersh Ber and Avraham Yankov, and daughter Tsine; and Elkone, his wife Gittel and their daughter Stera. Dovid is flattered by the presence of a scholar among the poor unlearned peasants, and invites Levy Yitzchok to stay as a boarder and tutor his two sons in religious studies. The phlegmatic, unworldly Levy is himself fascinated by the farmers' lives and their vitality. He is ashamed by his lack of physical prowess, which is demonstrated when he attempts to aid in field work. Levy secretly develops feelings for the youthful and vivacious Tsine, who is impressed with him and begins to spy on her brothers' lessons; she herself is restricted from attending, but manages to learn to write her own name. Dovid quarrels with his neighbor, and the enraged Elkone cancels his daughter's match with Hersh. He offers Stera's hand to Levy. Elkone brings his daughter to Dovid's house, to annul her relations with the latter's son. She begins crying and Hersh is obviously depressed. The fathers are softened and agree to forget about their clash and allow them to marry. Levy Yitzchok and Tsine reveal their desires to one another, and announce they want their own wedding. The film closes with an ending title stating that from Palestine to Birobidzhan, the Jewish masses are no longer superstitious and subservient before Talmud scholars and that in the fusion of the learned Levy and strong-willed Tsine, "a new Jew is born."

Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) is planning to marry his girlfriend Elisa (Salma Hayek) as he believes she is "the one", but Elisa tells Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) she has a secret. After asking Liz to tell Jack of her reluctance to get married, Elisa kisses Liz and walks away. Liz simply says "I see why he (Jack) likes it". She confesses to Jack and Liz that she killed her first husband in a crime of passion after he cheated on her, and did not go to prison because she could not get an impartial jury due to her consequent notoriety. Jack considers marrying her anyway, saying that love requires one to overlook another's flaws, but worries about what would happen if he would ever be unfaithful. Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) tells Jack that he has never cheated on his wife, Angie (Sherri Shepherd), which makes Jack think that he too can be faithful. However, when Elisa grows too suspicious of Jack's relationship with Liz, he calls off the engagement.

Meanwhile, at the 30 Rock studios, Frank Rossitano (Judah Friedlander) and James "Toofer" Spurlock (Keith Powell) decide to play a prank on J. D. Lutz (John Lutz), which results in Lutz getting hurt, after a flat-screen monitor falls on top of him. Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski) becomes romantically interested in one of the paramedics (Josh Casaubon), but unsure of how to contact him, tries to bring him to the studio by giving the show's page, Kenneth Parcell (Jack McBrayer), strawberries, which triggers his allergies. Kenneth willingly consumes some, after Jenna tells him that the paramedic might be "the one", only for Jenna to decide against having a relationship with the paramedic because he has custody of a young son.

The episode begins with the French Narrator recalling the day SpongeBob "changed" his pants, which happened three days ago. It is laundry day, and SpongeBob is drying a whole load of his "square pants". But while all his pants are in the dryer, SpongeBob gets distracted by Patrick who wants SpongeBob to hear him make funny sounds with his tongue for a long time. Eventually, SpongeBob goes to check on his pants which all shrunk in the dryer; he heads to the mall to buy new pairs. Upon hearing there will not be another shipping of "square pants" for months, SpongeBob tries out several different styles of pants at the mall until he finally chooses a pair of "round pants".

SpongeBob wanders around town and Patrick is unable to recognize him because of the new pants. SpongeBob is greeted by Sandy who teases SpongeBob by pretending she does not recognize him and makes comments about his clothes in a good way. SpongeBob sees Squidward who also pretends he does not know him. SpongeBob heads home, although Patrick does not let him in because the house belongs to SpongeBob SquarePants before he "left".

Feeling discouraged by the idea nobody knows who he is, SpongeBob decides to start a new life as "SpongeBob RoundPants", to which he decides to re-apply to his job at the Krusty Krab. When he meets Squidward at the restaurant, SpongeBob acts as if this is his first time applying at the Krusty Krab and has never met Squidward before. Squidward decides to take advantage of this by training SpongeBob to act like him, a horrible employee, in hopes SpongeBob will later get fired. After a series of complaints from the customers, Mr. Krabs confronts SpongeBob for his lousy work, to which SpongeBob explains since he has new pants, he is no longer "SpongeBob SquarePants". Mr. Krabs then convinces SpongeBob that he should take his pants off then. SpongeBob, no longer wearing pants, then continues to be his normal self and go back to being a good employee. When Sandy comes in seeing SpongeBob in his underwear, however, she (teasingly) calls him "SpongeBob UnderPants". SpongeBob looks at his underwear and screams in horror, ending the episode.

Christine Papin (Sylvie Testud), and Léa Papin (Julie-Marie Parmentier) are sisters with a troubled past, who work as maids in Le Mans, France. After a string of domestic jobs, they start working for the Lancelin family, which consists of Monsieur Lancelin, his wife and their adult daughter Genevieve. Christine sees in Madame Lancelin a mother figure, in spite of her severity. But their wretched background — an indifferent mother, a drunken, abusive father and time spent in orphanages — casts a shadow over the girls. Over time, their ill-fated situation darkens and they withdraw into themselves. Finally, after six years of service, they end up committing a particularly brutal crime on February 2, 1933: killing Madame Lancelin and her daughter after gouging their eyes out.

The plot follows the general outline of the novel of the same name, omitting many details and some entire episodes. The narrative is strictly chronological and avoids the digressions required to mirror the novel's structure. Many of the novel's minor characters do not appear or are combined. For example, the role of the Thénardiers is reduced to a scene in which Valjean ransoms Cosette from them.

The film begins with Jean Valjean's theft and then lingers in the Toulon prison where his mistreatment is detailed under the gaze of Javert, who witnesses Valjean's amazing feat of strength in rescuing a man crushed under a boulder. Valjean escapes when saving another convict who had fallen while repairing some battlements. Struggling to survive, he encounters a kindly Bishop, who feeds and shelters him. He steals silver plates from the Bishop. When Valjean is arrested and brought back to the Bishop, the Bishop pretends the silver pieces were a gift, dismisses the police, and gives Valjean two silver candlesticks in addition to what he had originally stolen. Valjean is overcome. The Bishop tells him he has purchased his soul for God and that his life will now be different.

Valjean becomes a prosperous businessman using techniques for the manufacture of black beads that he learned in Toulon and becomes mayor of his town under the name Madeleine. Javert arrives to serve as chief of the local police. He thinks he recognizes Madeleine and notes his use of the Toulon manufacturing method. Madeleine rescues the beggar Fantine, who recounts her history in a few sentences, when Javert is about to punish her, and Javert witnesses Madeleine rescue a man trapped beneath a cart, another astonishing feat of strength. Javert denounces Madeleine to his superiors, but before they can confirm Madeleine is actually Valjean, another man is arrested and charged in Arras with being the escaped convict Valjean. Javert confesses his actions to Madeleine and asks to be dismissed from his position. Madeleine refuses his request and goes to Arras where he wins the release of the falsely accused man by identifying himself as Valjean.

Valjean returns to his town and tries to help the dying Fantine while he awaits arrest. He learns how the Thénardiers are caring for her daughter Cosette. Javert insists on arresting him, Fantine dies, and Valjean escapes. He ransoms Cosette from the Thénardiers and gives her a doll. Living in Paris with Cosette, Valjean escapes from Javert, who is directing police searches of the district where he is living, by climbing a wall, landing in the garden of a Paris convent. The gardener is the man he rescued from being crushed under a cart, who agrees to pretend he and Valjean are brothers and recommends him to the nuns as a gardener. Cosette attends the convent school. When she completes her education and has become a young woman, Valjean decides they should leave the convent's cloistered premises so she can experience the world.

Valjean and Cosette are strolling in a public garden and pause to listen to radicals denounce the government. Cosette and Marius, one of the radical group though not a speaker, see one another and their eyes lock. Marius pays the urchin Gavroche to tail them and report their address to him. Marius soon romances Cosette through the entrance gate to their home. Valjean sees this and abruptly announces to Cosette that they must leave for England. When Marius learns this, he visits his grandfather, Gillenormand, who detests his radical activities, to ask for money. Instead his grandfather suggests he make the woman he wants to marry his mistress and Marius, repulsed by the suggestion, leaves.

The radicals have created a barricade and are exchanging gunfire with the military. Gavroche identifies a man on the radical side of the barricade as the undercover police infiltrator, Javert. Enjolras arrests Javert and promises to shoot him if the barricade falls to the government's forces. Marius sends Gavroche with a message for Cosette, which Valjean reads. Valjean goes to the barricade and tries to talk Marius into abandoning the radicals. Gavroche is shot by the soldiers and dies. Valjean asks Enjolras for the privilege of killing Javert, which Enjolras grants him. Valjean instead releases him, repeating the words of the Bishop that his soul was once purchased for God. When Marius is wounded, Valjean escapes carrying his limp body with him through the sewers. Javert pursues him there and confronts him about their earlier encounter. Javert prepares to kill Valjean but suddenly disappears into the darkness of the sewers. He commits suicide by jumping into the Seine. The film ends with the wedding of Cosette and Marius, attended only by Valjean and Gillenormand.

Jilted by her ex-boyfriend Jeff Logan, Shayne (the leader of an all-female motorcycle gang) and her new boyfriend Lon decide to torment Jeff and his new bride, Connie. The harassment backfires when Shayne's sister Edie is accidentally killed by a Molotov cocktail and when Shayne herself ends up hanging by her fingernails off a cliff.

The player is a new service technician aboard ''I.S.T. Rident'', a class B space-faring passenger liner in the ''Delta quadrant''. Implanted into the player's brain is a "symplant" (or simply, a "sym"), a symbiotic artificial intelligence designed by ''SYNSYM Corporation'' to act as a companion as well as a tool to help people in scientific and technical disciplines work more efficiently.

The Rident was experiencing a problem with its artificial gravity generators, and as a maintenance engineer, the player was assigned to fix the ship's $G\_$ gravity arrays. As a safety measure, Captain Roland Tailor and co-pilot Yuri Ruport decided to keep the ship's worm-drive off-line while the gravity generator is being worked on. Disabling the worm-drive significantly reduced the speed of the vessel. At this point the Rident was attacked by two war ships. The Rident shakes violently, knocking the passengers off balance, and alarms all around the ship start going off. The captain orders an SOS distress signal to be sent and hollers to prepare the lifeboats. The player falls unconscious while busy fixing the ship's gravitomagnetism.

The game begins with the player being woken by alerts from the implanted sym. I.S.T. Rident is left adrift in the depths of space and the player is alone aboard a deserted spacecraft. The player's objectives are to escape from the crippled transport and to find out who destroyed the ship and what happened to the 163 crew members and passengers aboard.

While on holiday in the Irish countryside, a dysfunctional family encounters a village of deformed and homicidal residents. These residents are mostly mutant children, to whom death is all fun and games.

Head girl Justine Fielding (Tuppence Middleton) is escorted out of Fairview High School by the police, as other pupils look on.

Five days earlier, Justine is reading the eulogy at the funeral of unpopular, asthmatic student Darren Mullet (Calvin Dean). Mullet's equally unpopular friend, Jason Banks (Olly Alexander), is (literally) thrown out of the church by the sadistic P.E. teacher after calling her a hypocrite because she did not really know him. Later, Justine agrees to go to a party with Alex (Dimitri Leonidas), organised by his popular friends, Bradley (Alex Pettyfer), Tasha (April Pearson), Khalillah (Larissa Wilson), Sophie (Georgia King) and Marcus (Tom Hopper).

When Justine arrives at the party, the DJ, Jez (Ben Lloyd-Hughes), egged on by Tasha, raps unflatteringly about her, before being thrown out of the party by Bradley. Bradley, Tasha, Khalillah, Marcus and Sophie all receive insulting text messages from Mullet's number. Later, Alex and Justine go to a bedroom and make out, only to be pranked by Bradley, wearing a clown costume and pretending to attack them with a chainsaw. Later, the 'in-crowd' toast Mullet. Justine admits that she did not know who he was. Jez goes to the cemetery and urinates on Mullet's grave. He is stabbed with a wooden crucifix by Mullet's ghost.

At school, Bradley threatens Nasser (James Floyd), the leader of the school's emo clique, about removing a website he had put up about Mullet. Justine drops her old friends Helena and Emily to hang out with the popular crowd. She finds a teddy bear (stolen from Mullet's grave) in her locker and, assuming it is from Alex, agrees to go on another date with him. Jason tells her that Mullet was in love with her and hands her his suicide note. In the school's recording studio, Mullet's ghost forces Nasser to listen to music at top volume through his headphones, rendering him permanently deaf.

Bradley and Marcus assault Jason, who they believe to be sending the text messages, but they are interrupted by another message, which Jason could not have sent. The P.E. teacher arrives, lets the bullies go and gives Jason detention. Later, Justine confronts Jason. He denies forging the suicide note, and tells her that Mullet killed himself because of bullying by the popular students, including vicious texts and a website that Bradley's gang created about him. Alex's friends tell her she cannot hand the note to the police, because it accuses Justine of hating him, thus supposedly implicating her in his death. The girls attack Justine's former friend Helena in the toilets; Tasha smashes her phone after accusing her of sending the messages. After swimming practice, Sophie tells Justine that she should sleep with Alex that night, but goes back into the swimming pool to retrieve her watch. She is attacked and drowned by Mullet's ghost.

Mullet's ghost brings flowers for Justine, but, after seeing her have sex with Alex, tears the badge from her uniform, and re-arranges her fridge magnets, calling her a "dirty slut". During football training Marcus becomes hysterical after seeing Mullet's ghost, and the P.E. teacher sends him off for a shower. Mullet's ghost then whips him with a towel, almost popping one of his eyes out its socket. He fights Mullet off with a cricket bat and gets outside, but is impaled through the skull upon an iron fence by the ghost. Later on, the gang have an argument at Bradley's house about who killed their friends, ending in Tasha fighting Justine and throwing her into the swimming pool.

Justine demands that Alex shows her the website, where she tearfully witnesses the in-crowd bullying Mullet. Justine realises that she ignored Mullet's pleas for help because he interrupted a conversation about her going to Oxford University. She tells Alex that their relationship is over.

After trying to dig up Mullet at the cemetery, Bradley breaks down and cries over the death of his friends. Tasha consoles him and they have sex in the car, but Mullet drags him out and rips off his penis, causing him to bleed to death. Tasha escapes and runs into an open grave, where Mullet decapitates her with a shovel.

Next day, Justine tells Jason, who is in the Art Room, that she was responsible for Mullet's death. He tells her that it was his fault, because he was scared of being bullied, so he told Bradley that Mullet fancied her. After she leaves the room, Mullet jams two pencils up Jason's nose and slams his head against the table, killing him. Justine vainly begs her old friends Helena and Emily to take her back, telling them that her new friends, including Alex, were all horrible.

Khalillah tells Justine that she received a text message from Tasha (who she does not know is dead) to meet in the Art Room. There Mullet places a plastic bag over Khalilah's head, before cutting off her hands with the guillotine. Justine and Alex arrive at the Art Room and find the bodies of Jason and Khalillah, and are attacked by Mullet. They stab him with a screwdriver and head to the common room, where Mullet nails Alex's hand to the floor with the screwdriver. Justine stops him, but he begins to choke her to death. She takes Mullet's inhaler and throws it across the room, telling Alex to break it. He does, and the ghost begins to die. Justine tells Alex to leave, but he finds Mullet's other inhaler, which Alex had hidden from Mullet when he was alive. Mullet then uses it, restoring his strength, and stabs Alex in the throat with the screwdriver before disappearing. The police arrive, having found Justine's badge near the bodies of Bradley and Tasha. She is led out into the police vehicle.

In a mid-credit sequence, the bullying gym teacher gives a speech to his students about how he was angry that Justine had killed his best players and ask why she did not kill them instead he sends the team away only to see Darren sitting, ready to kill him.

Middle-aged Hideo lives alone with an inflatable sex doll he calls Nozomi. The doll is his closest companion; he dresses her, talks to her over dinner, takes her for walks in a wheelchair, and has sex with her.

While Hideo is at work, Nozomi comes to life. She dresses in her maid's outfit and explores the world outside their apartment with wonder. She takes a job in a video store and becomes romantically involved with one of the employees, Junichi. When she accidentally cuts herself and deflates, Junichi repairs the tear with adhesive tape and re-inflates her.

One day, Hideo visits the store; she serves him, embarrassed, but he does not recognise her. Her boss presumes that Hideo is her boyfriend and that she is cheating on Junichi, coercing Nozomi into sex. At their home, Hideo discovers Nozomi is no longer a doll. He asks her to return to lifelessness, as he finds human relationships "annoying". Hurt, she runs away.

Nozomi goes to the factory where she was manufactured and meets her maker. He tells her that he believes all the dolls have hearts, as he can tell from their faces when they are returned what kind of treatment they received. When she asks what happens to used dolls, he says he throws them out with the garbage.

Nozomi tells Junichi she will do whatever he wants for him. He asks to let out her air and re-inflate her as he did in the video store. Afterwards, as he sleeps, she attempts to return the favour; finding no plug, she cuts him with scissors, and attempts to stem the blood flow with adhesive tape. Junichi dies and she leaves his body with the garbage. Heartbroken, she removes the tape sealing her own wound and allows herself to deflate, to be collected with the garbage.

Pip was once a normal 11-year-old kid with a happy life, but she became very lonely when her father and brother died at a plane crash. Her mother, Ophelia, has trouble dealing with the loss and becomes depressed. While walking on the beach one day, Pip meets Matt, an artist with a broken heart. She immediately befriends him. Her mother worries about her friendship and suspects Matt of being a pedophile. However, it doesn't take long before Matt wins over Ophelia's heart as well.

Inspired by true events, the plot takes place in 1950 and revolves around Mr. Caufield, the owner of a coal mine. During Christmas, there are several explosions. His employees worry about their health and decide to strike, without any luck. One of the miners, Johnny, is determined to improve the working conditions and wants the other miners to have a great holiday. However, this goes terribly wrong when they are trapped underground following an explosion. Their families are desperate to save them, worrying there might be an even bigger and deadlier explosion.

The film begins in 1927-1928 in the pre-Depression era in Kansas when oil is making many landowners wealthy. Deanie Loomis and Bud Stamper are a high school couple. Deanie is a sweet, idealistic girl who idolizes Bud and dreams of marrying him. Her family owns a general store and maintains a middle-class lifestyle, with a few investments in oil. Bud is an athletic, handsome but not academically talented senior whose family is very wealthy from oil investments and pumping on their ranch. Deenie's mother hovers over her and gives her guidance on being "good" in the eyes of society.

Bud loves Deanie but is having trouble managing his sexual urges around her. Deanie wants to please him but she holds the line at doing more than kissing. A messy encounter on New Year's Eve 1928 changes the trajectory of their relationship and puts Deanie in a state of deep mental funk. Bud, who has his hands full trying to corral his older, reckless sister, and assert himself in front of his domineering father, is on a mental decline of his own. His father is pressuring him to go to Yale and get a degree before returning to marry Deanie. Between Deanie's constant sexual rebuffs and his father's insistence about going to Yale, Bud puts his dreams aside and tells a friend that Deanie is available to date other boys. Bud has the sexual encounter he's been wanting with another girl from school, Juanita. Deeply hurt, Deanie rallies from her depression and attends a school dance with another boy. What happens at the dance results in Deanie's hospitalization and subsequent commitment to a mental institution for treatment. Bud, saddened by Deanie's condition, reluctantly goes to Yale.

At Yale, Bud flunks every class. He meets a waitress, Angelina, at an Italian restaurant and they develop a friendship. His father comes to town to try and talk the dean into letting Bud stay at Yale. Bud and his father stay at a hotel and mostly enjoy an evening at dinner, but his father hasn't changed since Bud left Kansas - he tries to set up Bud with a chorus girl. News then comes that the market is falling, but he refuses to sell his stocks. After learning he is financially ruined, he jumps out the hotel window. Finally rid of the overbearing influence of his father, Bud goes home.

At the institution, Deanie spends more than two years ironing out her issues with her parents and life. Her parents come to visit hoping to take her home soon, but she confirms for them that she needs to stay for more treatment. While there, she meets another man in treatment, a physician, who eventually asks her to marry him. However, Deanie wants to see Bud again.

When she is well enough to go home two and a half years later, she and her friends drive to Bud's ranch against her mother's wishes. Soon it is apparent that Bud has brought the Italian Angelina with him to Kansas, and they have started a family, but they live a lifestyle that is much poorer that of Bud's childhood. Deanie meets his family and seems to accept that their paths have diverged quite a bit since high school. She tells him she's going to marry the man she met at the institution. Bud seems content doing what he always wanted to do.

The film is a coming of age story and parallels the lines in Wordsworth's poem "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood".

Ghote is summoned by the Deputy Superintendent of Police and charged to protect a flamingo presented to Bombay Zoological Gardens by the American Consulate. The bird is one of four and the other three have already been shot. At the zoo the inspector interviews a senior zoo official who informs him that the director of the zoo has ordered that the bird be left on display in order to trap the perpetrator. During the interview the bird is shot. Ghote believes the marksman is in a clock tower, which he searches. He does not find the marksman but does note the smell of fine tobacco.

The next day Ghote arrives at the office to find Sergeant Desai has been allocated to his investigation of the shooting. This does not please Ghote, as Desai has a reputation for hilarious incompetence. Desai tells Ghote that a donkey was substituted for the favourite racehorse in the derby three months earlier and Ghote realises they are dealing with a rich and cruel practical joker.

Ghote's investigation is interrupted by a phone call from Mister Ram Kundah, deputy to the Minister for Police Affairs and the Arts. Kundah wants to liaise with Ghote on the investigation. Ghote and Desai go to the records department to check for other incidents that resemble practical jokes. Here Ghote first hears of the guru who intends to attempt to walk on water and finds a complaint from Professor Rustom Engineer.

Professor Rustom Engineer was a well-respected a scientist until he presented a new desalination machine to the media. A reporter discovered that, without the Professor's knowledge, someone had installed a small pump into the machine to remove the salt water and replace it with ordinary tap water. The next day Ghote goes to the racecourse to interview the owner of the racehorse that was replaced by a donkey, Mr Bedekar. Here Ghote meets Jack Cooper, an English alcoholic follower of horse racing, and "Bunny" Bender, who has inherited the title of Raja but appears to have only modest financial means. Bedekar is unenthusiastic about renewed police interest into the incident, but Bender seems more interested in helping. In order to educate Ghote in the subject of horse racing, Bender persuades Ghote to place a bet of 50 Rupees on a horse called "Cream of the Jest". Unexpectedly the horse finishes first, but a steward's inquiry seems to rob Ghote of his winnings. Only when Ghote finds Desai does he learn that the objection to "Cream of the Jest" was overturned and that he has indeed won enough money for a good air-conditioner. As Ghote collects his winnings he again encounters Bender, who offers to use his connections to obtain Ghote an interview with Professor Rustom Engineer.

At the professor's house Sir Rustom talks of the prank that was played on him very reluctantly. He admits to taking his work very seriously and only revisits the memory when Ghote reminds him that there have been other victims. Rustom Engineer tells Ghote that he had two trusted assistants (no longer with him) who had worked for him for many years. Rustom often showed friends and visitors the workshop and the machine he was working on. He shows Ghote the machine he showed to the press, complete with the pump that was used to fool him. The next day Ghote is telephoned by Raja Bender, who wants Ghote to accompany him to see the yogi Lal Das attempt to walk on water. Ghote is alarmed to learn that tickets are being sold for up to 500 rupees and strongly suspects that another prank is about to be played. Raja Bender has also invited Rustom Engineer, Jack Cooper and Ram Kundar to witness the attempt. Lal Das begins his attempt to walk on water and immediately fails. Ghote becomes concerned when the yogi does not emerge from the tank and is forced to dive into the tank to rescue him. The yogi survives and Ghote resolves to interview Lal Das to learn who convinced him that he could walk on water. Ghote deduces that a heavy sheet of glass placed below the surface of the water must have been used to fool the yogi. A brief search locates the glass sheet at the back of the temple.

The next day Ghote is in a meeting with Ram Kundar when Raja Bender calls him unexpectedly. Ghote accuses Bender of being the prankster and Bender invites him to see him in his summer home so they can talk about it. Ghote accepts and at the summer home a Sikh servant shows Ghote in to see Raja Bender. Bender is certain that no charges will be brought against him because of his privileged social position, because of the ridiculous nature of the charges themselves and because of the lack of material evidence.

Bender persuades Ghote to play cards and bet the money he won at the horse race against an assurance the Raja will play no more practical jokes. At a loss for any better idea, Ghote agrees to the game and the wager. Raja Bender wins the game easily, possibly cheating, as well as a second round played for double or quits. Ghote is given until the next day to pay the debt then sent away by the Raja, who carelessly says that the rifle used to shoot the flamingos has been stolen. Ghote is forced to borrow to meet his gambling debt. That evening he plays with his son, Ved. While playing, Ghote decides to play a joke on Ved by hiding behind a bush. Ved is terrified by this prank and Ghote is instantly remorseful. Later Ghote calls the office and orders Desai to ask Rustom Engineer if the Raja had left the rifle at the professor's home. When Desai does not report back Ghote must visit the professor's home to search for the sergeant. The professor denies any knowledge of the sergeant's visit or the theft of the Raja's rifle.

Later, Ghote receives a telephone call telling him that the Raja, "Bunny" Bender, has been shot dead at his summer home. Ghote is ordered to go and take charge of the investigation. At the scene he meets Inspector Gadgil, who has arrested the Sikh servant, Mr Singh. Ghote interviews the suspect but quickly clears him. Singh says no one wanted to kill Bender, which surprises Ghote, until Singh explains that "Bunny" Bender did not care enough about anyone to kill them and therefore everyone he knew felt the same about him. Ghote tells Singh of the Raja's practical jokes, which Singh has trouble believing.

The next day Ghote visits and interviews Mr Bedekar. Bedekar confirms that at the time his horse was replaced by a donkey, costing him a winning place in the derby, he would have killed the person responsible. Bedekar claims he still does not know who was responsible for this. The interview ends when Sergeant Desai is caught attempting to obtain inside information for gambling on horse races.

Afterwards Ghote goes to interview Lal Das, the yogi. Lal Das is quite mild mannered and unperturbed by his recent disgrace. He freely admits that he was made to look a fool, but is philosophical about it. He tells Ghote that he was persuaded to walk on the water in a specially made tank only to prove that he could not do it, yet found he was able to do so. He could not explain this and it puzzled him greatly. When he tried again in front of the crowd he failed. Yogi Lal Das thanks Ghote for saving him, though the yogi's spiritual beliefs mean that he considers his life to be of little importance. After interviewing the yogi, Ghote is summoned to an interview with Ram Kundah. At first Ghote suspects he is about to be rebuked but it emerges that Kundah only wants to learn the details of Ghote's investigation. Ghote again interviews Rustom Engineer. The interview proves difficult and Rustom admits being deeply affected by joke that was played on him, but claims to have spent the evening of the murder at home with his brother.

After the interview with Rustom Engineer, Ghote receives a telephone call that informs him that Lal Das has been arrested by Inspector Gadgil. Lal Das was found occupying the garden shed of the late Raja "Bunny" Bender's summer home. Ghote is told by Lal Das that the street urchins tormented him until he was forced to leave the spot where he meditated. He knew the house was empty from Ghote's earlier interview and went there for peace and quiet. Inspector Gadgil is disappointed that Lal Das is not the murderer. Before Ghote can leave two constables bring Jack Cooper in for being drunk and disorderly. Cooper tries to wheedle Ghote into having him released and in the process mentions that Bedekar had "Bunny" Bender investigated by a private detective.

Ghote revisits Bedekar who claims that before the Raja was shot he discovered one of his racehorses was of good enough quality to win the next derby, which means he has no motive for the murder. By a process of elimination Ghote realises that Professor Rustom Engineer is the only suspect left. He visits the professor's home again and interviews the professor's brother. The professor's brother denies the professor's alibi but also undermines the professor's motive. The professor's research had gone down a blind alley decades ago and he was too old to start again, so secretly the professor welcomed the excuse to abandon his work.

Ghote returns to the police station and catches Sergeant Desai playing cards with a joker in the pack. This inspires Ghote and he goes to visit Ram Kundah. Ghote notes that Kundah devotes himself to his job twenty-four hours a day, every day with complete single-mindedness. Ghote characterises Kundah as "totally serious". Kundah accepts this because he sees nothing wrong with the description. Ghote explains that when he is looking for a murderer, he is looking for someone who was at least totally serious at the time of the crime. He observes that Kundah has several times stressed that he did not know that "Bunny" Bender was the prankster, even though Ghote was with Kundah during the telephone call in which Ghote first accused Bender of committing the pranks.

Kundah attempts to flee but is overpowered by Ghote and Sergeant Desai. Back at the police station the Deputy Superintendent of Police, who has not yet heard the news of the arrest, tells Ghote that Kundah has contacted him with news of a vacancy for a security officer in the ministry. He intends to recommend Sergeant Desai for the role.

A young couple, Havana and Peter (Patricia Arquette and Tate Donovan), robs a county fair of its daily receipts and escapes to Canada to hide out in the Hutterite community where Peter was raised.

While there, they marry to satisfy the conservative elders in the community. Peter hides their loot but then is killed in a car wreck. His much younger brother Zeke (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is called upon to replace his brother and marry Havana in a levirate marriage.

Zeke already hates Havana because he believes that she influences his elder brother's behavior. She begins looking through everything that was Peter's, and Zeke rightly deduces that Peter hid something from her. He finds the money, along with a newspaper article that mentions Peter as the prime suspect in the robbery.

Zeke initially uses the cash to trick his bride into doing housework. Later he shows it to the elders, who deem that it should be returned to its rightful owners. Zeke and Havana (who claims innocence of the source of the money) are sent on a quest back to the US to return the money.

During this quest, the two eventually forget their initial animosity and grow protective of each other. When Havana kisses him goodbye, Zeke promises to return and give her a real kiss when he is older.

Michael Dixon (Cuba Gooding Jr.) is an agent working linewatch for the United States Border Patrol on the U.S. Mexico Border in New Mexico. He is well-respected by his peers at US Border Patrol and loved by his wife Angela (Sharon Leal) and 5-year-old daughter Emily (Deja Warrior). Michael and his partner Luis DeSanto (Omar Paz Trujillo) discover a van full of dead illegal immigrants, and they go in search of the "coyote" who was leading them across before he left them for dead.

At the same time, Michael has to deal with a Minute Men-style militia led by Ron Spencer (Chris Browning). The search for the coyote leads Michael and Luis to a trailer, and results in a shootout where Luis gets shot.

During the ensuing chaos, Michael recognizes one of the suspects as Cook (Malieek Straughter), a member of the High Noon Gang (HNG) from Los Angeles. Years ago, Michael was a member of the HNG, until he turned on his back to the gang. The encounter along with Cook, who escapes, leads the HNG and its leader, Kimo (Omari Hardwick), to Michael.

It turns out that Michael has interfered with an HNG plot to bring drugs into the United States. Kimo threatens to kill Angela and Emily unless Mike agrees to use his Border Patrol connections to help the HNG bring in a drug shipment. Meanwhile, Michael would not able to help Kimo, but he realizes that, through the threats made against his family, that he has little choice. Michael is forced to find a way to protect his family from the High Noon Gang.

During the siege at the Alamo, John Stroud (Glenn Ford) is chosen by lot to leave the fort and check on his family and warn other families of the mission's defenders of the impending arrival of General Santa Anna. But when everyone who stayed at the Alamo is wiped out by the Mexicans, Stroud is therefore branded a coward. When Stroud returns to his family, he finds that they have all been killed. Stroud takes the initiative to help other families move to safety from the pursuit of Wade, a Santa Anna sympathizer.

This 32-page book begins with a two-page introduction. According to the adventure background provided, the plot involves a fortress that became buried in the earth ages ago, and became known as the Sunless Citadel. In the citadel's core grows the terrible Gulthias Tree, shepherded by the twisted druid, Belak the Outcast. The Tree spawns magical life giving (and life stealing) fruit, as well as evil creatures known as twig blights. The adventure starts with player characters hearing rumors about the citadel while staying in the nearby small town of Oakhurst. The majority of the adventure then focuses on the characters exploring the citadel and encountering the malign creatures that have taken up residence within, such as kobolds and goblins. The characters eventually come upon the Twilight Grove and its blighted foliage, where they find the Gulthias Tree and encounter the druid Belak. He explains that the tree grew from a yet-green wooden stake that had been used to kill a vampire on that very spot, and the tree accepts humanoids bound to its bole as "supplicants", making the victims completely subservient to its will. A three-page appendix at the back of the book features statistics for all of the creatures encountered in the adventure, as well as three new magic items and the twig blights.

Jessica Donovan (Amy Smart) is engaged to workaholic Kent (played by Billy Zane) and they decide to take dancing classes for their wedding. However Kent is so busy with his work that he misses all of the lessons. Jessica, however, develops a liking for dancing, and ultimately, for the dance teacher Jake (played by Tom Malloy). Jake is deaf (he uses hearing aids) but is a two-time former US Open Swing Dancing Champion. His former partner Corrine is now a judge in the Open Tournaments. Jake and Corrine also have a history as they were engaged but Corrine cheated on him which ultimately led to their break up.

With every lesson, Jessica's interest in both dancing and Jake increases dramatically. At the same time, her fiancé's behaviour becomes unpleasant; partly because she is too busy to cook at home, and partly because he is jealous that she spends too much time dancing with Jake.

Jessica shows both skill and talent; Jake asks her to participate in the National Open Swing competition. This leads to more unpleasantness between her and Kent and eventually she breaks up with him. Jake and Jessica also realize they have great chemistry and finally express their feelings for another just before it is time to participate in the competition.

At the competition, Corrine is on the panel of judges for this dance. Jake and Jessica manage to dance well and avoid the post-performance bickering of many of the other couples. A series of "where are they now" titles then reveals the future trajectories of the major characters.

This 48-page book begins with a two-page introduction. According to the adventure background provided, the plot involves the ''Blade of Fiery Might'' once wielded by the sultan of the efreet, which was destroyed and scattered across the planes. Imperagon, a half-duergar/half-dragon and ruler of the Iron Fortress of Zandikar on the plane of Acheron, has been reforging the sword using the trapped spirits of the greatest forgemasters of history as slave labor. Imperagon intends to wield the ancient blade at the head of a great army to conquer and build a kingdom on the Material Plane, with allies among the drow, the illithids, and fellow natives of the evil Outer Planes. The adventure begins when the player characters investigate events involving local craftsmen, following the trail of clues to the city of Rigus, which leads into the plane of Acheron. Once there, the characters encounter formian settlers from Mechanus, whose hive can serve as a base of operations while preparing an assault on the Iron Fortress. If successful in defeating the golems and '''steel predators''' that guard the fortress, the characters may breach its walls and destroy Imperagon's works. The book contains four appendices. Appendix I contains the statistics for the non-player characters encountered throughout the adventure. Appendix II contains statistics for new monsters, including the '''axiomatic creatures''' template, the '''bladeling''', and the steel predator. Appendix III contains statistics for two new spells and four new magic items (including the ''Blade of Fiery Might''). Appendix IV contains statistics for four pregenerated player characters, recommended for use in case the players require extra player characters.

The Early Triggers

India's Parliament is mostly destroyed in an apparent terrorist attack while in session waiting for an address by the Prime Minister. The casualties are significant and the suspicion immediately turns to Pakistani-based terrorists. Unknown individuals initiate a massacre of Hindu citizens triggering a Hindu back lash and triggering riots across India. The president of Pakistan, who is on a visit to Malaysia, is assassinated by a member of his security detail. An Islamic uprising quickly gains control of Philippines and Brunei. Coups take place in Pakistan, by a fundamental military regime, and North Korea, where a former military commander and party strongman takes over from the current ruling disposition. At the same time there is a theft of a new Super Virus from an Australian laboratory and a weaponized smallpox virus from Russia.

Escalation

The new regime in North Korea launches an unarmed missile targeting an American base in Japan, killing many US troops and bringing United States into the crisis. At the same time, the United Kingdom intervenes and liberates Brunei from the takeover by the Islamists. The new military regimes in Pakistan and North Korea with China looking the other way, collaborates and Pakistan transfers a few nuclear weapons to North Korea in return for a long range missile which can reach anywhere in India and beyond. This is immediately followed by a mortar attack on the Indian Prime Minister's house which fails to kill him. An outraged India asks the United Nations especially US and China to neutralize Pakistan failing which it threatens war with Pakistan. The new North Korean regime prepares for an invasion of South Korea while also testing a new biological weapon created from the viruses stolen from Australia and Russia. Russia and China expresses their desire to stay out of the conflict while at the same time China warning United States that North Korea and Pakistan which they consider allies are not to be interfered with. Japan, now headed by a nationalist leader and not happy with the US response to the missile attack on Japan threatens to withdraw from the mutual defense treaty with the US and develop nuclear weapons for itself. Threatened with an invasion from the North, the South Koreans also toy with the idea of acquiring nuclear weapons. An Islamic cleric with his own agenda also conspires with North Korea and Pakistan to precipitate this crisis.

Countdown to Armageddon

In face of the rapidly escalating crisis of seemingly unconnected events confusion and indecision reigns supreme in the situation room of the US administration and in talks between the various major powers with no co-ordinated actions taken against the escalating threats. The connections between the various characters also becomes evident. The North Koreans successfully weaponize the new virus obtained from Australia and as a demonstration of their capability launches a missile to the middle of the Pacific Ocean where the US detects the presence of the biological agent. Japan conducts an underground nuclear test and officially becomes a nuclear power. In the seemingly monolithic Chinese leadership, cracks becomes visible as differences surface between the pacifist president and the more militaristic party leadership and the Military Commission. United States also discovers presence of Chinese nuclear missiles in Cuba.

Decent into the Abyss

For reasons not very clearly defined, the Pakistani military leadership decides on a pre-emptive nuclear strike against India. The choice of delivery is a fighter bomber whose pilot drops the bomb on the Pakistani nuclear complex instead. Pakistan launches a nuclear attack against India which destroys New Delhi. India threatens nuclear retaliation against Pakistan, and to prevent a regional nuclear exchange Russia and China invade Pakistan to try to neutralize the rest of the country's nuclear weapons. The invasion is unsuccessful as Pakistan launches 6 nuclear missiles and India retaliates with a massive nuclear strike which completely destroys Pakistan. United Kingdom in collaboration with US strikes North Korea with the intend of destroying all the underground bunkers, but fails to neutralize the North Korean leadership. New York is hit by a suicide bomber who has infected himself with the new engineered virus and prior to detonating himself spreads the virus from aerosol containers. The first report of infected people starts to appear within 24 hrs of the attack.

Mutually Assured Destruction

Once the initial shots have been fired the crisis quickly spins out of control with retaliatory nuclear strikes by North Korea and Japan, an unsuccessful intercept of nuclear missiles launched at the US, a power shift in China and both China and Russia entering the war and resulting in a worldwide Armageddon. In the Epilogue it is suggested that all the formal governments in the countries has been destroyed and the leadership hunkered in underground bunkers with the world still officially at war.

Publius Quinctilius Varus, formerly the governor of Syria, is appointed to the governorship of Germania, a hold-out full of what the Romans think of as barbarians. During a brief assignment to the legions in Dalmatia, Varus befriends the Germani auxiliary commander Arminius, unaware that the latter has plans of his own for the Romans occupying Germany. The Roman army is misled by talk of a revolt in a nearby village to the west. When Varus decides to give it precedence and detours from the normal path into the forests, his three legions are quickly entrapped. Twenty thousand heavily armed Roman infantry, and auxiliaries, are brutally ambushed by Germanic forces. Though the legions are well trained, it is Arminius' tactics that prove to be decisive. For three days the Germanic tribesmen surround the legions, killing Roman soldiers along with civilians, family members of the soldiers; some are even taken captive, most of whom are sacrificed on an altar to the Germanic gods. Forty years later the Romans attack Germania again.

The story is divided into three parts called "epochs". The "Jonathan Wild" epoch comes first. The events of the story begin with the notorious criminal and thief-catcher Jonathan Wild encouraging Jack Sheppard's father to a life of crime. Wild once pursues Sheppard's mother, and eventually turns Sheppard's father over to the authorities, and he is soon after executed. Sheppard's mother is left alone to raise Sheppard, a mere infant at the time.

Paralleling these events is the story of Thames Darrell. On 26 November 1703, the date of the first section, Darrell is removed from his immoral uncle Sir Rowland Trenchard, and is given to Mr. Wood to be raised. The second epoch traces the adolescence of both Darrell and Sheppard, who are both living with Mr. Wood.Worth 1972 p. 54

The third epoch takes place in 1724 and spans six months. Sheppard is a thief who spends his time robbing various people. He and Blueskin rob the Wood's household, when Blueskin murders Mrs. Woods. This upsets Sheppard and results in his separation from Wild's group. Sheppard befriends Thames again and spends his time trying to correct Blueskin's wrong. Sheppard is captured by Jonathan Wild multiple times, but continues to ingeniously escape from his prisons. After his mother's death, Sheppard is captured by Wild at Mrs. Sheppard's gravesite, where he is taken to Newgate prison for the last time. He is executed by hanging, with thousands of Londoners turning out to watch his death.

Characters

• Jack Sheppard
• Jonathan Wild
• Thames Darrell
• Mr. Wood
• Mrs. Wood
• Winifred Wood
• Blueskin – Joseph Blake
• Thomas Sheppard
• Mrs. Sheppard

The story of ''Guy Fawkes'' starts in summer 1605, when a plot to blow up Parliament was underway. The first book of the story begins with the execution of Catholic priests in Manchester. During the execution, Elizabeth Orton madly raves before being chased by an officer overseeing the execution. To avoid capture, she leaps into the River Irwell. She is pulled up by Humphrey Chetham, a Protestant member of the nobility, and Guy Fawkes, a Catholic. After she is brought out of the water, she predicts that both men will be executed before she dies. The novel transitions to Lancashire and the Radcliffe family. William Radcliffe is a supporter of the plot, and his daughter, Viviana Radcliffe, is revealed to love both Chetham and Fawkes. Fawkes travels to John Dee, an alchemist, who is able to call forth the ghost of Orton. The ghost warns Fawkes again. This is not the only time Fawkes is warned, as he receives a vision from God that the plot will end in disaster. During this time, the Radcliffe family is exposed as hiding two priests, which provokes the destruction of the home by the British Army. Having lost their home, the conspirators in the plot travel to London.

In the second book, Fawkes and Viviana Radcliffe marry, and she tries to convince her new husband not to continue with the plot. Fawkes argues that he is bound to follow through with events. The book ends when the conspiracy to blow up Parliament fails on 5 November 1605 and Fawkes is arrested.

The third book deals with the trial of Fawkes and the other plotters. They are all held in the Tower of London, and Viviana, who is by then dying, convinces Fawkes to repent. Eventually, he does so as she dies, following which he is executed. The book ends with the execution of the last of the plotters, Father Garnet.

The film centers around a group of druids called the "Sangroids" living in Westchester County, New York, who plan to resurrect their queen by draining the blood from unsuspecting civilians into her body.

On her first day of junior year Suze is horrified to find that Paul Slater is now attending the Mission Academy, having moved to town to care for his ailing grandfather. At dinner that evening, she meets Neil Jankow, a college friend of Jake's, and Neil's brother Craig, a ghost. Suze learns that Craig recently died in a catamaran accident, and that he believes Neil should have been the one who died, as he was the weaker swimmer. When he leaves, Suze and Jesse argue over whether to report his existence to Father Dom.

Paul invites Suze to his house after school the next day, promising to expand her mediator training. There, he tells her that they are "shifters" - powerful mediators with extended abilities, including inter-dimensional travel - and abruptly kisses her. Furious, Suze runs away and is picked up by Neil, who drives her home, but during the trip, Craig takes over the wheel, nearly killing them both. Jesse discovers that Paul is back in town when he sends Suze a bouquet of flowers as an apology. At school a few days later, Father Dom informs Suze that Jesse will be moving out of her room to the Mission's rectory, leading her to believe that their relationship is over. Paul attempts to recruit Suze again, but she lashes out at him and he leaves school.

Later that week, Suze's stepbrother Brad throws a house party while their parents are out. During the party, Jesse learns that Paul had kissed Suze, and tries to kill him. To end the fight, Suze drags Paul into the spirit plane, but unknowingly takes Craig with them. Realizing that he is getting nowhere by trying to hurt Neil, Craig willingly steps into the next world. Paul proposes a deal to Suze: he will not harm Jesse and teach her more about her mediator abilities if she agrees to spend time with him; Suze accepts, in order to protect Jesse. They return to the party as it is broken up, and Paul is sent to the hospital for his injuries.

At the Father Serra festival the next day, Suze meets Dr. Slaski, Paul's grandfather, who reveals that he is also a shifter, and warns her not to trust Paul. After hearing this, Suze runs to the mission's cemetery and meets Jesse once again, who admits that he distanced himself from her because he thought she deserved someone living. She reaffirms her love for him, and they kiss.

Leslie (Amy Poehler) announces she has invited a reporter from the local Pawnee Journal newspaper to write a story about the construction pit that she plans to turn into a park. Leslie meticulously prepares for the interview, instructing the members of her subcommittee to "stay on message." Over lunch with Mark Brendanawicz (Paul Schneider), Leslie seeks advice on how to deal with the press. Leslie once again tells the documentary crew like she did in the pilot that she previously had sex with Mark and seems to still harbor feelings for him. The reporter, Shauna Malwae-Tweep (Alison Becker) arrives the next day to interview Leslie, along with Ann (Rashida Jones) and Andy (Chris Pratt). During the interview, Andy reveals he was drunk when he fell in the pit, much to the horror of Leslie and Ann, who were not previously aware of it.

Leslie calls Mark for assistance in dealing with the reporter and Mark, seemingly attracted to Shauna, ends up leaving the parks department office with her. The next morning, Leslie waits at the pit for an interview with Shauna. Leslie is surprised when Mark drops Shauna off at the site and, when she sees Shauna is wearing the same dress as the previous day, she realizes Mark and Shauna have had sex. Leslie is standoffish and irritable during the interview, and she later confronts Mark, who says that it is a private matter and tells Leslie she is acting like a "huge dork." When Leslie says she cannot have this type of behavior from members of her subcommittee, Mark resigns from the committee. Leslie asks for another interview with Shauna, attributing her behavior during their last interview due to food poisoning from a burrito. During the interview, Shauna reads a number of quotes claiming the park will never be built, and that the existence of unicorns, leprechauns and talking monkeys are more likely. Leslie is disappointed to learn that Mark was quoted as saying "this park is never, ever, ever, ever going to happen".

Later, Ann tells Mark about the upcoming story and the negative quote, which Mark thought was off the record. The two confront Shauna and ask her not to use the quotes. Shauna says that she will not use the quotes since the two are "romantically involved," but when Mark disputes the idea that they are romantically involved, Shauna appears visibly annoyed. Later, Mark apologizes to Leslie and asks to be reinstated to the committee, to which Leslie happily agrees. Later, Leslie reads the story, which is not entirely positive, but her enthusiasm remains strong. In a B story, Tom (Aziz Ansari) deliberately loses at online Scrabble against his boss Ron (Nick Offerman), and is horrified when he finds intern April (Aubrey Plaza) sitting at his desk playing several high point words against Ron. Tom insists to Ron that he is the "Scrabble king." Ron later reveals he knows Tom loses on purpose, but doesn't mind because Tom is his idea of a model government employee: unproductive, lacking initiative and a poor team player.

Mrs Sethi (Shabana Azmi) is a widow living in Southall who wants to marry off her only daughter, for she is alone and unhappy. Her daughter, Roopi, (Goldy Notay) is a little plump and opinionated. Mrs Sethi finds that all her matchmaking efforts are rudely rejected. She avenges this behaviour toward her daughter by murdering the failed dates using her culinary skills. A police hunt begins for a serial murderer using a killer curry.

Mrs Sethi does not feel guilty until the spirits of her victims come back to haunt her. They are unable to reincarnate until their murderer dies. Mrs Sethi must kill herself to free the spirits, but vows to get her daughter married first.

The spirits realise that helping Roopi find a suitable husband before the police catch Mrs Sethi is in their best interests, and everyone begins to work together. Meanwhile, Roopi catches the eye of the young Sergeant investigating the case.

First episode: Telemaco and Penelope

Athena, happy that King Ulysses is close to returning to his native island Ithaca, located to the west of Greece, under the guise of King Mentes, arrives in Ithaca to make sure that Ulysses' return is pleasant. Unfortunately it is not so: although welcomed with respect by the twenty year old Prince Telemachus, Mentes discovers that the palace of the king of Ithaca is besieged by numerous arrogant nobles of the region, the suitors, who anxiously wait for Queen Penelope to decide to take a new husband between them, supposing that Ulysses died since twenty years have passed since his departure for Troy, looting without reserve the cellar and the pantry of the palace. Penelope tries to take time by declaring to the processors that she must weave a canvas in honor of her father-in-law Laertes, but with this pretext every night she undoes it and starts it again the next morning.

Telemachus, at the suggestion of Mentes (who disappears as he came), announces a town meeting to be able to know who is on his side to be able to chase away the suitors and who is willing to follow him on the land to ask for information about Ulysses to King Nestor, the oldest commander who participated in the war. The suitors also arrive at the assembly, claiming to be right in the king's long absence and the fact that Penelope is spending too much time weaving the web. To these answers, the people of Ithaca are silent and dare not oppose, yet the soothsayer Egizio, noting a hawk perched on the battlements of the palace, sees the success of Telemachus' journey, but is derided by the suitors. The next morning, Telemachus is joined by his father's friend and adviser Mentor (again Athena in disguise) who gives him a boat and sailors to get to Pylos, by Nestor. Before leaving, Telemachus asks the nurse Eurycleia not to say anything to Penelope. During the night, Melantho, a young female servant of the palace who is a lover of Eurymachus, one of the suitors, betrays Penelope by revealing to the suitors what Penelope does to her canvas at night. Discovered, Penelope is forced to finish the shroud without apology.

The next day, the suitors noticed the absence of Telemachus and discovered, threatening a boat seller, that he really started to look for news about his father. Concerned that his research is successful, Antinous, chief of staff, suggests an ambush by Telemachus. Arriving in Pylos in the middle of a sacrificial ceremony at Poseidon, Telemachus joins the king after the ceremony. Nestor tells Telemachus of the evening before he returns from Troy: there were those who, like Ulysses, wanted to punish the allies of the Trojans and those like Menelaus who wanted to go home; after several discussions, the Achaean fleet separated and Nestor no longer knew about Ulysses, so he advised Telemachus to go to Sparta, to Menelaus, with his son Pisistratus, who would guide him. Medon, the wine bearer, on hearing the suitors, runs to warn Penelope who, after a moment of anger at Eurycleia for not having told her anything, prays for the safety of her son.

At night, Penelope receives in a dream Athena's visit, under the guise of her sister Iftime, who assures her that the gods watch over her son and also about Ulysses. Finally the figure of Ulysses is presented: a lonely man at the head of a miserable raft at the mercy of the waves that move him away from his final destination.

Second episode: Ulysses, Nausicaa and Calypso

At the beginning of the second episode there is a discussion between Zeus and Athena in which the two agree that Poseidon has tortured Ulysses enough and that it is time for his suffering to end. Ulysses is shipwrecked on an island and, having found a refuge, wanders into a grove of trees and asleep on a bed of fallen leaves. The island in which Ulysses arrived is Scheria, governed by the Phaeacians, and Athena arrives in a dream to the young princess Nausicaa, in the guise of a distant friend and enters the dreams of the girl, telling her that she should prepare herself for her now near marriage and go with the maids to the mouth of the river to do the laundry. The next day Nausicaa goes to the mouth and after doing the laundry, the princess starts to play with the maids, when she sees in the bushes a dirty man, naked and caked with salt and leaves with which he slept on. All the girls run away except for Nausicaa, who is staring in astonishment at the desperate man. Ulysses also remains somewhat captivated by the beauty of the girl and compares her to a goddess, then begging her to take him with her to the palace to clean up the debris of the waters.

As ordered by the goddess and also by her heart, Nausicaa has him washed and dressed by the maids, but she asks that, out of discretion, he did not follow her to the palace, or the young people would believe she had chosen him as a husband. Accepting the wishes of the girl, Ulysses goes alone to the city, while an internal voice (Athena) suggests to him how to behave in front of the sovereigns: Alcinous and Arete. The nobles and monarchs of the palace, suspicious of all the foreigners who come to their land, fill him with questions, only to apologize for their abrupt and gruff interrogation, after they recognize in the hero a good man with nothing to hide. In reality, in order not to cause a stir, Ulysses pretends to be a shipwrecked traveler in search of protection. Alcinous tells that long ago his people, ruled by his grandfather, resided in the Land of the Cyclops, monstrous and violent beings, who continually threatened their lives; so they decided to move with the help of the gods to a new island, paying the price of being isolated and unknown to any traveler, except Ulysses.

Hosted in the palace, Ulysses knows that the Phaeacians are peaceful and that they know how to build boats that never sink and never get lost, but have stopped building them worried by a prophecy: Poseidon, their protector, would have punished the Phaeacians by destroying the crew of the ship that will accompany an enemy on board. Ulysses, meanwhile, spends a lot of time with Nausicaa, telling her that until a few weeks ago he had been a prisoner in Ogygia for seven years, an islet in which the beautiful nymph Calypso is exiled, to whom Ulysses mentally resisted, until ordered by the gods, she didn't allow him to go on a raft.

A few days later, Odysseus is invited to see the games that will decree a husband for Nausicaa. The champion, therefore, asks the guest to participate in the sword contests, but Ulysses refuses, in order not to be recognised, at least until the athletes question his strength, making Ulysses so angry that not only he beats all the participants, but also risks to kill one. Sorry, Ulysses asks Alcinous for forgiveness, but he demands to know his name rather than to hear his apologies.

Third episode: the fall of Troy and the island of the Lotus-eaters

For the victory of the athletes, the blind aedes Demodocus tells everybody the history of the last thing he saw before losing his sight: the fall of Troy. Ten years had passed since the beginning of the war, but neither of the two factions gave up, until one day, on the shores of Ilium, the Trojans found the achaean camp deserted and a gigantic wooden horse on the beach. While Priam and many other citizens interpreted it as an offer of the Achaeans to Poseidon to secure a safe journey, the priest Laocoön understands that it is a trap, or an offer asking that the god destroy the city. The priest is so sure of what he said that he thrust a spear in the belly, almost piercing Ulysses and the others hidden inside. On the verge of burning it, Priam stops Laocoön and orders for the horse to be brought inside the city to repent the offense made to the god. Ulysses' plan works: with the horse inside the walls, the Acheans come out of the sculpture, warn the hidden companions and Troy is conquered. The tragedy is unstoppable and on that same night, after having feasted and celebrated, the Trojans are wiped out by the Greeks; this is the destiny also of Priam, of Deiphobus, the new husband of Helen, and of Astianax, the baby son of Hector and Andromache, who is forcefully taken from his cradle and thrown out of the walls by Neoptolemus, the cruel son of Achilles. Remembering these atrocities, Ulysses starts to cry softly, shaken by violent shivers, and Demodocus, after realising it, recognize him under the shock of all people.

Meanwhile, Telemachus and Pisistratus arrive in Sparta, where Menelaus and Helen have just returned from their journey, unlike Ulysses. The sovereigns welcome Telemachus who, contrary to his expectations, finds himself in front of two sad spouses, severely tested by the fatigue of the war and the fate of the survivors. Agamemnon, says the king, died killed by his wife Clytemnestra, and many met the same death in their homes. The ruler says that the last time he heard about Ulysses, he heard from Proteus, who also told him how to go home. In order to calm the spirits, Elena drugs the wine of her husband and of the guests to relieve their pain and tells of the time she saw Ulysses before Troy was conquered: after being beaten to death by his friend Diomedes to appear as a beggar, he had entered the city presenting himself as a Phrygian soldier attacked by his drunken comrades. The priestess Cassandra, famous for her misfortune to predict future events but without ever being believed, immediately believes him and confides in him that she knows that her city is destined to lose, if the Palladium of Athena were to be stolen from the temple. After Cassandra goes away, Helen arrives, who has become the widow of Paris. who immediately recognizes Ulysses, although battered and bleeding, cursing his coming. Ulysses, furious, threaten her of playing the double-cross and unnecessarily wasting time in that palace, since the entire army of Greece is fighting for her; he finally leaves her, warning her against her husband Menelaus.

Now discovered, Ulysses tells the Phaeacians the misadventures that cost him his return home, his fleet and his companions. Departing from Troy with 12 ships and many companions, he first loses 6 men for each of his ships in the land of the Cicones, allies of the Trojans. Later he loses 11 of his 12 ships in the land of the Laestrygonians, giants that sink ships that have entered the port; only the ship of Ulysses is saved, who for precaution had kept it out of the port. With the only surviving ship, Ulysses lands on the Mediterranean coast of Africa, inhabited by strange people called Lotophagi, or eaters of an aphrodisiac flower called Lotus. Three companions are sent scouting, but after several hours they never return. Worried, Ulysses goes to look for them and arrives in an immense garden with poor houses. All the inhabitants smile and rave about laughing, and among them there are also the three friends of Ulysses. They have completely lost their memory because they ate the dust obtained from the crushing of the flowers of that field, the Lotus, and now they don't want to leave the island. Even when Ulysses tries to remind them of their wives, children and loved homes, the drunken companions do not express the slightest consideration and continue to devour the lotus with a laugh. Then Ulysses takes them all and binds them on the ship, to continue the journey.

Having landed on another island, Ulysses and twelve of his companions go to get supplies and so they go hunting until, following enormous human footsteps, they discover a huge and rough cave. Intrigued, the sailors enter and discover a huge deposit of cheese, milk and ricotta, and utensils belonging to a giant: the bowls that contain the food are huge, and so are an ax and the bed. However, Ulysses, deaf to the insistence of his companions who would like to leave after having taken the cheese, believes he can establish a dialogue with the inhabitant whose skills in making knots and producing good ricotta he appreciates. In any case, there is no more time to escape because the animals of the flock arrive in the cave.

Fourth episode: Polyphemus and the gift of Aeolus

The cave is inhabited by a monstrous giant with feral habits named Polyphemus. The cyclops is horrible to behold, full of hair like a beast and with a single eye in the middle of the forehead. The companions fall to the ground in terror as soon as they see him blocking the entrance to the cave with a huge boulder and asking them in a booming voice to introduce themselves. Ulysses, trying to protect his friends, asks Polyphemus for hospitality, since they need food, and to respect the laws of the powerful and vengeful god in regard to visitors Zeus. Polyphemus bursts into a thunderous and terrifying laugh, declaring that he is the son of Poseidon and therefore above any law and that he does not have to obey anyone, not even the other gods. The men run away terrified, but Polyphemus takes one and crushes it in his hand; then he grabs another, fainted from shock, and dashes him violently against a stone, and then eats them both. Ulysses would like to kill him, immediately after he has gone to bed, but is held back by his friends, including his good cousin Eurilochus. If Ulysses had killed the Cyclops while asleep, then no one would have had the strength to remove the gigantic boulder from the entrance, and so the hero is forced to wait the end of the night. The next day, however, he gets an idea and orders his companions to take a large olive branch and sharpen it, while the Cyclops goes out to graze the herd. Subsequently, Ulysses draws lots for the companions who should distract the Cyclops, while he hides the trunk. Unfortunately the chosen ones are not fast enough and Polyphemus devours them too.

All the prisoners are about to lose hope, were it not for the astute Ulysses, who decides to make the Cyclops drink the wine he had brought with him from the ship as a gift for the inhabitants of that land, a very special wine, so concentrated that to be drunk normally it should be diluted with as many as 20 measures of water. Having filled a large bowl, Ulysses barely grabs it with both arms and hands it to Polyphemus, who, although suspicious of the new drink, tastes it, immediately becoming crazy for it and demands more. Ulysses, wanting to get him drunk, brings him another full bowl, which Polyphemus empties. Ulysses, at the request of Polyphemus to reveal his name, replies that he is called "Nobody"; whereupon the Cyclops laughs and says that as a reward he will eat him last. Ulysses, without wasting time, after the Cyclops has fallen asleep dead drunk, calls to him his friends who heat the tip of the tree trunk: the prisoners intend to blind Polyphemus so that he can make them escape by opening the entrance. The companions, including Ulysses, take the smoking trunk and approach the bed of Polyphemus, climbing on it and positioning themselves directly behind the monster's head to better implant the trunk. With a shout of encouragement Ulysses and his companions thrust the pole, but the cry of pain of Polyphemus is so chilling and resounding that it makes them all fall to the ground, while the Cyclops, waving his hands, creates a great disorder and noise in the cave. He also calls screaming at his Cyclops neighbours who, rushing up outside the cave, ask what or who is doing him harm. To the answer "Nobody wants to kill me!" the other Cyclops tell Polyphemus that they can do nothing and that he must pray to Poseidon and abandon him.

After a night of constant and agonizing cries, Polyphemus the next morning opens the cave door to let the sheep and goats out to graze. The companions tie themselves to the bellies of the sheep joined in groups of three bound with ropes, clinging to the bellies of the middle animal, except Ulysses who clings under the fleece of the ram of the herd, so as not to be recognized by the Cyclops, who touches the sheep one by one on the back and sides but never thinking to feel them underneath. The ram comes out last and Polyphemus, after having said words of affection towards the head of the herd, pronounces a curse against Ulysses calling his father Poseidon to him. While his companions hurry to get back on the boat, Ulysses prefers to stay on earth for a moment longer to mock Polyphemus by telling him his real name, that it was Ulysses, the king of Ithaca, who blinded him. Polyphemus, mad with rage, climbs a ledge, cursing him and throwing various boulders against the ship, begging his father to wreck the enemy's boat. And in fact, shortly after leaving, Ulysses will be forced to land on the island of Aeolus, the god master of the wind, due to bad sea conditions.

Continuing the story, Ulysses arrives on the island of Aeolus and decides to venture alone. Entering a palace, Ulysses enters a huge and opulent banquet room filled with blue steam and "erotes" (flutist kids) playing various instruments and distributing wine. At the end of the room there was a large table full of all kinds of good things, with Aeolus seated in the center and his family at his sides: his wife Cyane, and their sons and daughters, whom he had married to each other to keep the family together. Aeolus is very old and stout with silver hair, and asks the hero to eat with them, telling of his exploits of the Trojan war. Ulysses will stay to eat for several months, telling and repeating his stories about him several times, until he asks the god to let him go. Aeolus agrees and moreover decides to give him all the winds of Boreas and Leveche that dominate the world. First, however, he asks Ulysses if any gods persecute him, in which case he could not have given him his gift; Ulysses lies, keeping silent about the fact that Poseidon, after the episode of Polyphemus, is hostile to him. Aeolus, then, gathers all the winds and encloses them in a large sack made with the tanned skin of a ram, and gives them to Ulysses as long as he never opens the jar so as not to trigger a natural cataclysm. Ulysses promises and goes to the ship, to resume the voyage; thanks to the winds he would have reached Ithaca much earlier than expected. But the companions, intrigued by the sack, believing that it contained riches, one day, just as the coasts of the much desired island are beginning to be glimpsed, open the bag while Ulysses was sleeping exhausted, being tossed back and forth across the Mediterranean Sea. Ulysses stops to reflect on his misfortunes, while the queen comments that after all he deserves all his troubles for not being vigilant and for having set himself against the gods, visiting unknown lands and disobeying the orders of friends with deception.

Fifth episode: the island of Circe and the descent to the Underworld

Having landed on a new and unknown island, Ulysses together with his unfortunate companions decide to visit it to see if it was inhabited by beasts or bloodthirsty men. He divides the expedition into two groups: one commanded by Eurilochus and the other by himself. Entering the thick wood, however, the group of fillet is attacked by no one knows what and people are transformed into pigs. Meanwhile, Ulysses meets a shepherd boy, actually Hermes, who tells him the sad fate of the other group. Ulysses would like to rush to their aid, but the god stops him, telling him that this is a spell of the sorceress Circe, mistress of the island, and that to free his friends he must first of all eat a sacred flower. After that the hero would have presented himself to the sorceress and would have been led to her abode; Circe would certainly deceived him, by giving him a potion to drink, but Ulysses would have remained immune and would be seized by a terrible desire to stab the sorceress, but restraining himself.

Ulysses hears this prophecy and goes into the garden where he meets a woman, beautiful and terrible at the same time, who subjects him to riddles and tests, but Ulysses, protected by Hermes, solves them all. Circe, realizing that this man is different from all her other victims, decides to take him home to make him drink some wine. Suddenly Ulysses finds himself in a strange abode full of climbing plants and cages containing animals and birds of all kinds, all prisoners of the sorceress, but he is immediately invited to sit by Circe who offers him a golden cup. Ulysses, knowing that he is immune to her poison, drinks it all in one gulp, yet suffering greatly from her poison. Meanwhile, Circe laughs heartily, thinking that soon the unfortunate person would turn into a pig too, but suddenly she goes pale and begins to become terribly ugly: she has realized that her powers are ineffective on the hero. Ulysses, angrier than ever, rushes with the sword drawn to the sorceress, but then remembers the prophecy and does not kill her, but he orders her to take him to her friends. Circe, suddenly returned beautiful and more docile than ever, takes him to a stable where pigs grunt desperately and turns them back into the people they were before. However, due to the sudden metamorphosis, the companions find themselves confused and do not even recognize Ulysses, running away every time he tries to talk to them. Circe then takes the opportunity to hold back the hero a little longer, since the effect of the magic on his companions would disappear in a few days, and she spends passionate nights of love with him.

Circe, to ensure that the hero decides to stay with her forever, makes him drink a magic potion that makes him forget his beloved island, and makes him invisible in front of his companions. With Circe, Ulysses will spend a full year, and only the intervention of his companions, tired of living on the ship doing nothing, will bring the hero back to reason. Ulysses asks Circe to be let go once and for all and she, albeit reluctantly, accepts, but before leaving she confides him some secrets and above all orders him to go to the Underworld. Indeed, since many of the gods are hostile to him, Ulysses has a very uncertain and dangerous destiny when he sails on the sea, and so he needs the prophecies of the blind diviner Tiresias, who died at the venerable age of over 700 years, so that he can sail peacefully to in Ithaca.

Ulysses, as Circe had told him, walks through the woods of the island, until he reaches a dark cave dug into the earth. The dark place where Ulysses will find himself is bleak, lifeless and full of fog. The hero is afraid because to him it seems like an intricate labyrinth full of columns and dead caves and above all he does not see a living soul. Indeed, Circe had advised him to take a black young goat with him to slaughter, so that the souls of the deceased could appear and approach, with the hope that among them there was also Tiresias. Ulysses performs the rite and immediately a group of mournful, weeping and sighing people appears, covered by heavy gray cloaks that leave only their faces uncovered. All of them come dangerously close to the victim's blood to drink it, but Ulysses drives them away with his sword: only Tiresias should have quenched his thirst. The group disappears and the soothsayer finally appears: he is white-haired, with a long beard and communicates only by speaking in a whisper, and Ulysses invites him to drink. When Tiresias gets up from the ground, his figure appears even more ghostly, as he drips kid's blood from his mouth and he begins to communicate his future journey to Ulysses. He will still have to face many dangers and only in the tenth year after the destruction of Troy Ulysses will be able to embrace his family again, but he will not stay in Ithaca for long because, driven by his desire for knowledge, he will make another journey which will be the last of his life.

Ulysses does not understand everything and leaves Tiresias to feed on the goat again, to venture deeper into the Underworld. He sees a soul: it is that of Agamemnon who reveals to him that he was stabbed in treason together with the concubine Cassandra by his wife Clytemnestra. The woman was still upset by the ancient sacrifice of her daughter Iphigenia at the behest of her father, since the gods did not allow him departure for Troy, and she now had one more reason to slaughter Agamemnon: his betrayal with the Trojan prophetess. Agamemnon warns the hero when he returns to Ithaca: no woman is faithful to her husband and above all she will try to kill him after so many years away, and this could also happen with Penelope and Telemachus. Agamemnon's weeping soul goes away and Ulysses, more shocked than ever, meets another one: the spirit of the brave Achilles, who died at the hands of the god Apollo and the arrows of Paris. Achilles appears more lugubrious than Agamemnon and confides in Ulysses that he would rather be a slave to the most vile and cruel master in the world than be forced to rule the dead in Hades. The last spirit that Ulysses will meet in the Underworld will be the mother Anticlea. Ulysses asks her how she died and she, crying, communicates that she died waiting for the arrival of her son in Ithaca. Then Ulysses realizes the atrocity and uselessness of the war fought for so many years in Troy to take back the bride of a betrayed king, and to have wasted time in continuous journeys in the Mediterranean, without realizing that the loved ones died of despair waiting for him to Ithaca; and remembering this, he weeps bitterly at the feet of the spirit. His mother invites him not to despair and to hurry on his return to the island because if he is still late, his father Laertes, who had long since retired to live like a filthy hermit among animals, will soon die of a broken heart, too.

Ulysses also becomes aware of the abuses of the suitors who infest his palace by undermining Penelope's innocence, and hearing these words is seized by a wave of anger, but first tries to hug in vain his mother's knees, who disappears every time she is touched. Going towards the exit, Ulysses sees another soul: it is his friend Elpenor, who died a few moments ago due to his intoxicated state. In fact the companions, on the world of the living on the island of Circe, had given themselves to mad joy to drive away the worries and Elpenor, who had drunk too much, had fallen from a ledge breaking his neck. Ulysses promises to the soul that he will have a worthy burial once he gets back up and so he will do, burying him right on the island's beach, shouting his name together as many times as enough to reach the ears of the distant mother.

Circe communicates terrible things to Ulysses about his next travels: the first trial to face is the crossing of the rock of the fearsome sirens, then he will have to overcome the gorge of Scylla and Charybdis. It is believed that this was only overcome by Jason with the Argonauts thanks to the help of a god, an epic feat narrated by Apollonius Rhodius in the ''Argonautica''. The last effort of Ulysses will be the stop on the island of the Trident, where there are grazing cows sacred to the god Helios, or the Sun, inviolable if one did not want to loom in the wrath of the divine master. Circe confides all these things to Ulysses and then vanishes, leaving him confused and amazed. The hero communicates the stages to his companions and invites them to leave, but something has changed in them: they are slowly losing faith in their leader.

Sixth episode: the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, the island of the Sun and the return to Ithaca

Encouraged his companions to embark to return to Ithaca, Ulysses resumes his journey, immediately approaching the rock of the sirens. These are beings not visible to man, although the legend wants them with the bodies of rapacious birds and the heads of beautiful women, and they have the power to enchant travelers with their voice, to finally make them smash with the boat on the rock. The companions believe that Ulysses has gone mad, as he wants to cover their ears with wax so that they do not hear the voice. Ulysses, to show them that he is perfectly lucid, is tied by Eurilochus to the mainmast, recommending him to hold tighter if he begged to untie him. The ship has now reached the rock and while skirting it, Ulysses glimpses the bones of the unfortunate sailors victims of the Sirens and finally begins to hear their voices that penetrate his mind, obscuring it. The voices insistently invite Ulysses to land on the island so that he can end his days in joy and carefree after so many years of fighting and living in pain. But Eurilochus holds him tight and so Ulysses, severely tested by the power of the Sirens, manages to overcome the rock with his companions.

The second stage is the crossing of a narrow gorge between two huge rocks: Scylla and Charybdis. However, Ulysses, believing he was wasting too much time in the crossing and not getting out of it alive, took another longer route that brought him to the island of the Trident, consecrated to the god Helios (the Sun) for the cows grazing the grass.

The ship lands on the beach and immediately a great calm falls on the area, preventing the companions from resuming the journey soon. In fact, Ulysses was reluctantly forced by his friends Heraclius, Eurilochus, Polites and Filetor, who no longer had faith in their commander; now sailors can only hope for the food they own and the prey to fish. Ulysses no longer knows what to do because Circe's prophecy had told him that if anyone dared to kill a single cow, the entire fleet would be annihilated by the gods. The hero does everything to prevent his companions, now exhausted for weeks by hunger and lack of food, from doing it, but one day when he climbs a cliff to implore Zeus, a misfortune occurs. Eurilochus has a heifer killed and feasts with the others all night; Ulysses does not even scold him because he already knows that the fate of those unfortunates is sealed. In fact, after leaving the island due to the sudden return of the wind, a terrible storm unleashed by Poseidon arrives and wrecks the ship with his companions. Only Ulysses is saved on a beam and is tossed for seven days in the sea until he arrives on the island of Calypso.

After the sad tale of all his misadventures, Ulysses asks King Alcinous for a new ship and a crew to reach the now nearby Ithaca and the good king grants it to him. Arriving on the beloved island, Ulysses, since he hadn't seen it for twenty years, no longer recognizes anything about his homeland and immediately asks a shepherd for information about the place. The boy is none other than his protector Athena who, to put him to the test, asks him who he is. Ulysses, keeping his personal details hidden, tells him that he is an unfortunate sailor from Egypt and Athena praises him for his shrewdness, transforming him into an old beggar so that he is not immediately recognized by the inhabitants and family members, so that he can better plan his revenge. . When the boy is gone, Ulysses arrives in the house of Eumaeus, the pig keeper and most trusted servant of Ulysses, who welcomes him amicably as tradition dictates to any guest, obviously not recognizing him. Ulysses is amazed by the goodness of the man and begins to ask questions about the fate of that unfortunate fighter who left for Troy and never returned home, leaving his wife and son desperate, who went in search of him. Eumaeus tells everything in detail and Ulysses, although tempted to show him who he really is, does not.

Meanwhile, Telemachus returns to the island of Pylos from Sparta, more disheartened than ever, and lets the soothsayer Theoclimenus on board, convinced that he can tell him something about his father; by now Telemachus is willing to do anything and is ready to believe anyone's testimony. And in fact, getting that man on board proves to be an excellent action for Telemachus because Theoclimenus advises him to reverse the route to Ithaca, not passing through the Strait of Samos, since a snare of suitors was waiting there. Telemachus arrives safely in Ithaca and goes at night to the house of Eumaeus where Ulysses is also waiting for him. Then the goddess Athena appears to the hero and tells him that now he can finally reveal himself to his trusted family members and the night ends with a tender and moving embrace between Ulysses and his son weeping with joy. The following day the three plan the way to enter the court, relying on the help of Eumaeus and Penelope, while the ship returns to the port with the suitors, more angry than ever for the failed coup.

Penelope is worried about her son's fate, but is reassured when she sees him appear safe and sound on the doorstep with Theoclimenus, and invites them to wash themselves and then eat. Refreshed, Telemachus approaches her mother, gently resting his head on her knee, and asks her what Ulysses was like before her birth. Happy, Penelope remembers when her husband, poorer than ever, came to her house to ask for her hand, although chased away by her future father-in-law. He, knowing that Penelope loved him secretly, went towards her chariot and the girl had chased him, begging him to let her up. The father, beside himself with rage, stood in front of the chariot, but Ulysses overtook him anyway, avoiding him and married Penelope. The episode ends with Theoclimenus who foretells the arrival of Ulysses in a few days and Eumaeus who leads his master Ulysses, always dressed as a beggar, to the court.

Seventh episode: Ulysses beggar at the court and the eve of the final competition

Ulysses is accompanied by Eumaeus to the palace, but first he stops in front of an old and decrepit dog: it is Argos, the dog loved by Ulysses, now dying, who recognizes his master, even after twenty years of absence, and finally dies happy. At the prompting of Athena, in his beggar's disguise, he approaches the suitors for alms. The welcome of the suitors is rude and cruel: they mock and insult him, not knowing what fate awaits them in a few days. The episode is one of the most characteristic of the entire work because there is a continuous connection of the narrative that passes both through the mouth of a male voiceover (as happened in the other episodes) and into the lips of muses in the guise of handmaids. Telemachus cannot endure for long the abuses of the suitors against his father who is even beaten by Antinous, leader of the suitors, when he approaches the latter for alms. As if that were not enough, the corpulent Arnaeus (known as Irus) also arrives at the court, who boasts of being the strongest of all beggars and bullies Ulysses, fearing that the latter wants to steal his place. The suitors propose to make them fight by giving away a choice piece of roast meat and they head into the courtyard. At first it seems that Arnaeus is about to win but then the bully's blows awaken an ancient wrath in Ulysses' chest, who knocks him down with a single well-aimed blow on the jaw. Bleeding and staggering, Arnaeus falls to the ground and Ulysses places him in front of a column, with a stern warning not to challenge him any further or suffer a worse fate.

He is later summoned to meet with Penelope, to speak with the queen in private. Penelope is intrigued by that stranger and she would like to know more about him. However, Ulysses lies anyway and tells her that he is Aethon, brother of the Cretan king Idomeneus, sons of Minos. However, he claims to have known Ulysses, describing in every detail his cloak with the golden buckle depicting a dog tearing a deer. Penelope is amazed and even deludes herself to recognize her beggar as her husband, but Ulysses controls his emotions by reminding her that he is only a Minoan warrior who fell from grace after the Trojan War.

Eurycleia, the oldest and wisest handmaid in the palace, is called to wash the beggar's feet and, going up to the knee, she recognizes a scar. This is the wound inflicted on the hero by a wild boar many years earlier during a hunting trip. The nurse has finally recognized her master, but he covers her mouth, fearing that she may, even if unwilling, ruin all her plans for revenge. Eurycleia is sworn to silence and Ulysses goes to the stables where a young cowherd is feeding a bullock: it is Philoetius, hired by Ulysses when he was a ten-year-old boy; not even he recognizes his master. Eumaeus, knowing everything, is equally silent.

The day long-awaited by suitors is approaching, that is the one in which Penelope will decide who will be the new husband and king of Ithaca; indeed, the rude suitors had not yet brought gifts for the queen and she, to buy time, had demanded that they bring them to her. On the same day as the delivery of the gifts, Penelope had ordered that a competition be organized with the bow of Ulysses and her winner would become her new husband. Both Ulysses and Penelope pass the night before the appointed day sleepless; the first is strongly tempted to reveal himself to the bride, the other has a vision. Indeed, she imagines a large group of geese being mowed down by the arrival of a large eagle and she fears for joy and fear for the true arrival of her beloved husband.

The fateful day arrives and Penelope goes to take Ulysses' bow. It was believed that no one except the hero was able to stretch it, because the master had made it from the horns of an ox sacred to the gods and smeared it with grease every time before using it and always lifted the rope when he didn't need it. Telemachus also wants to register for the competition, to prevent one of the suitors from winning and holds the bow, but he is unable to pull the string. While Antinous prepares for the deed, he sees the beggar Ulysses placing side by side on a horizontal beam twelve axes with a large hole in the middle of the blade, so that there was a single and perfect invisible line between the holes of each blade.

Eight episode: victory of Ulysses and the recognition of Penelope

Antinous tries to draw the bow but it is impossible for him; the other suitors are also unsuccessful. Then Ulysses, in his beggar disguise, asks humbly to be able to try to thread the bow. All the suitors mock him for daring to be their equal, but Penelope steps in and gives him permission to do so. Ulysses skillfully draws the bow, shooting the arrow and making it pass through all the holes in the shutters. He then turns towards Antinous and kills him with an arrow to the side. The suitors are in a shock at his deed, then Ulysses strips off his rags and reveals himself to them, sending them in a panic. Eurymachus, the second foremost of the suitors, lays the blame on Antinous for being the instigator of wasting the palace resources and offers recompensation for everything they had consumed but Ulysses rejects his proposition and proceeds to shoot him and the other suitors. They begin to panic and try to escape his wrath but they are unable to, for the doors had been locked beforehand on Ulysses' orders. They do not even have a weapon to defend themselves: all of these had been sneaked away by Telemachus and Eumaeus the previous night. With the help of Telemachus and the loyal servants Eumaeus the swineherd and Philoetius the cowherd, Ulysses slaughters all suitors. Not even one is saved, and the maids who had betrayed the trust of Queen Penelope by consorting with the suitors are made to clean up the blood and gore and dispose of the bodies of the dead suitors before being punished themselves for their disloyalty by hanging.

Finally Ulysses has taken his revenge and is waiting for nothing but to go to the room of Penelope, who has witnessed terrified and amazed at the carnage. The woman is not yet fully convinced that the warrior is Ulysses, however she lets him into the room. The recognition occurs when Penelope proposes to move the nuptial bed, to which Ulysses replies that this is impossible, because that bed had been built by himself by carving it from a huge tree trunk, around which he had then built his palace. Penelope then has no more doubts and she embraces the groom crying and laughing with joy. Ulysses, moved by her, tells her all her misfortunes and with her he spends a long and happy night of love; in fact the Aurora prolongs the night by passing several days. The final part of the episode tells of the pacification, through the intercession of Mentor and Athena, between Ulysses and the relatives of the suitors, who are seeking vengeance for their deaths. When the clash between the two parties in the fields near Laertes' hut (where Ulysses had gone with his family) seems inevitable, at the urging of Mentor and Athena, Ulysses first lays down his arms, kneeling in a sense of respect for the relatives of the young dead, then the same is done by the father who led the opposing party, thus sanctioning the pacification.

Occupied France, 1944. While trying to avoid the Milice with the Doctor, Polly encounters events that hit too close to home.

In an unnamed forest, a group of women with white-painted faces and robes wander to a ritual site. One of the women, Himiko, the shaman and translator of the Sun God, lies on the ground while another holds a bronze mirror up which reflects the sun's light. Himiko starts to convulse and moan, imitating an orgasm which symbolizes the Sun God penetrating her body. We see several different tribes, one of the Land People, and one of the Mountain People. The Mountain People are a raggedy, unsightly group, all conjoined together by a single rope, and donned with haunting makeup consisting of heavy paint, cobwebs and strings. They wander around the mountain like insects, twitching and in almost no control of their own limbs and muscles. A lone traveler appears, named Takehiko, from the far side of the mountain and enters the forest.

Himiko spends her days weaving cloth on a loom. She hears of Takehiko's arrival and it pleases her. In a ritual, the king of the Sun-God People, Ohkimi, holds a meeting to discuss the visions of the Sun God seen by Himiko. He also discusses the possibility of Mimaki as his own successor to the throne. Mimaki is pleased at this, but Nashime, servant to Himiko, believes that Himiko will be the successor herself, as direct orders from the Sun God. Mimaki is suspicious of this. He confides in his brother Ikume and King Ohkimi and tells them that Himiko might be losing her ability to communicate properly with the Sun God. That her love for Takehiko, a sympathizer of the Land God People, is not allowing her to translate the Sun God's words properly. Mimaki also states that he believes the Land God and the Mountain God are false Gods because they believe that God is in all things and any human being and living creature is able to communicate with God, and the only way for the Sun God People's kingdom to prosper is to take over the Mountain and Land People's kingdoms and force them to believe in only the Sun God. Anyone who resists will be killed.

In the forest, during a ritual, Himiko sees Takehiko hiding behind a tree, and engages in conversation with him. Nearby, Adahime, one of Himiko's assistants in the ritual, overhears them. Takehiko comes to the kingdom of the Sun-God people and meets Himiko in her quarters after dark. Himiko reveals that Takehiko is her half-brother. Despite this, she seduces him and they have sex. Adahime is not far away, and watches them from behind a pillar. During a ritual in the king's court the next night, Himiko addresses the court subjects of the Sun God's wishes. She states that the Sun God requires the people of the kingdom to also accept the Land God and the Mountain God as valid Gods. This shocks the people of the court. King Ohkimi refuses to believe that this is true. He restates Mimaki's assertion from earlier, that Himiko has lost her powers to speak with the Sun God, and her statement is solely out of her love for Takehiko, who is a sympathizer of the Land God People. Believing that Himiko is not wrong in her assertion, her assistant Nashime assassinates the king while the subjects are all distracted by Himiko's speech. King Ohkimi falls and Himiko takes over rule of the Sun God People. She orders anyone who did not believe in the Sun God's words that she would be ruler to be buried alive in the mountains.

The next night, Himiko and Takehiko again sleep together, but Takehiko is resistant to stay with her. Himiko tries to gain Takehiko's favor by offering him a cloth that she knitted. He accepts but leaves her anyway. Adahime follows him and meets him by a lake. She professes her love to him, pleading him to make love to her. After resisting, he eventually obliges. Himiko is horrified to know that her lover has been with another woman, and orders his arrest. Takehiko is captured in the mountains and brought back to the Kingdom of the Sun God. There, Himiko banishes him, but orders her subjects to first rip out all of his fingernails and tattoo his face in colors of shame. Takehiko leaves the kingdom bloody and in pain. The Mountain God People carry him up the mountain where Adahime reunites with him.

Back in the Sun God Kingdom, Nashime consoles a broken Himiko, who feels betrayed and unloved. Himiko proceeds to perform oral sex on Nashime. Meanwhile, Mimaki and Ikume conspire to take power away from Himiko, who they still believe is not acting on the Sun God's behalf, but rather through her own love. They do their best to convince Nashime, and he eventually succumbs to the belief that Himiko has lost her powers, and he keeps her stashed away in her room and Mimaki takes the throne as the leader of the Sun God People. Nashime then tells Mimaki that the young girl Toyo will take Himiko's place as the shaman and translator of the Sun God.

Mimaki declares war on the Land and Mountain God People. The battle between the kingdoms wages in a field. Takehiko and Adahime decide to run away to be together forever, but they are ambushed in the forest by Mimaki's soldiers who pierce them with arrows. Takehiko and Adehime's corpses are brought back to the Sun God People's Kingdom to show to Himiko. She is angered and sad. Nashime again tries to console her, but she tells him to leave. Nashime realizes that Himiko has lost all her powers and possibly her mind too. While she is knitting cloth, the Mountain God People kidnap her from her room and torture her. She calls out for Nashime's help, but he only watches and cries. Himiko dies and Nashime's falls into depression, crying out in the mountains for her. Ikume and Mimaki are shown battling with swords on a ridge, and Mimaki kills Ikume.

Mimaki has a court ritual in which the new translator, Toyo, comes and declares the Sun God is still within Himiko and that the powerful country of Wei is to be given many slaves and offerings. Mimaki is disturbed by this. Nashime breaks down crying. The film flashes forward several years, and Nashime is walking in the forest, old and fragile, still crying over Himiko. He looks up and sees a helicopter. The camera pans out of the forest to reveal that it is atop a kofun, or ancient keyhole-shaped burial mound, surrounded by a suburban neighborhood with offices, houses, factories and a highway, revealing the film as a mythical fable shrouded from, yet within, modern times. The credits roll with aerial shots of more ancient tumuli and their modern surroundings.

This short novella returns to the planet ''Jijo'', setting of the first two books of the ''Uplift Storm'' trilogy. At the end of ''Infinity's Shore'', a small group of neodolphins are left on Jijo, those suffering from "stress atavism", a condition wherein the subject reverts to a more primitive state similar to non-uplifted dolphins, as well as medical personnel to oversee them, and others deemed non-essential to ''Streaker'''s desperate final mission. Additionally, they are to search for Peepoe, a nurse who was abducted by two reverted dolphins, Zhaki and Mopol, who wished to remain on Jijo with her as their unwilling sexual partner.

Tkett was an archeologist aboard ''Streaker'' and is among those that were considered non-essential. He is not suffering from stress atavism, but has a seemingly delusional belief that they may all return to earth some day. Using the dolphin's highly sensitive underwater hearing, he detects the sound of engines and, believing this may be one of the many ancient ships used as decoys during ''Streaker''s escape from Jijo, goes in pursuit of it accompanied by Chissis, a partially reverted crew mate.

Peepoe also hears the sound of engines deep in the ocean and decides that the time has come for her to make an escape. As she is totally unaware of where she is relative to the dolphin station outside Wuphon Port, the rumbling of the distant engine is the only clue she has as to what direction to travel in. She begins by swimming deep where her captors are less likely to notice her escape, but eventually resorts to a furious sprint across the surface once she detects the sounds of Mopol and Zhaki pursuing her with their powered sled. Exhausted, she comes to a point where she is directly above the engine noise, and she makes a desperate dive down toward it, finding not a spaceship but something that looks like a strange sea monster that grabs her with a tentacle as she loses consciousness.

Around this same time, Tkett and Chissis encounter the source of the noise they had been pursuing. It’s revealed to be an extremely large cylindrical machine moving across the ocean floor. They enter a hatch and find a strange realm within, where tiny versions of the six races that live on the surface live inside strange semi-transparent cubes, apparently living entirely inside simulations. They see a great many of these cubes in numerous huge chambers within the machine.

Peepoe awakes in a pool inside the "creature" she encountered, and likewise finds tiny versions of the six races living inside of it, but in this case they live in fanciful villages along the shores of intricate waterways. Each village has an apparent shaman leader that can summon other creatures to defend their people. She eventually encounters a friendly shaman who recognizes her as a dolphin and not a monster. It is explained to both dolphin parties that they have come earlier than expected to these simulations, but they are invited to remain there and live a life of endless adventure and excitement.

A holographic link is used to allow them to speak to one another, and to see that Zhaki and Mopol have already accepted the offer and are awaiting transformation and entry to the simulated worlds. They are told that nobody is forced to enter the simulations, but if they refuse their memory of the encounter will be erased in order to protect the secrecy of the project, which is now revealed to be a plot by the Buyur, the last race to legally inhabit Jijo.

The Buyur foresaw the "Time of Changes" and knew that the galaxy Jijo is in would lose contact with the broader galactic civilization. Their plan is that the descendants of those in the simulations will found an entirely new type of civilization that rejects science in favor of magic and wonder, all provided by the Buyur's machinery.

Tkett is repulsed by the idea and rejects it entirely, while Peepoe argues for accepting it and recruiting as many other dolphins as the can to join them. As they argue the point, Chissis suggests to Tkett that he listen more carefully to what Peepoe is saying, and he realizes there is a hidden sonar message behind her words advising him to "sleep on it".

Tkett awakens sometime later on the surface with the other two dolphins, disoriented to find himself already swimming at a rapid pace. Peepoe explains that she has realized the Buyur had no experience with cetacean brain structures, and would not realize that only one hemisphere of their brain sleeps at a time. Tkett suddenly recalls everything from their encounter, and the three agree they will fight against the plot. Chissis makes remarks that seem to indicate she is ready to return to full sapience with the others.

A cave with primitive drawings on the walls is discovered on the grounds where a housing community is to be built. An archaeological group from a local university, led by a Dr. Klein, begins excavating the cave. Shortly after, livestock begin to go missing from nearby farms, their carcasses found near the mouth of the cave. Dr. Klein believes this to be an intimidation tactic by James Holsen, the man in charge of the new housing project, which is now on hold thanks to the discovery of the cave.

Her group goes home for the weekend but Dr. Klein stays and continues study of the cave. Sheriff Roy looks into the dead animal carcasses and follows the traces of a recent kill back to the cave, to find a dead animal being cooked and Dr. Klein lurking in the darkness. She claims she is staking out the site because the drawings have been changing. The photos taken earlier show that the cave paintings are different from when the photos were taken. Now suspicious of Klein, the sheriff tries to talk her into leaving the cave but she refuses. The sheriff holds his own stakeout in his truck outside the cave.

Dr. Klein is awakened by footsteps and animal growls. She looks over the drawings and the human figures are gone. She sees people running back and forth inside the cave and tries to make contact. The sheriff hears Dr. Klein scream. Rushing into the cave, he finds her dead, a spear in her back. The sheriff explores the cave but finds nothing. He returns to the entrance to find Klein's body is gone and the cave drawings have become animated, with one figure pulling a prone figure with a spear in it, and many figures with spears moving toward the other figure. He frightens the encroaching figures off with gunfire. He then takes some water and scrubs the paintings off the wall. A primitive hunter appears behind him and throws his spear. When the sheriff finishes scrubbing, the hunter and the spear disappear. The sheriff returns to his truck and leaves.

In Los Angeles, Cooper is a "key-man" (fence) for a local crime boss, operating a series of warehouses used as storage facilities for stolen and illicit goods. Cooper hopes to close a deal for a new block of storage units, bribing local realtor Elias O'Neil to broker a deal with city officials to sell him the warehouses. Elias tells Cooper that he needs more time, and he gives him a week with an implicit threat of violent retaliation should he fail. Cooper is ordered by his boss Carl to fix a boxing match, after their resident fixer Paulie failed to get the fighters to take a dive. Carl meets with Paulie, who tells the former that he's lost his touch and wants out of the criminal underworld. Cooper volunteers to fix the fight on his behalf, and informs the boxer Tonozzi that if he doesn't take a dive, Paulie will be hurt. Tonozzi reluctantly agrees.

After a surprise birthday party, Cooper is taken by Carl and his bodyguard Bobby to one of the prospective warehouses, where he is ordered to finish the deal by Saturday. Carl introduces Cooper to Turner, a young punk dressed like a cowboy who is to be his protege in the underworld. A disgruntled Cooper returns to his birthday party, but is interrupted by Paulie's arrival, announcing Tonozzi won the fight. Begging Cooper to help him, Paulie is advised to leave town until Cooper can smooth things over with Carl. Cooper visits Elias at a barbershop to close the warehouse deal, but Elias demands another $15,000 for bribes. Cooper agrees to pay out another $10,000, but Elias questions his authority to do so as he heard rumors that Cooper is on the way out. Cooper meets Carl and gives him the weekly pay offs. As he gets in the elevator to leave, Bobby joins him and brags that he killed Paulie. Angered, he brutally beats Bobby and breaks two of his ribs in the process.

Cooper is driven to Carl's office by Turner, who is now Carl's driver following Bobby's hospitalization. At the office, Turner goes to the bathroom, allowing Cooper to slide a gun from his desk and hide it under his coat. Turner returns and asks questions about Cooper's days as a carnival barker, but Cooper does not answer and goes outside just as Carl drives up. Carl authorizes the extra $10,000 for the warehouse, but warns Cooper that he better have a "yes" by Saturday. He chastises Cooper for beating Bobby, stating that Cooper is the syndicate's "computer" and they cannot afford for him to break down.

Hoping to relax, Cooper and his girlfriend travel to a cabin in the woods. Things seem fine, until Sarah notices wet footprints inside the cabin and Cooper discovers his gun missing from a drawer. After searching the cabin and finding no one, Cooper buys new locks and a shotgun. That afternoon, Cooper drives to Elias's hotel, only to find he is not registered there. He telephones Elias, but gets no answer. Returning to the cabin, Cooper finds Turner waiting for the warehouse answer. Cooper responds that when he gets the answer, he will call Carl himself, and sends Turner away. After Turner leaves, Sarah demands to know what is going on, but Cooper will only say it is "business." Enraged, Sarah slaps Cooper, who then punches her in the face. Embarrassed, Cooper puts her on the bed, explaining that there are new people that want to take his job away, and without his work he is nothing.

As there is no telephone in the cabin, Cooper goes to a nearby bait shop and calls the hotel. Upon learning Elias never arrived, Cooper drives back to the cabin and falls asleep holding his shotgun. He dreams Turner is there, holding a rifle; Cooper aims his shotgun, causing Turner to drop the rifle, and scream that he only wants the "message." Cooper slugs him with the gun and, just as he is about to pull the trigger, Sarah appears, distracting Cooper long enough for Turner to grab the rifle and shoot Sarah. Cooper awakens and tells Sarah they have to return to the city. After dropping Sarah off, Cooper goes to Elias' house and learns that the deal has fallen through and that Carl already knows. Cooper puts Sarah on a train for Las Vegas, promising to join her later. He then finds Carl at a restaurant and threatens to kill him if he doesn't take the contract off his head. Carl insists that the mob cannot lose their "key man" and that they will find other warehouses.

At his home, Cooper is attacked by Turner with a gun. Cooper is shot multiple times, but manages to charge Turner, then beats him and strangles him to death. He collapses to the floor in exhaustion, and dies of his wounds.

Past life regression therapist Mary McNeal has had great success in using hypnosis to make patients remember past lives, but when she tries to trigger memories of her own past lives, the recordings of her hypnosis technique just bore her to sleep.

One day Mary pays a house call, but her patient says she already knows about her past lives and dismisses her. Mary finds her office is now an employment counseling center. Accepting that reality is now changed such that she no longer has a job, she agrees to a session with Jim Sinclair, the employment counselor. She has no useful skills in her current life, since in this reality everyone remembers all their past lives, leaving no demand for regression therapists, so Jim asks her for her background from her past lives. She tells him she cannot recall any of them. He does not believe her, so she leaves.

Mary finds a woman outside suffering from exposure and offers to get help. The woman refuses and reminds Mary that the law grants people the right to commit suicide so as to move on from a unsatisfactory life to a potentially better one. Mary convinces her that she is needed here and runs to get help, but is abducted by Jim. Jim reveals he is a member of a paramilitary organization. He and his associate accuse her of pretending not to recall her past lives because she is a reincarnation of a notorious person who could face retribution for crimes in previous lives. They give her truth serum and interrogate her about her past lives, but she insists she does not remember.

Convinced she is telling the truth, they ask Mary to help them forget their past lives, to stop trying to avenge injuries or yearn for joys from the past. Mary goes to work with Jim, using hypnosis to make people forget about their past lives.

The film follows three characters, a hit-man, a mobster and a corrupt detective who confront each other when events come to a head for them. Hit-man Lee Choe decides to retire to live a normal life. After refusing an order from mobster John Lowe, Lowe has Lee's girlfriend killed. In order to seek vengeance, Lee goes on a mission to kill Lowe, who turns to corrupt detective Craig Barnes to frame him. At the same time, Barnes, who's being investigated by internal affairs, has to deal with his unhappy, alcoholic wife Katie.

Norman Blane is a lonely man who spends his evenings watching the television and eating TV dinners. Attempting to order a music album from a television advertisement, he dials a wrong number. A woman named Mary Ann answers and they get to talking. She asks Norman to call again tomorrow, but only after 7 p.m. The next day, he discusses this with his co-worker Richard. Richard suggests he ask Mary Ann out.

That evening, Norman calls Mary Ann. He suggests they meet in person. She is adamantly resistant to the idea and only wants to talk on the phone. A week later, Richard suggests Norman call the phone operator and ask for the address which corresponds to Mary Ann's phone number so that he can scout out the location and contrive to run into her. The address is an art gallery but no one named Mary Ann works there. Norman calls the number while in the gallery and hears Mary Ann's phone ring. He follows the ring to a room with the sculpture of a woman. A patron tells him the sculpture is a self-portrait by Mary Ann Windebelle, her last work before she killed herself.

Norman calls Mary Ann that night and she says she saw him at the exhibit. She says it is lonely and dark where she is and that she should not have answered the phone when he misdialed. She breaks contact, no longer answering his calls. He returns to the art gallery and talks to the sculpture, telling it how much he loved talking to her, and that he feels without their conversations to look forward to he no longer has a reason to live. Tears run from the sculpture's eyes in response. That night, Mary Ann calls him and she tells him she heard what he said, and it reminded her of how she felt before she committed suicide. He tells her that he loves her and she asks him to come to her immediately, before she changes her mind. The art gallery is closed, but the door unlocks for Norman after he tries it. He embraces the sculpture, telling her that he wants to be with her forever. A security guard enters and finds two sculptures holding hands.

An officer of a farmer's bank, Warren Cribbens, is called into the bank manager Mr. Cutler's office. He offers Warren a promotion to loan officer. Warren is more comfortable in his current position but too shy and diffident to express his thoughts clearly, and he gets the promotion. When Warren leaves Cutler's office, a teller, Sandy, bumps into him and accidentally steps on his glasses, cracking them. Warren later looks through his cracked glasses and sees a teller drop a bill into a trash can. When he tells her about it, they look and see nothing. He sees her drop a bill in the trash again, this time without his glasses, and keeps quiet for fear of embarrassing himself further. However, the teller notices there really is a bill in the trash this time.

Cutler tells Warren to foreclose on any mortgages that go past due. But when farmer Vern Slater nears the end of his grace period, Warren offers to look over the property. He finds Slater has underdeveloped the land and is using outdated equipment, and looking through the glasses he sees the farmhouse as dilapidated; the only way Slater can hope to escape foreclosure is to sell off some of his land. Slater becomes hostile once it becomes clear that Warren cannot approve an extension of the grace period.

Warren uses the glasses to get a look at Sandy's future: she falls off a ladder and breaks her neck. He begs her to be careful around the bank and then withdraws his life savings to give Slater a personal loan. Cutler wants Warren to offer Slater bottom dollar for his land as his only alternative to foreclosure, because a highway is planned to run through the land. Warren puts on his glasses and sees Cutler's plan to get rich from the highway land will succeed. When Cutler finds out about Warren's loan to Slater, he fires him. Sandy falls from the ladder but Warren grabs her as she lands. She apologizes for breaking his glasses again but he assures her not to worry as he does not need them anymore.

''Love, etc'' was written some ten years after ''Talking it Over'' and is set ten years later. In the intervening period Stuart, the protagonist, has emigrated to America, remarried, opened a restaurant, got divorced and returned to England, where he has set up a successful organic food business. Meanwhile, Oliver and Gillian and their two daughters live in a small flat in north-east London, Oliver still seeks success as a writer supported by Gillian's picture restoration. Stuart appears to have forgiven Oliver for stealing his wife and offers him a job as a driver...

The film opens with brief flashes of a man and a woman embracing. The man later proves to be Brady, the "odd-job man." There is also a flash of the woman's body floating in the lake.

The reclusive Helen invites her friend Anne, a writer, to stay the weekend with her at her family's estate. The large manor, located near a lake in a forest, is overgrown with foliage and has mostly been untouched for an extended period of time. Helen, a translator, has recently returned to her native England after working abroad, and had lost touch with Anne. Helen had broken up with her boyfriend John. The two women have dinner, start a fire in the hearth, during a storm, and talk over tea before going to bed. Helen asks Anne what she thinks happens after death.

The next morning, Helen stops by a chemist store in town, where the clerk Mr. Burke asks about her friend, Cora Porter; she tells him she is not with her. Back at the manor, Helen and Anne go for a walk through the woods. At the lake, Helen tells Anne that someone drowned themselves there. The two women take a boat out onto the water, which unnerves Helen. En route home, they encounter Brady, a handyman who lives in the stables on the property; Anne comments that he was staring at Helen, and Helen responds by saying he disgusts her. Later, Helen spies on him with binoculars from the house.

Helen continues to have trouble sleeping at the house, and hears voices emanating from the attic one night. The following morning, Anne borrows Helen's car to drive to town. On the way home, she stops by the lake and smokes a cigarette, where she is confronted by Brady, who introduces himself. He mentions Helen's friend Cora, whose photograph Anne recalls seeing in the house. Anne returns to the house where she finds Helen distraught over her absence. She confides in Anne that she is ill, and Anne suggests they return to London, but Helen refuses, and then kisses her.

That night, Anne is awoken by moaning noises. She asks Helen if someone else could be living in the house, but Helen dismisses the idea. John arrives at the house to pick up Anne, but Anne insists on staying a few days longer due to Helen's fragile emotional state. Helen observes John kissing Anne in the car, and is upset. That night, Helen's attention is drawn to an attic door in her bedroom, and she begins to masturbate furiously. Anne gets up to investigate the noises she hears and is startled by a figure who stabs her to death.

Hannah, the housekeeper, arrives in the morning, and finds Helen asleep on the couch; Helen asks her not to return for several days, saying she needs solitude. Later at the drugstore, Hannah tells Mr. Burke about the interaction, and recalls that she once saw Cora having sex with Brady in the stables, and has not seen her since. While walking through the woods, Helen is confronted by Brady, who asks her about Anne's whereabouts; when he intimates that she murdered Anne and Cora, Helen runs away in a panic.

At the house, Anne's dead body sits in a chair in Helen's bedroom, and Helen is plagued by disembodied voices and other phenomenon. During a rainstorm, John arrives looking for Anne, and enters though an unlocked door. Upstairs, Helen stabs him in the head and neck numerous times, killing him. That night Brady stops by Helen's house to confront her about Cora, whose decomposing body he has found in the lake. He has cut off some off Cora's hair and brought it with him to show Helen. He tells Helen he witnessed her push Cora in, but she coolly denies it. When he threatens to blackmail her, she stabs him repeatedly in the face and the back of the head, killing him. She appears to see flashes of Cora standing in an open doorway, illuminated by flashes of lightning during another rainstorm. The next morning, Hannah, Burke, and his protege Nick arrive at the house. In the living room, they find Brady's corpse. While searching upstairs, they find John's body in the hallway, and Helen staring blankly through the window. In the yard, she watches as Brady and Cora embrace.

Doctor Burrell, physician for the wealthy Brockman clan, confirms the family matriarch, Selena, is dying. Burrell despises the Brockmans, particularly Selena's malicious niece Diane, but feels obligated to work for them as his family has for generations.

Selena sends for her niece Debra, whom she has never met. Intrigued, Debra takes the invitation. At the mansion she meets Diane's mother Martha, who is nearly catatonic, and Selena, who grabs Debra's hand.

The next day, Debra has a liver spot and Selena is up and fully recovered. Dr. Burrell is surprised and incredulous. Late that evening, Debra calls Burrell. He comes over and, finding she has the appearance of premature aging, sends her to the hospital. Fearing the unknown malady may be contagious, Dr. Burrell examines the other residents of the Brockman mansion and discovers a scar on Diane's arm. When he mentions his concern for Debra, Selena and Diane immediately dismiss him. Outside, the Brockmans' deaf handyman, Orville, shows him a diary with a photograph from 1940 of a girl who looks like Diane, with a scar in the same place as Diane's. The diary recounts how Martha burned her arm in a fire.

Burrell slips back into the house and examines Martha, confirming by the absence of a scar that "Martha" is really Diane, and Martha switched ages with her. Realizing Selena did the same thing to Debra, he confronts Selena and demands she return Debra's years to her. She refuses, and Martha attacks Burrell. A disoriented Diane enters with a gas lantern crying for her mother. Martha shoves her away, knocking the lantern from her hands. The house is engulfed in flames. Dr. Burrell tries to help them but barely escapes with his own life. A neighbor sees a woman on fire break through a window and leave. The next morning Burrell identifies the corpses of Selena, Martha, and Orville. Debra's youth is restored and Dr. Burrell tells her the whole story.

At the hospital, Diane is taken in with burns all over her body and labeled Jane Doe. The doctor concludes all they can do is make her comfortable as she dies. However, her left arm is healing quickly and a nurse complains of a burn she does not recall receiving.

In order to write an article for the Mesa University college newspaper on how cheerleading demeans women, Kate (Jo Johnston) infiltrates the cheerleading squad. The other cheerleaders deal with their own problems: Mary Ann (Colleen Camp) struggles to get her promiscuous football player boyfriend, Buck (Ron Hajek), to propose to her; Lisa (Rosanne Katon) is having an affair with statistics teacher Professor Thorpe (Jason Sommers); and Andrea (Rainbeaux Smith) debates whether or not to stay a virgin. Meanwhile, Kate uncovers unscrupulous dealings: the football coach (Jack Denton) and college dean (George D. Wallace) are in cahoots in rigging games to favor betting spreads that Professor Thorpe, who is also the bookie, arranges. Later, Prof. Thorpe turns against the coach and dean as they turn against their star quarterback, who they want to convince to throw the game for a big payoff. When confronted, the quarterback refuses on principle and is arrested by university police, who plant a marijuana joint on him as they carry out the dean's ultimatum. The movie endorses defiance of authority, and questions the ideals of love and virginity.

Middle-aged and highly successful lawyer Bertrand Beauvois (Fabrice Luchini) is hired by Monaco businessman Louis Lassalle (Gilles Cohen) to defend his mother Édith Lassalle (Stéphane Audran), who has killed her former lover. Lassalle assigns a bodyguard to Beauvois, Christophe Abadi (Roschdy Zem).

Audrey Varella (Louise Bourgoin), a beautiful but highly promiscuous local TV weather girl whose previous lovers include Christophe, enamors Beauvois, hoping to make a better life with him. This despite the warnings of Christophe to Beauvois, who have formed a bond of friendship, to stay away from her.

Audrey spends all her time with Beauvois, including nights of exhausting wild sex, and Beauvois entreats Christophe to make her disappear from his life. He then continues to the court for his final plead in the Lassalle case.

After having sex with her, Christophe pushes Audrey and her scooter off the road and kills her. Beauvois willingly takes the blame. In one of the last scenes, we see Mrs. Lassalle being freed from prison after only one year of imprisonment while Beauvois remains among the inmates.

A historical drama about Yeonsangun of Joseon as a prince trying to restore the status of his mother, the deposed and executed Queen Yun.

Continuing from the previous episode, Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) and Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) hold each other at gunpoint. Fox Mulder (David Duchovny), the person lingering outside his apartment, bursts in and forces Skinner to put his gun down. He also demands that Skinner surrender the digital tape. Skinner insists on keeping the tape, saying it is their only leverage in exposing the conspiracy.

The agents visit The Lone Gunmen, showing them an old photo featuring Bill Mulder, The Smoking Man, Deep Throat, and other members of the Syndicate. The Lone Gunmen also recognize Victor Klemper, a notorious Nazi scientist who was brought to the United States under Operation Paperclip. Melvin Frohike informs Scully of her sister Melissa's condition. Mulder persuades Scully not to visit Melissa at the hospital, since she could be targeted there.

Furious that the wrong person was murdered, the Syndicate demands that the Smoking Man produce the tape. The Smoking Man promises to do so the following day. Meanwhile, Mulder and Scully visit Klemper, who says that the photo was taken at Strughold Mining Facility, a former mine in West Virginia. After the agents leave, Klemper calls the Well-Manicured Man and informs him that Mulder is alive. The news causes the Syndicate to further mistrust the Smoking Man. Meanwhile, at the hospital, Albert Hosteen visits Melissa while a suited man loiters nearby.

Mulder and Scully arrive at the mining facility and, using the code for Napier's constant given to them by Klemper, unlock one of the reinforced doors inside. The agents discover a large complex of filing cabinets containing smallpox vaccination records and tissue samples. Mulder finds his sister Samantha's file and finds that it was originally meant for him. Meanwhile, Skinner tells the Smoking Man that he may have found the digital tape. The Smoking Man is agitated at this, insisting that he will not make a deal with Skinner and tacitly threatening his life.

Hearing noise, Mulder heads outside and witnesses a UFO flying overhead; inside, small beings run past Scully. Cars full of armed soldiers arrive, forcing the agents to flee. The agents meet with Skinner at a diner in rural Maryland. Skinner wants to turn over the tape in exchange for their reinstatement and safety. After initially objecting, Mulder agrees to let Skinner turn the tape over. Skinner heads to see Melissa in the hospital and is told by Hosteen of the mysterious blue-suited man outside. Skinner chases the man to a stairwell where he is attacked by Alex Krycek and Luis Cardinal, who beat him unconscious and steal the tape.

Krycek narrowly escapes an attempt on his life when his car explodes. He subsequently phones the Smoking Man, telling him that he has the tape and will make its contents public should anyone come after him. The Smoking Man lies to the rest of the Syndicate, telling them that Scully's would-be assassin was killed in the car bombing and that the tape has been destroyed with him. Mulder and Scully return to Klemper's greenhouse, finding the Well Manicured Man there. He admits to knowing Mulder's father and states that he helped gather genetic data for post-apocalyptic identification, data Klemper used to work on alien-human hybrids. Samantha was taken to ensure Bill Mulder's silence after he learned of the experiments.

Mulder confronts his mother, who tells him that his father chose that Samantha be taken. At FBI headquarters, Skinner once again meets with the Smoking Man about the tape. The Smoking Man calls Skinner's bluff, knowing he no longer has the tape, but Skinner reveals that Hosteen and twenty other Navajo have memorized the contents of the tape and are ready to reveal it if either Mulder or Scully are harmed. Mulder meets with Scully at the hospital, who reveals that her sister died a few hours before. Mulder tells Scully that he believes that the truth is still in the X-Files. Scully tells him that she's heard the truth, and now what she wants are the answers.Lowry, (1995), pp.235–237Lovece, pp.184–186

Mac, Charlie, and Dennis have an awkward meeting with Sweet Dee's acting class crush, Terrell (Malcolm Barrett), when they find out he is African American. After finding out he is a club promoter, they decide to try to hire him to help Paddy's Pub bring in more customers. While talking about him, Charlie's crush, The Waitress (Mary Elizabeth Ellis), overhears him say something offensive out of context. Charlie and Mac go to a college campus and try to make friends with African American students in an attempt to prove they aren't racist, but Charlie ends up attracting Jennell (Telisha Shaw), one of the African American girls. Meanwhile, the bar sees huge business from Terrell's promotion, but they discover Terrell is gay, and the bar becomes one of the hottest gay bars in the city. Dee and Mac conspire to get Dennis, who is liking the attention from the gay men, drunk, to make it seem as if he has hooked up with one of the gay men, causing him to fire Terrell. Charlie tries to use Jennell to prove to the Waitress he isn't racist, but ends up getting both to hate him. Mac, trying to prove to the gang he isn't racist, ends up being the most offensive of all.

Lisa and Thomas are lovers. They give appointments in hotels and have so far managed to avoid arousing the suspicions of their respective spouses, Lionel and Carole. One day, Carole goes to a new gynecologist (hers is on maternity leave!) And falls on Lionel, she had met shortly before leaving school, their children being in the same class. A detail then puts their chip ear, they even decorated the pen came from Seville, which had been offered by the husband and wife. They eventually realize that Lisa and Thomas were in the same place at the same time. Lionel and Carole each follow their spouse and discover their connection. They will then work independently of each other to separate the two lovers ...

The book follows the journey of an orphaned girl named Shandril who later leaves her home and embarks on a journey, thus discovering love, and of course Spellfire.

After her mother's death and her father's brutal suicide, 25-year-old Sarah Black fears she is losing her grip on reality. She is haunted by nightmares and terrifying visions, and she cannot shake the feeling that something evil is about to find her. When people she cares about start to die, Sarah believes she may be next. Detective Scott Aro has been investigating a string of murders for 10 years, but nothing he has seen can prepare him for what lies ahead. As hope seems lost, the two must face the evil that has been unleashed and battle to stay alive as they discover some things will not stay dead....

Beka's story continues when she gets sloppy with her reports to Ahuda, and she decides to practice again by starting a new journal.

Now a first year Dog, Beka works the Evening Watch with her loathsome partner, Silsbee. His attitude of letting Day Watch catch the criminals they see annoys Beka to no end. Silsbee eventually dumps her as a partner, and she is partnered with Clara Goodwin and Matthias Tunstall, her former trainers.

Beka learns of the existence of coles, or counterfeit coins, from her friend Tansy. As she and her partners investigate, they get word of a thin harvest, which bodes ill for the poor of the Lower City. Beka and Pounce—a speaking constellation in the form of a cat—find Achoo, a bloodhound, being hurt by her handler. When Beka steps in to stop the abuse, she takes Achoo as her scent-hound. Meanwhile, due to the thin harvest, bread prices go up and a riot starts in the city. Beka, Goodwin and Tunstall get caught up in the fight, and Tunstall gets both of his legs broken.

After the riot, Lord Gershom, the Lord Provost, sends Beka, Goodwin and Achoo to Port Caynn to further investigate the coles while Tunstall recovers. Pounce, for once, cannot go with her as he is actually a constellation and he must deal with some troublesome stars. They depart and on board the ship are reacquainted with Dale Rowan, a banker who helped them during the Bread Riot.

Together Goodwin and Beka make friends and try to pry information, pretending to be corrupt, or "loose." Beka's romance with Dale blossoms, and Goodwin too flirts playfully, though she never forgets her husband Tomlan back home. When Goodwin returns to Corus to deliver reports to Lord Gershom, Beka comes across several pieces of evidence that point to Pearl Skinner, the Port Caynn Rogue, as the colemonger. She goes to Sir Lionel of Trebond, the Deputy Provost, but Sir Lionel's fear of Pearl (who had previously threatened his family) prevents him from acting. Beka loses her temper with him, and Sir Lionel orders her sent to Rattery Prison. With the help of one of the loyal Dogs, Beka is able to escape and goes to Pearl for shelter.

Through use of a gift, flattery and an amusing tale degrading Sir Lionel, Beka is able to convince Pearl to let her stay for now. However, one of Lionel's men goes to Pearl and tells her that Beka has evidence that Pearl is the one behind the coles, and Beka is forced to flee once more.

This time, Beka goes to Nestor Haryse, Lord Gershom's younger cousin, and his transgender lover, Okha Soyan (Amber Orchid). With Nestor's help, Gershom is able to bring in a large squad of Dogs to arrest Pearl and her conspirators. Pearl and her bodyguards escape, but Beka follows them down into the city's sewers, where, with Achoo and Goodwin's help, she manages to arrest Pearl. They suffer numerous wounds, and when Beka wakes, she must face the sad reality that she and Dale must part; they live too far apart, and their jobs leave no time for each other.

When they return to Corus, Goodwin tells Beka that the Evening Watch Sergeant, Ahuda, was offered a position in Corus's Flash District, and that Goodwin was going to take Ahuda's place, leaving Beka with Tunstall as a partner. She says that she is tired of being a street dog, and that desk sergeant will be the perfect position for her. The novel ends at Beka and Goodwin's welcome home party, as Beka and Tunstall agree to stay partners. She gains a new nickname, Bloodhound, from the public and her friends.

The unsuccessful Swiss artist Aloïse Corbaz finds work at the court of the German emperor and gets infatuated. Showing frank symptoms of insanity she is hospitalised.

Victor and Anselme are two aged men who are cohabitants for practical reasons. The widower Victor permanently picks on Anselme who still always remains rather nonchalant. When they try to organise a music festival they are joined by a lady named Anne who considers herself an accomplished singer. Victor picks at her too and unlike Anselme she cannot take it. Seeing that Anselme has had it and starts to hit back.

The novel deals with issues such as the AIDS epidemic, sex, the Lebanese civil war, death, and the meaning of life. It is a postmodern novel told from the point of view of numerous narrators. ''Koolaids'' breaks from the traditional novel style in that the whole book is a non-linear narrative. ''Koolaids'' is written in a creative style, with short paragraphs and sentences that have deep meanings. In fact, the whole novel is a series of short sections, or vignettes. Each vignette is part of a stream of consciousness from one of the multiple narrators. The different types of vignettes include diary entries, e-mails, newspaper articles, holy texts/prayers, and dialogues to name a few. Also, there is a multitude of characters who make quick appearances in different spots throughout the novel. The randomness and fragments of thought add to the overall theme of chaos, and the meaninglessness of everything in life. The main sub-themes of the novel are death, AIDS, war, art, and violence. The novel also offers narratives on the inadequate representation of the realities of AIDS and the Lebanon civil war in the mass media. Alameddine achieves this by citing fictional examples told from the first person point of view on the exploitation of the sick and the disregard for human life in war. These examples help reflect the insufficiency of monolithic narratives of AIDS and war. Often, people's harrowing personal experiences are not accounted for in the news or in history books. Alameddine's central purpose for this novel is to portray the meaninglessness of life and to show that the only thing that is certain in life is death.

After the death of his father, Hideo and his mother Shigeko leave Ueda, Nagano, for Tokyo, where she starts a job at a ryokan, while Hideo moves in with his uncle's family. He befriends the slightly younger Junko, the daughter of Shigeko's employer Naoyo, herself the mistress of a married businessman who finances the ryokan. The two children start making repeated trips around the city together, which finally lead them to the ocean that Hideo only knows from pictures. Hideo is eventually left alone when his mother runs off with a guest and Junko moves away after her father sold her mother's business.

It has been two months since the Rage outbreak. At a refugee camp in Norway, Selena is visited by an American journalist named Clint Harris, who asks her to help him sneak through Britain's island-wide quarantine and act as his guide in London. After initially refusing, Selena reminisces about her life prior to the outbreak and decides to join Clint at his helicopter. Clint introduces her to the rest of his team: Derrick, Trina, Hirsch and Acorn. Selena and Derrick instantly dislike each other. Upon being attacked by a U.S. aerial patrol, the group lands in the Shetland Islands. They soon discover that Infection has spread to Shetland from mainland Britain.

After fighting Infected at an abandoned hotel, the group drive a hot-wired van to Sumburgh, fortifying themselves in a pub. Selena and Derrick are able to sort out their differences over a drink and a game of Texas Hold'em poker. Unfortunately, Selena is forced to kill Hirsch when he is bitten by Infected, leading Trina, his lover, to hold a psychotic vendetta against her. As the pub is attacked, Trina bites Selena's arm in an unsuccessful bid to have her killed as an Infected. The group escapes the pub and commandeers a boat, heading for Scotland. Everyone except Selena, Clint and Derrick is killed when the boat is attacked by a U.S. fighter jet.

Selena and Clint are left to guide a blinded Derrick towards the shores of Scotland. As the former two set up a campfire, they discuss what to do with Derrick, since it would be difficult to get a blind person all the way to London. Derrick refuses to allow Selena to kill him, and she reluctantly agrees. In a flashback, we see Clint's initial efforts to cover the Rage pandemic during the original outbreak, during which he travelled to France and witnessed the U.S. military's human experimentation with the Rage virus on the Isle of Wight, which was unaffected by the Rage Virus. Seeing the contagion's effects, Clint decided to approach Selena at the refugee camp.

Selena and Clint save Derrick from two oncoming Infected, and learn that despite claims and reports, some of the Infected in Scotland have not died off. They find cover in a village, where Derrick falls ill and the other two struggle to care for him. Selena once again tries to convince Clint to euthanize Derrick, but he refuses. The following night, a horde of Infected destroy their van. The damage being merely cosmetic, Selena, Clint and Derrick take off in another van and run into a group of armed survivors led by a woman named Kate. Kate sends Selena and Clint to Halkirk to search for antibiotics in what she tells them is a pharmacy; however, it turns out that she sent them to recover her son, Douglas.

The three are captured by U.S. intelligence personnel, which experiments on Douglas with the Rage virus for the purpose of weaponizing it. Clint and Selena manage to escape as a forest fire nears the U.S. camp, which is overwhelmed by fleeing Infected. After recovering Derrick, Selena and Clint commandeer a train in Inverness; Derrick, however, is killed in the process. Travelling to Edinburgh, Selena and Clint discover that the survivors in the city are locked in a resource war with delinquents in Glasgow.

Upon entering England, the pair are confronted by a Captain Stiles, a former British Army officer who seeks revenge against Selena for her role in the death of his commander, Major Henry West. After several close run-ins, Selena is captured and taken to Manchester; Clint is abandoned and is eventually found by the U.S. Army. Stiles takes Selena to the mansion which West and his troops had fortified and tortured her. He meets his death as he walks across the lawn, which is laced with landmines. Selena is rescued by U.S. troops, who had been tipped off by Clint where Selena had been taken.

Selena and Clint are both taken to London, which is being repopulated by British refugees who had escaped during the outbreak, under NATO supervision. Selena leaves shortly afterwards, sneaking out of the green zone to search her former home. There, it is revealed her husband had been infected during the outbreak months earlier, forcing Selena to kill him. Selena and Clint are eventually reunited as the infection once again breaks out in London, and successfully escape across to France via boat. They board a flight to the United States just as the infection breaks out in France and the Infected storm Paris, escaping the infection.

Grandfather Desouche, a pessimistic old French Montrealer, makes a living by digging bodies out of their graves and selling the embalmed corpses to a doctor who uses them for medical experiments. When the winter comes, the frozen ground forces Grandfather and Uncle to retire for the season. Grandfather, after his wife's death, has taken to hating his neighbors and indulging in food and drink. Grandfather decides to marry Aline Souris, a spinster who cares for her widower father. She becomes the woman of the house, caring for the house and for Grandfather. Aline realizes that Grandfather tricked her into marrying him in order to have someone to take care of him.

Granddaughter Marie Desouche, a leading member of the Front de libération du Québec, is abhorred by her family's Anglo-ism. Her boyfriend Hubert is the leader of their cell. Her brother Jean-Baptiste, a quiet romantic poet, opposes his sister's burning idealism, and spends most of his time reading and writing. One night, after planting a bomb next to a crowded restaurant, Marie comes home to find a police car outside her house and is immediately alarmed. She forces her brother to be her alibi, insinuating that they were having sex. It turns out the police were there to inform their Mother of the death of her father, Angus, who was killed by Marie's bomb. Mother is destroyed by this news, and enters a coma-like state. Marie leaves to live with Hubert.

Recognizing her marriage to Grandfather as a sham, Aline moves into Marie's vacated room. She becomes attached to his pet crow, which she names "Grace". Grandfather gradually comes to hate the crow as his wife gains affection for it. Eventually Grace attacks Grandfather and scratches out one of his eyes. Dr. Hyde becomes depressed at his mother's condition. Her friends, Mrs. Harrison and Mrs. Pangloss, come every week to visit hoping she will recover. She, however, cannot hear a word they are saying when they try to speak to her. Grandfather becomes increasingly frustrated with his new handicap, a missing eye, but realizes that it is an excuse to be bed-ridden and have Aline wait on him hand and foot.

At Christmas, the Desouches gather, and Marie gives Jean-Baptiste a blank book, a statement of her dislike of empty words but instead he chooses to write a play. Meanwhile, Hubert has a drunken disagreement with his own father and wanders off very drunk. He gets hit by a car while shouting separatist manifestos into the night air. Ironically, he gets hit by a personal hero of his and is killed in the accident. The local police do not want the premier's reputation, so take the corpse to Grandfather to be disposed of. Grandfather charges a high price for the body. Marie becomes the head of her FLQ division. Meanwhile, Jean-Baptiste becomes a political paraiah over the summer, thanks to the play he wrote about his family, creating a sensation. He is arrested by the police when Marie sneaks felquiste pamphlets into his possessions.

Hoping to free her brother, Marie kidnaps a British government official and holds him hostage. Meanwhile, Dr. Hyde experiments on Hubert's corpse, trying to revive him. He offers Grandfather and Uncle a pretty sum if they extract the bleeding heart of Frere Andre from the Cathedral so he can insert the heart into Hubert's corpse, and thus find out where the human soul dwells. On Hallowe'en, he revives Hubert, Marie strangles the British diplomat, and Jean-Baptiste is finally let out of jail. Hubert comes back to the Desouche house, looking like a Zombie made of different body parts from different corpses. When he sees Mother sleeping it becomes apparent that it is not Hubert at all but Angus dwelling in the mangled body. Mother is revived upon seeing him, and a gas leak explosion destroys the house. Aline flies out the window with Grace. After the explosion, Jean-Baptiste sees his family from a distance, Grandfather and Marie, Mother and Father, Uncle and the ruined house. He realizes that he has lost all of his writing, but understands that he can now start again. And so the book ends as it begins "Montreal, an island..."

Seven dead boys are trying to communicate through James (Ted Danson), to tell their story of how they died, and how their murderer is still out there. James agrees to work alongside the detective investigating the murders, and discovers who murdered the seven boys.[http://articles.latimes.com/2002/apr/28/news/tv-coverstory28 Messages From Beyond], Susan King, ''Los Angeles Times'', April 28, 2002; accessed February 17, 2013

Set in the Bronx against the historical backdrop of United States Senator Eugene McCarthy's unsuccessful bid to become the Democratic presidential candidate for the 1968 elections, the novel focuses on Connors's "rocky relationship that fared no better than McCarthy's campaign", in the words of critic Wayne Hoffman (author of the novel ''Hard''), who described it in ''The Washington Post'' as a "classic".

As the day begins, Suzuki St. Pierre reports on Calvin Hartley's involvement with Meade Publications, and the TV screen flashes over to Betty eating a donut...which Justin notices after he sees Betty with one at home. As she kisses Matt, who wishes her good luck on a possible promotion, Hilda stumbles onto a letter addressed to Elena.

At work Betty and Marc are shocked that Wilhelmina and Daniel have told both of them that Calvin has initiated a hiring freeze and that they will have to wait until someone leaves. Hours later at YETI, Jodi informs the students about their final project, in which Jodi explains that whoever comes up with the best assignment will get a major job offer for the three participants. Jodi pairs Betty, Marc and Matt together, but Matt's slacking off could jeopardize everything they've worked for. This becomes very noticeable when Matt shows up late for the assignment, and it's not sitting well with Marc as he tells Betty about his behavior as if Matt doesn't care about the project.

The three come up with an intergalactic/music project that will take place at the Planetarium, but it appears that Matt is not at all interested, since he forgot to book the place days in advance. Later that evening Marc surprises Betty and Matt with getting singer Adele for the project. Unfortunately, Matt's lack of involvement continues to irk Marc, forcing him to get Betty to drop him as their partner. When Matt hears this, he leaves the apartment. When Betty follows him, she learns from him that he wants to do something else, and that is pursuing a career as an artist.

The following day, Betty finally gets the Planetarium for the assignment. But when she gets there, she sees Victoria, who asks Betty for a favor, but with some strings attached: After she showed Betty a screen shot of Matt's "accomplishments," Victoria warned Betty that if Matt doesn't finish YETI, they can kiss their future as editors goodbye. Betty reluctantly goes along with it and later back at MODE she does convince Matt to finish the project.

During the shoot, all things go as planned...until Victoria shows up, prompting Matt to ask Betty if she gave in to her. This leads to Betty getting blamed by Matt for listening to his mother as he walks off the set and Marc blaming the two for losing Adele because of Betty and Matt's arguments.

For Daniel, he's surprised that Molly, after looking at the layout for the wedding issue, asked about whether Daniel will pop the question, and after talking to Claire, he does, making Molly very happy about their future. However, the wedding plans seems to make the very-excited Molly worried to the point that she calls it off after she is shown a picture of a nursery.

Things comes to a head for Daniel and Betty, who turns their setbacks into a combined plan, in which Betty turns the project into a wedding for Daniel and Molly, who finally say their "I Do"s at the Planetarium. As Daniel and Betty dance, Matt interrupts Betty to apologize, then introduces Adele, who Matt managed to convince to come back for the project, to Betty. The project pays off for Betty, Marc and Matt, who are anointed the YETI future editors by Jodi, who seems to have an eye for a nervous Marc.

After Hilda confronts Elena about the letter, in which Elena may be offered a job at a hospital in Chula Vista, California, Elena told her that she doesn't know if she will accept because of her feelings for Ignacio. This prompts Hilda to talk to Ignacio about this situation, resulting in Ignacio asked Elena to marry her and with the Suarez family blessing, Elena says yes. But this brief moment of excitement would be short lived when Ignacio gets a phone call for the hospital in California, so Ignacio encourages Elena to pursue the job in California by buying her a ticket, saying that if he's committed to her, he's committed to what's good for her. The two have their final kiss before they part ways, promising to start a long-distance relationship with each other.

As Calvin sits in at the meeting for the wedding issue, he feels that the Cherry 7UP ad presentation isn't good enough, so when he sees Claire walk in to prepare for her "Hot Flash" issue, Cal decides to make Claire part of the project. This prompts Claire and Wilhelmina to square off over their roles at Mode, with Wil making remarks about Claire's lack of inspiration and Claire firing back over Wil's snarkiness, especially in front of a crying model, leading to the two to talk to Cal. Claire acknowledges that Wilhelmina is right, bowing out of the catfight for the good of the magazine. As Wil leaves, Cal then asks Claire to stick around to talk. Hours later at the wedding, Wilhelmina got a shock from Claire, who told her that Cal made her the Senior VP at Meade Publications, which means that Wilhelmina will have to report to her archrival. Wilhelmina's response was not audible when she went into an exhibit, closed the door and screamed so loudly that the portions of the exhibit (glass-made planets) break into tiny pieces.

On the other hand, the happy ending for Daniel and Molly takes a tragic turn when Daniel discovers Molly lying on the bathroom floor, just as they were preparing for their planned honeymoon vacation.

Harry Walters, a stout real estate salesman who is randomly picked up by a beautiful woman, Wanda Olivia Wellman, then raped at gunpoint as a prank. He is later dropped off naked in a small town and left to explain to his wife, friends, and the police how he was both kidnapped and raped by a woman.

One night, deep in the forests of Ontario, bachelor John Longridge plans a long hunting trip. His housekeeper Mrs. Oakes is coming the next day, so he leaves her a note, including how he plans to let the three animals staying with him - Tao the Siamese Cat, Luath the Yellow Labrador, and Bodger the elderly English Bull Terrier - out for a morning run. He retires to bed, and reflects on how his friend John Hunter (Luath's owner, who lives nearly 250 miles away) received an offer for a visiting fellowship at Oxford University. Tao and Bodger belong to Hunter's children Elizabeth and Peter, respectively, and Longridge offered to take in all three pets while the family was away. Tao, meanwhile, accidentally knocks the crucial half of the note into the fireplace, destroying it.

The next day, Longridge lets the animals into his yard for a run, and departs. Before Mrs. Oakes can arrive, Luath hears wild geese traveling home, and decides he wants to go home, too. He leaves the yard, and the other two follow. They intend to travel due west until they get there, not knowing how far it is. Mrs. Oakes and her husband Bert arrive, and assume that Longridge has taken the animals with him.

The animals soon realize Bodger, due to his age, is a liability. Having no means of getting food from humans without getting caught, they continue to forge ahead, but Bodger eventually collapses. Tao goes off to hunt some birds, and Luath goes off in search of water. Two black bear cubs discover Bodger, but he does not respond to their play, so they decide to wrestle each other. The mother bear comes running at the noise, thinks Bodger has hurt her cubs, and tries to attack. Tao and Luath return and drive off the bear, and Bodger eats a bobwhite that Tao has killed for him, regaining his strength.

The animals travel on, hunting as they go. They are forced to pass through the yard of a sawmill, where Bodger attempts to raid the cookhouse trash can, only to be shot at by the cook. Luath catches a rabbit, but Bodger and Tao discover an old hermit, Jeremy, who has dementia. Jeremy mistakes them for human guests, and tries to serve them food, but then distractedly eats it all himself. Later still, the two dogs swim across a river while Tao walks across on a beaver dam. It breaks, and Tao is washed miles downstream, where he is rescued by a little Finnish girl named Helvi. He hurries to catch up with the dogs, narrowly avoiding being eaten by a lynx on the way.

Shortly after being reunited, the animals encounter a porcupine, which spikes Luath in the face. Seeking water to alleviate the pain, Luath is found by hunter James Mackenzie. He takes Luath back to his farm, where Bodger has already arrived and made friends with Mackenzie's wife Nell. The dogs are treated and fed, and locked in the barn for the night. Meanwhile, Longridge returns home, and he and Mrs. Oakes quickly piece together the truth. Longridge starts calling all the ranger stations and outposts for help, and news of sightings comes in from all over.

Tao manages to free the dogs, and the trio wanders into the harsh Ironmouth Mountains, where there will be no more help from humans, and a terrible wintery climate. The Hunters return home to the sad news that Mackenzie was the last to see the animals alive. Elizabeth refuses to believe Tao will die, but Peter and Mr. Hunter accept that Bodger and Luath are likely no more. They decide to celebrate Peter's birthday to take their mind off of things.

Elizabeth hears a dog barking during the party, believes it's Luath, and convinces her father to whistle for the dog. Hunter whistles, and Luath appears, quickly followed by Tao, joyfully reuniting with the family. Peter mourns for Bodger, who is not there, but then notices the old dog slowly approaching from far behind the others. Peter runs to meet him, and the other two animals return to Bodger's side, so they can all complete their journey together.

The film follows the standard story about Captain Blood: arrested and sentenced to slavery for his treatment of a wounded rebel during the Monmouth Rebellion, Dr. Peter Blood, with a group of fellow slaves, has escaped and become a feared buccaneer on the high seas. King Charles II of Spain calls upon the Marquis de Riconete, the governor of Rio de La Hacha, to capture the elusive Captain Blood and end his attacks upon Spanish ships.

Blood is safe until he tries to resupply his ship; when a party of his men go ashore, they are betrayed by their supplier and captured by the slave trader George Fairfax, who sells them to the Marquis. After revictualling and rearming at Tortuga, Blood then secretly returns to La Hacha disguised as a fruit seller to find and rescue his loyal crew, who even while being tortured by the Marquis have refused to reveal the location of their captain. During his search, he befriends Pepita Rosados, a beautiful flirt who reveals to Blood that many of Fairfax's slaves are dying. Blood then confronts Fairfax about the deplorable situation, and finds that Fairfax is having troubles with Isabelita Sotomayor, the niece of the Marquis. The Marquis then decides to arrest Fairfax for his supposed involvement with Blood, so his troops secretly follow Isabelita to his house. She pleads with Fairfax to alleviate her boredom with the island, offering him money to carry her to Spain. After their discussion, the troops enter and a fight ensues.

Still disguised as a fruit seller, Blood treats the wounded Fairfax in a nearby tavern and offers Isabelita passage to Spain if she convinces her uncle to pardon Fairfax. She agrees, and using his newfound insider information Blood discovers the seal of the Marquis. Unfortunately, he mistakes the forgery and after revealing his mistaken note to the prison guard a battle ensues. Blood and his men escape, however the Marquis is not willing to abandon his search.

Isabelita is shocked to discover that her uncle plans to torture the local tavern owner to find the captain, so she reveals Blood's location, thinking he has already set sail. Unfortunately, the incoming tide has prevented his escape, and the Marquis confronts Blood at sea. A fiery battle ensues, with the flaming ship of the Marquis ultimately trying to ram Captain Blood. Luckily, Blood and his crew manage to destroy the vessel before the deadly flames could reach them. After the pirates' victory, Blood sails away and Isabelita vows to stay on the island and create a new government without slavery.

The story follows Tranh, the once wealthy head of the multi-national "Three Prosperities" trading company, now a refugee suffering from PTSD, who is forced to eke out a living in the slums of a future Bangkok.

Genetically engineered plant pathogens have destroyed much of the world's crops, and Western biotech companies are busy selling disease-resistant seeds to third-world countries, while also re-engineering the pathogens to destroy the new plants after a few years, so that the companies can re-engineer the seeds to be resistant to the new diseases and thus repeat the cycle.

Prejudice and ethnic tension have boiled over in Malaysia, resulting in the Malays slaughtering the other ethnic groups. Tranh barely escaped the mobs, having seen his family hacked to death by machetes and his successful business looted and burned. He has made his way to Bangkok and has been granted refugee status—a "yellow card". Most refugees are despised and are relegated to scrounging for the lowest day-laborer work.

Ma, a former employee whom Tranh had fired for stealing, had left Malaysia for Bangkok well before the massacres, and thanks to having been in place before the flood of refugees, was able to find well-paying work.

The story opens with Tranh waking up late and rushing to get to a company he has heard will be hiring new employees. On his way, he encounters Ma. Tranh notices that Ma is wearing Tranh's old Rolex watch, which Tranh had been forced to sell for a pittance in order to survive. Ma, seeing that Tranh has noticed the watch, mocks Tranh for having fallen so far, and taunts Tranh for having once told him that individuals "make our own luck", that success is solely a result of earning it and that luck plays no part.

Finally arriving at the factory, Tranh finds that the rumor of job openings is true, but there is already a line of hundreds of refugees waiting ahead of Tranh for the interviews. Tranh talks with some friends in line, discussing how all of them are highly educated and formerly successful men—physics professors, heads of corporate legal departments, or like Tranh the former head of a multinational trading company—and so are all far overqualified for the three jobs as low-level managers. The seething frustration of other yellow-cards is directed at Tranh for "cutting in line" even though it obviously does not matter, so he leaves. Needless to say, the jobs are filled by the first few interviewees, long before the remaining hundreds of refugees are interviewed.

That evening, Tranh sees Ma again at a restaurant, and Ma invites him to eat and to talk. Ma thanks Tranh for having fired him, since it saved his life by forcing him to leave Malaysia long before the massacres. Ma explains to Tranh that he bought the watch because he recognized it and wanted it as a memento mori—a reminder that if a successful major company like "Three Prosperities" could fall, so could he. Ma tells Tranh that thanks to his work, he has finally gained Thai citizenship and will no longer be a yellow-card refugee. Tranh begs Ma for any sort of job, but Ma tells him it is impossible, that line work at his factory is not open to crippled refugees when legal Thai workers are available, and that Tranh's business experience does not qualify him for the sorts of scientific research for which a work permit could be obtained.

The next day, Tranh is injured while unloading a cart of potatoes, when a - a genetically engineered elephant - goes on the rampage; his knee is destroyed, leaving him badly crippled. At that, he is fortunate, for one of his friends is killed by the animal. Tranh gets the supervisor to pay him double, both his own wages and the dead friend's, as compensation; he wastes the money on a last bottle of whiskey and hobbles off to await starvation and death.

However, while drunk and laying against a building late that night, Tranh sees Ma leave a brothel with his business manager, who departs in a pedicab. As Ma begins to walk home, Thai police accost him for being out after curfew, and when Ma attempts to explain that he is a Thai citizen, the police, hearing his Malay-Chinese accent, beat him and rob him for failing to grovel his respect.

Ma, badly beaten, begs Tranh to help him get home. Instead, Tranh murders Ma, smashing his whiskey bottle and slashing Ma's throat with the broken glass. He then robs Ma of his papers and money and takes a rickshaw to the factory where Ma worked. Although it is late at night, he knows there will be a job opening in the morning, and he wants to be the first in line to apply.

At MacLaren's, Ted gets Holli's phone number and says that he will call her immediately, though Barney insists Ted should follow the "Three Days Rule" and wait that long. To circumvent the rule, Ted texts Holli instead. She texts him back quickly, and they continue an increasingly flirtatious conversation over the next two days, with Ted offering escalating levels of commitment to her. But after Ted receives a message apparently intended for someone else, mentioning takeout and sex, Robin spots Marshall with the takeout order and realizes that "Holli" has really been Marshall and Barney, having edited Holli's number in Ted's phone.

They explain that it has been a long time since Ted was very interested in a girl, and their goal is to lure Ted into saying "I love you" too soon, to release his stored-up "crazy" and give him a better chance with Holli after he really contacts her, noting that he had a look on his face, similar to the look he had on his date with Robin. They tell her that there are three signs that Ted displays before telling his date that he loves them: suggesting that they get married, planning a trip too soon, and getting too personal. Stan, a night security guard and MacLaren's regular, provides them with beautiful messages in an effort to obtain this result. These messages inadvertently cause them to fall in love with Stan as well.

Barney and Marshall then complain that Ted is not confessing as soon as they had expected, which Robin does not care about and demands them to stop. When Robin goes back to the apartment, she reveals the truth to Ted, so he "confesses" via text that he had a gay sex dream about his "best friend", leading Barney and Marshall to argue over which of them is more attractive to Ted and who is his best friend. Later at MacLaren's, Ted lures them into spending half an hour listening to him describe a dream about dining with famous architects, before he reveals he knows about their deception and has tracked Holli down. He explains that he wants to meet a woman who likes his enthusiasm; Holli arrives, saying she found Ted's immediacy romantic, but when they go out to dinner she turns out to be an off-puttingly more desperate romantic than he is, showing the signs that Barney and Marshall had mentioned earlier. Future Ted then reveals that when he got the Mother's number, he did not wait three days to call her; he called her right away.

To Barney and Marshall's dismay, Stan shows up at McLaren's to take Robin out on a date. After Stan says a heartfelt goodbye speech to the men, he leaves with Robin after claiming he does not remember their names.

Santee St. John is a reporter for NewsReal, a shock site for which he records video via a virtual “interface” allowing viewers to actually experience his recordings on the World Wide Web. He is sent to record a massacre of indigenous people being attacked at Chiapas, Mexico without warning by landowners working for capitalist corporations. However, due to a business deal with Mexico’s government, NewsReal decides not to show the story, prompting Santee to take a sabbatical. While on sabbatical, he meets Margaret Mayfield, a rebel Zapatista with whom he is swayed to travel with and, eventually, fall in love with and decide to fight against the capitalist elite.

St. John and Mayfield decide to join a group called Intrepid Explorers, working for the corporations, in order to find a strong group of Zapatistas to join. They are met by an individual claiming to be Subcomandante Marcos, the first revolutionary to use cyberspace, who helped Santee and Margaret establish a plan: to give the rebel victims of the capitalists’ massacres interfaces, which will allow the entire world to experience their sufferings via the World Wide Web by actually taking on all sense perceptions of that person through a completely realistic virtual reality simulator.

Margaret Mayfield went on her part of the mission with Webster Webfoot, who used to be one of the most highly rated internet stars but became a “webkicker” and now tries to avoid using an interface whenever possible. However, once there, she is told that Santee is dead and that the funeral will be held the very next day; she and Webster travel to Chiapas, where the funeral is to be held, and discover that Santee is not actually dead, but that someone has faked his demise. Margaret abandons Webster, leaving him some cash for travel, and travels with a hotel owner named Zack Hayman who seems to have an inside connection with the conspirators.

In Chiapas, Margaret discovers that Santee left her a personalized interface, which cannot be activated until Santee is actually present. At the same time, Webster’s girlfriend on the internet, Starchilde or “Starr” for short, discovers through her work on a space station that there exists oil on Mars, which means that biological extraterrestrial life must have existed on the planet at some point, as well as that Mexican rebels are being shipped to Mars in order to harvest the oil. Back on Earth, Zack, the hotel manager whom Margaret is with, discovered that the rebels are being sent to Mars in part so that the rich landowners can take their land without resistance. Santee and Margaret believed that they were setting up the victims with interfaces so that they would be able to show their sufferings to others outside of Mexico, but in fact the interfaces were going to make them think that they were receiving messages from Santee, while they were actually going to be tricked to going to Mars as slave labor.

On the ship near Mars, Starr discovers that the slaves are to be sent to Mars in order to live there for a time and scout out any biological hazards or chemical hazards. Starr meets an intelligent AI, called Alice Irene, who serves as a literal deus ex machine. Starr convinces Alice Irene to join the cause of the rebels by having her examine the entire Internet and come to her own conclusions about the corruption of the current capitalist regime. Starr was given control of the ship, and the Zapatistas took control with the assistance of Alice Irene. The revolutionaries were given the option to stay on Earth or go to Mars, but as a form of utopian paradise rather than as slave labor. Santee St. John and Margaret Mayfield chose to stay on earth, while the remaining main characters chose life on Mars.

God Drug is the story of one large acid trip that literally alters the reality and changes the lives of several college students and drug users. The basic plot of the novel centers on the effects of the use of a form of LSD that the military tested out on some of its marines during Vietnam as a means of making its soldiers better in combat. The intent of the drug was to enable the soldiers to be able to communicate telepathically and thus be able to work together more effectively during battles. Unfortunately, the experiment did not go according to plan, and the LSD caused more warfare in an alternate reality than it was able to solve in actual reality. This powerful drug left only one survivor, Jovah.

Jovah is never seen in the book, only referred to by the other characters. Jovah’s reality was drastically altered by the use of the LSD and caused all of his thoughts to become realities. These realities were constant nightmares and wars within the users’ minds that actually became real. Anything that he believed to happen in his mind would actually take place. Therefore, Jovah had to be locked away in a sensory deprived room, secluded, and deemed insane and not allowed nor able to exist in normal society. The remnant personalities of Jovah’s realities and those of the other soldiers that he was telepathically linked to have now been set free and are roaming around in the real world. Jovah wishes to be God-like by consuming all of the realities and personalities that make him up so that he can be completely whole. He attempts to do this by means of the LSD trips.

These characters consist of the war veteran known as the General and the beauty Hanna. These people are not actually real but become real when one has experienced the use of this form of LSD. The story takes place in Gainesville, FL at the University of Florida where a drug dealer named Galactic Bill sells some of the LSD to college students, Tom and Sparrow who live in what can be seen as a contemporary counter culture of hippies. Tom, Sparrow, and some of their friends find their lives intermingled with Hanna and the General as they become linked with their minds and thoughts by the use of the LSD. The central struggle of the novel takes place as Hanna, Tom, and Sparrow try to fight off the General as he strives to consume all of Jovah’s personalities in order to make Jovah whole once again. However, the General and the rest of the crew also fight a common enemy known as the heli-dragon, which is in true reality a helicopter that is transformed to a dragon in the reality of the LSD.

As the story takes place, the induced realities of the LSD actually become true realities in the lives of Tom, Sparrow, and Hanna. The group of friends begins encountering increasingly more strange phenomena as the novel progresses, including flying. The group perceives these occurrences to be results of the LSD, but are they really only just that? The epic war between the General, the students, and the heli-dragon ends when Hanna, Tom, and Sparrow are able to erase the war reality and transform the old into a new reality. They are now able to start their lives over and create their world as they would like it to.

The novel contains very graphic war and sex scenes, and it is also accompanied by intense artwork and drawings done by Andy Lee which adds to the overall effect of the acid trip.

The novel concerns the issue of personhood and what it takes to be considered a member of the moral universe. There are three main characters: Herbert the vacuum cleaner, who is modified by his owner, David Bailey, a scientist who specializes in figuring out how to "mindload". Mindloading is the act of a human downloading his mind into a machine. A successful mindload entails the death of the human. It is a way for humans to become immortal, if only in the form of vacuum cleaner.

The book begins with the arrest of Herbert, the vacuum cleaner, for David's murder. David's wife, Suzanne Jantille, is a trial attorney who is a quadriplegic as a result of a car crash that also paralyzed her husband. She lives through a "Remote person" who has all human senses except for the ability to feel by touch. She can guide the remote person through a helmet attached to her "bio body" and retrieves all "video and audio" signals through the remote. She can function as a whole human being, but the outside world notices that she is a remote—and does not approve.

Suzanne defends Herbie, with the help of an astute journalist and a police officer who has access to documents that she wouldn't otherwise. The book ends with a recognition of David’s humanity due to the ultimate confusion in the courtroom. It also ends with the death of Suzanne’s bio-body, and in turn, her ultimate death.

Laura, the central character, lives happily enough with her husband and children, until a long forgotten lover comes back into her life. When her passion is re-awakened, she comes to realise how the excitement has faded from her life.

As the story unfolds we find that everyone in the Sussex village where the novel is set, lives with their own inner dramas. None of them seems to notice that she is going through a crisis. The hidden feelings of a large cast of characters are interwoven to form a plot that attempts to reveal the intensity with which ordinary lives are led.

The novel is multi-stranded exploring the highs and lows of life. Sometimes serious, at others sublime, it tries to answer the central question, how much happiness we should expect from life.

Jacko Teves (Christian Vasquez) owns Puccini's, an Italian restaurant in Bacolod. When a monstrous cock fighting debt sets him at odds with Boss Dolpo (Peque Gallaga), he offers his restaurant up as payment. Boss Dolpo brings in Cassie Labayen (Angel Jacob) as a consultant to renovate the restaurant. Much to Jacko's dismay, Cassie decides to offer Negrense cuisine instead of Italian. The pair then set off across the province re-discovering the unique aspects of Negrense food.

In the foreword, "Tomorrow’s World", the author comments on how the development of liquid-fueled rockets points to missions to the Moon and establishment of a lunar base in the near future. Then he points to Mars as the next obvious step in the exploration of the solar system. He mentions the possibility of life on Mars, recapping what astronomers knew about Mars in 1952, and speculates on what explorers, like those in his story, will find.

After spending two weeks on Earth for testing, Chuck Svenson returns home to the Moon to prepare for his part in the first expedition to Mars, as the ship's radar operator and communications technician. Jeff Foldingchair pilots the small, fast rocket ship that was sent to pick Chuck up from the spaceport high in the Andes. While they wait to take off Jeff receives a message telling him that the Mars expedition's take-off date has been moved up to enable the ship to avoid a flock of meteors that lunar radar has detected.

Although Jeff seems perturbed by the message, the full meaning of it does not register with Chuck until they land on the Moon: the Mars-bound rocket is now scheduled to blast off the day before Chuck's eighteenth birthday, which means that he cannot go. In spite of everything Governor Braithwaite can do, Chuck has been replaced on rocket ship ''Eros'' by a slightly older man, Lewis Wong.

Acting on hints from Jeff, Chuck stows away on ''Eros'', hiding in the section holding the ship's hydroponic gardens. With its six-man crew and one stowaway on board, the ship blasts off from the Moon and the pilot Nat Rothman quickly puts it onto a Hohmann transfer orbit that will take the expedition to Mars. All too quickly Chuck is discovered by the ship's engineer, Richard Steele, and taken to the ship's captain and the expedition's leader, Miles Vance. Officially Chuck is under arrest and Vance chides him for taking one-seventh of each of the other men's supplies. Unofficially, though, every member of the crew is delighted with the stunt and even the people on the Moon and Earth find cause to cheer. The celebratory atmosphere does not last long.

As ''Eros'' passes in front of the flock of meteors that lunar radar had spotted, it runs into what the lunar radar could not see – a cloud of much smaller particles surrounding the larger pieces of space debris. Two of the particles, pebbles smaller than peas, hit the ship and penetrate it. The second one goes through the ship's electronic controls and damages them. Now Chuck and Lewis will spend the rest of the trip to Mars repairing them.

The repair job is complicated by the discovery of an unknown component in the wreckage of the control system. It had been inserted by an engineer who died in an auto accident before he could provide proper documentation for the device. Chuck and Lewis have to figure out how it works, repair it, and then calibrate it before they can land on Mars.

After making two attempts, in which he nearly loses control of the ship, Rothman brings the ship down on the Martian surface on the third attempt only to have one of the landing legs give way and leave the ship to fall over onto its side. By luck everyone survives the crash and Dr. Paul Sokolsky has little to do but tend to minor cuts and abrasions. After checking the damage and making some urgent repairs they discover that they have ninety days in which to make major repairs that Steele estimates will take five to six months.

Before they get down to the task of getting the ship ready to return to Earth, the men take a break. Dr. Sokolsky discovers plants, which explains why the thin atmosphere contains oxygen: they can replace the tanks on their spacesuits with battery-operated compressors and spend more time outside the ship. They also discover ruins and artwork depicting humanoid Martians, apparently long gone. It takes them a week to get the ship lifted just enough that they can begin repairing the broken structure well enough to lift the ship fully upright and prepare for take-off.

As a means of boosting morale, Chuck and Dr. Sokolsky are sent on a two-day hike to check out one of the canals, finding that it is actually a vine-like plant growing in a broad band across the planet's surface. On the way they catch glimpses of wide-eyed animals at night and wake up to find that some of their possessions are missing. When they return to the ship they discover that a number of tools have gone missing. As tools keep disappearing the men get desperate and eventually decide to go to the ruins to search for them. When they return they find the ship has been tilted over again and that the winches have been destroyed. They conclude that the Martians are not hostile, but simply want the men to stay.

After setting a trap Chuck follows a Martian into the ruins and then down into a maze of tunnels under the old city. There he is captured by the rodent-like humanoid creatures. The elder of the group introduces himself as Sptz-Rrll and shows Chuck the broken copper impeller of a rotary air compressor. The Martians have been trying to repair it with one of the welders they have taken from the spaceship. After the Martians leave in response to a call Chuck frees himself and takes the welder. Before he leaves he repairs the impeller. As he tries to find his way out he is recaptured by the Martians.

Seeing the repaired impeller, Sptz-Rrll frees Chuck and, accompanied by over fifty other Martians, takes Chuck back to the ship along with all the stolen tools. In the ship, using a notepad and pencil to draw diagrams, Sptz-Rrll offers the help of his people in preparing the ship to return to Earth and Steele offers to leave much of the ship's unnecessary equipment behind for the Martians. Later trade between Earth and Mars will bring new drugs from Martian plants to Earth and material from Earth will enable the Martians to revive their dying civilization and expand it.

The crushing 1940 defeat of France (an event the author lived through) is the subject of this novel. Marshall implies that France lost its soul and was itself more responsible for its defeat than Germany.

We meet Bigou, the protagonist, in 1934. He is an honest, hard-working, but irreligious and immoral accountant, employed by a successful industrial firm in Paris. He is mildly troubled that his firm expends considerable effort conniving to avoid paying its legitimate taxes. Conversations with accountants and employees of other companies lead Bigou to realize that most of the business enterprises of the time in France are behaving similarly,

The novel gives us a picture of Bigou's life. The reader is introduced to his family, sulky, plucky daughter Odette and sickly wife Marie, friends, his coworkers and other people he meets in his business life. The author endeavors to show that money and pleasure were the main goals sought with any sincerity. Even religion, when it did exist, wasn't much more than an outward display. Bigou does come to believe that the local priest is one of the few people he knows who exhibits integrity.

The "petit bourgeois" in the novel are shabby and bewildered as they assist helplessly at their nation's funeral, but they stand in brilliant contrast to the insatiable greed and craftiness of the wealthy.

Marshall clearly believes that France lost its virtue, especially among its elites. He even implies that the leaders of the Church were more interested in status and materialism than spirituality. The novel indicates that the common people, deprived of the just rewards of their labor, and without worthy spiritual direction, became trapped in immorality, and were spiritually and physically impoverished.

The plot centers on a royal family, long tainted by a curse put upon them by the emperor many hundreds of years before. The son of every Palindrake (literally meaning Water Dragon) king was named Valraven; according to the traditional mythology, any woman that he took to wife would immediately become the Sea Wife, a being who could capture and hold the dragon daughters within herself. The emperor tries twice, once unsuccessfully and once successfully, to awaken the dragon queen and her daughters.

'''Part One'''
The novel starts with Pharinet describing her life as a young girl, playing in the gardens with her best friends Ellony and Khaster, and thinking about her brother's future.

'''Part Two'''
Valraven and Pharinet engage in twincest, leaving Pharinet pregnant with her brother's child. Valraven attends a military academy where he meets a brash and sexually extrovert young man. Pharinet visits a soothsayer who predicts the miscarriage of her child. The prediction is realised a few days after she leaves.

'''Part Three'''
Valraven returns with his lover, who takes an interest in Pharinet, culminating in them having sex. He empties his seed into her saying, "Now I have been in both of you." Ellony is possessed by the Sea Dragon's singing, so allured by the melody that she runs into the sea and drowns.

This film is journeying backwards through history while telling, re-telling and re-imagining the story of Adam and Eve. This film consists of three contrasting tales Eve's Secret, Cain and Abel and Snake's Temptation, which reveal the dark tragedies at the heart of all romance, the temptations of the flesh and the spirit, the loss of innocence.

A major stock exchange in the world, Hong Kong attracts not only money but any who try to manipulate the market. At the Hong Kong Police Force Commercial Crime Bureau, an operation is underway to infiltrate a trading company, Feng Hua International where a man, nicknamed "Boss" is the chief suspect. The team of Criminal Intelligence Bureau (CIB) officers, led by Inspector Leung (Lau Ching-wan) together with Yeung (Louis Koo) and Lam (Daniel Wu), installs interception devices to monitor the company's communications. Yeung is a family man, has a wife, a daughter, and a son who is suffering from a serious illness and needs constant attention, while Lam, a young newcomer to the team, is to be married to the daughter of a wealthy man. Leung is a calm experienced officer who is having an affair with Mandy (Zhang Jingchu) who happens to be the wife of his friend Lee (Alex Fong).

One night, while monitoring a conversation between the company's manager and his secretary, Yeung and Lam overhear that the stock price will surge on market opening the next day. Seeing an opportunity, Yeung asks Lam to delete the portion of the recording so he can take advantage of it. The next day, Lam opens an account at a stock brokerage house but is discovered by Leung. However, Lam has already invested in the stock on a deep loan. The stock rises quickly, but before the trio manages to sell it, trading is suspended due to unusual trading activity.

Back in the operation center, the three of them overhear a plot to murder the manager over a listening device planted unofficially. To report the intelligence would lead them to suspicion and ruin their future, and Lam begs Leung not to report it. Having thought about it, Leung decides instead to stop the murder themselves. They ambush the murderer as he force-feeds the unconscious manager with pills to fake a death scene. Leung's face, however, is briefly seen by the manager's girlfriend. Seeing him again along with Yeung and Lam at the station after selling their shares worth $15 million, she calls the Boss's men, allowing him to track them down, seek retribution, and organise the deaths of Leung, Lam, Yeung, and their families. Because of Leung's compassion for his subordinates' mistakes and unwillingness to turn them in and seek help from the rest of the police force, he is unable to stop their unnecessary deaths. Faced with guilt, Leung turns himself in to the "Boss's" henchmen, and the Boss's subordinate, Wah, seemingly executes Leung in an unmarked grave, watched by the "Boss".

A year later the "Boss" gives a speech at a charity function. But during the recital, a video plays on screen showing the whole room the Boss's shadowy dealings the morning before. Surrounded by the police and ICAC officials, the Boss attempts to cut off the videofeed but is stopped and detained by a very much alive Inspector Leung. It is revealed that Leung had bought off Wah, promising the entire $15 million to him in exchange for not killing him prior to Leung's "execution". Wah would then act as Leung's agent in bringing down the Boss. While under police escort, the van carrying the Boss drives off course, and the driver is revealed to be Yeung, who was the sole survivor of the attempted murder of him and his family. Yeung drives himself and the Boss off the unfinished bridge into the harbour as part of a murder-suicide, while Leung sadly looks on and remembers the happy times with his two subordinates.

Sara Kingdom fights for her existence by telling the tale of her and the Doctor's visit to a deadly water world.

A seemingly innocent woman becomes involved in the netherworld of massage parlors in this drama. Maya (Kerry Liu) is a young East Asian woman who arrives one day at a seedy massage parlor in a run-down neighborhood in Los Angeles. Dressed in shabby clothes and speaking in broken English, she asks Mamasan (Tomiko Lee), who runs the parlor, for a job, and Mamasan immediately puts the attractive Maya on staff. While obviously new to the world of "shower and massage" - which is about sex rather than physical therapy - Maya soon becomes one of the most popular women working the parlor, and she soon bonds with her co-workers, including the thick-skinned Asia (Gina Hiraizumi), vulnerable Yuko (Mari Tanaka), practical Jenna (Hiromi Nishiyama), and self-centered Sammy (Kate Holliday). Maya also gets to know Harry (Luciano Saber), a freelance writer and would-be poet who at the age of thirty has yet to lose his virginity. As he stops in for the occasional "massage," Maya and the painfully shy Harry find themselves developing a very non-businesslike infatuation for one another, and as she confronts her growing love for Harry, Maya must come to terms with the secret that brought her to the parlor in the first place.

A film biography of An Jung-geun, a Korean independence activist who assassinated Itō Hirobumi, the first Prime Minister of Japan.

A historical drama depicting power struggles in the last days of the Joseon Dynasty.

A melodrama about the wife of a handicapped war-veteran writer. Their marriage is tested when the wife is tempted by a romance with a younger man.

Anna Holm is an embittered woman with a facial disfigurement that distorts her eye and mouth on one side and scars her cheek. She has expressed her alienation from society by becoming part of a criminal gang specialising in blackmail. This gang has two notable operations going as the film starts: they are demanding a large sum from a doctor's wife, Mrs. Wegert, for letters she wrote to a lover, and they are pressuring a rich Consul's dissolute nephew, Torsten Barring, who is entangled in their complex schemes and owes them increasing sums, to murder the little boy, the Consul Magnus Barring's orphan grandson, who stands between him and inheriting the Consul's estate.

To succeed in this, the gang needs a woman accomplice to be sent as the little boy's governess and help kill him; they deplore the fact that Anna's face makes her ineligible for this.

Anna goes to Dr. Allan Wegert's house to threaten Mrs. Wegert into paying for the letters; Mrs. Wegert gives her all her jewellery, which she puts in her purse, but it is only half the sum the gang demands. Dr. Wegert comes home, and Anna injures her foot trying to escape through the window. Dr. Wegert finds the jewellery in Anna's purse and, not suspecting she is a blackmailer, takes her for a burglar, but is interested in the problem of her disfigured face. He is a plastic surgeon and has specialised in restoring the faces of men damaged in World War I.

Instead of turning her in, he puts her in his hospital, heals her foot and operates on her face. Mrs. Wegert goes to the hospital to see if Anna will give to her the letters if the surgery is successful. As Anna is taken to Dr. Wegert for removal of the bandages, she gives to Mrs Wegert the letters, asking for nothing in return. The operation is successful, and Anna is beautiful; she is also moved by her talks with Dr. Wegert to become a different person.

Anna is now fit to go north to Forsa, where the Consul's estate is situated, as governess to his grandson, Lars-Erik. She has assumed a new name, Anna Paulsson. Already conflicted about helping Torsten murder the boy, she turns against the idea entirely as she grows to love Lars-Erik and the happy family atmosphere with which the Consul and his servants surround him. A close friend and employee of the family business, Harald Berg, who is treated like a member of the family (Lars-Erik calls him uncle), falls in love with Anna and she with him. The head of Anna's gang and the other members turn up at the hotel in town to urge her to get on with the plan, and Torsten pressures her.

On a winter night sleigh ride, Torsten manages to be in a sleigh alone with Lars-Erik, and whips the horses into running off with it. Anna, in a sleigh with Harald, realises that he means to fake an accident that kills Lars-Erik, and desperately whips up their own horses to pursue them. As they speed along, she confesses the murder plot to Harald and the part she was meant to play in it. They catch up, she snatches Lars-Erik out of Torsten's sleigh, but Harald is thrown from their sleigh and badly injured. Torsten, dropping his torch on the snow, rides off into the darkness. Anna's gang members hear what has happened, good-naturedly give up on Anna and leave town.

In the aftermath of the murder attempt, Anna is still with the Barring family as governess and Harald is recovering from his injuries. The Consul tells Anna that Harald has resigned from the firm and wants to leave the country to go travelling and convalesce. The Consul is very upset and tells her that he wants Harald to come home to Forsa, where he belongs. He hopes she can persuade him to return. Anna goes to see Harald in the Dr. Wegert's clinic, where he has been moved for treatment, and tells him her life story, including how as a small child her face was burned in a house fire and she was abandoned by her criminal parents. She became a criminal herself, but is glad that her ugliness preserved her from becoming worse. Harald is agonised, but still loves her, and proposes that they go away and start a life together somewhere new. She turns him down for his own good, and he goes back north to Forsa to resume his old life, happily received by Lars-Erik and the family.

Dr. Wegert, whose marriage has broken up without assistance from the gang, is leaving his practice in Sweden to go with the Red Cross to China. He proposes that Anna come with him as a governess to his cousin's child in Beijing, and she gratefully agrees. Vowing to forget the past and start a new life right then, they sail off together.

George Raft works in New York as a dancer at the Dreamland Casino. He associates with gangsters and goes into working at mob-controlled night clubs. One night he protects a cigarette girl, Ruth Harris, from being sexually harassed by a gangster. This causes his life to be in danger so he moves to Hollywood.

He breaks into filmmaking as an extra, then is cast as a gangster in ''Scarface''. Al Capone asks to meet Raft and the actor fears for his life, but Capone reveals he likes the movie. At a party, Raft punches out a manager and they become friends.

Raft becomes a big star. He broadens his image making a dancing movie, ''Bolero''. That is a hit but then Raft starts demanding rewrites and turning down gangster roles. He leaves his girlfriend for a Hollywood star he has an affair with.

Raft has financial trouble with the IRS and his friend Benny "Bugsy" Siegel is killed. He has to sell his Hollywood mansion and move into a small apartment. He gets a job working at a casino in Havana, but this ends when Castro comes to power.

Back in Hollywood he is offered to fix a fight by promoter Johnny Fuller but refuses. He gets a job in a Billy Wilder film ''Some Like It Hot''.

A deaf farmhand is in love with the landlord's daughter-in-law.

Pre-nuke period

''Godkiller: Silent War''

In the near future, 17-year-old Joe Junior and his girlfriend Bee run a speakeasy in the basement of an abandoned NYC church where they serve narcotic drinks to underagers while providing sanctuary and black-market employment to draft dodgers. When Joe is recruited by an armed cult of populist assassins, he is thrust into a secret world of international cabals, alien conspiracies, and the countdown to Armageddon.

''The Long Knives''

A deadly viral pandemic is tearing America apart. Amid the looting and lawlessness, a murderous gang of awol black ops is abducting children ... but no one knows why. When 16-year-old Bird winds up in their clutches, she'll uncover a dark conspiracy with terrifying consequences.

Post-nuke period

''Godkiller: Walk Among Us''

Set in the future after an economic collapse, a nuclear holy war and an alien invasion, ''Godkiller: Walk Among Us'' follows orphan Tommy as he searches for a new heart for his ill sister, Lucy.

''Godkiller: Tomorrow's Ashes''

The story continues Tommy's quest from ''Godkiller: Walk Among Us''.

A woman in a fishing village is widowed when her husband dies in a fishing boat. She has a liaison with a mainland man who is drafted. She goes insane and waits on a mountain for the return of her husband. Based on a novel.

The plot of ''The Witch of Atlas'' revolves around the travels and adventures of a mysterious and mythical Witch who lives in a cave on Atlas' mountain by a secret fountain and who creates a hermaphrodite "by strange art" kneading together fire and snow, a creature, Hermaphroditus, "a sexless thing", with both male and female characteristics, with pinions, or wings. A "fair Shape out of her hands did flow" because "all things together grow/ Through which the harmony of love can pass." In Greek mythology, Hermaphrodite was the offspring of Hermes and Aphrodite. The hermaphrodite is androgynous and synthesises the opposing and contradictory aspects of the creative mind. The hermaphrodite is both the companion and the servant to the Witch. The journeys consist of sailing in the air on an airship and in water on a boat, or pinnace. They travel from the Atlas Mountains to the Austral Lake to the Nile Valley. Nature is explored as are fire and electrical energy. The Witch begins her sojourn from the ancient northern Ethiopian city of Axume. Lake Moeris, an ancient lake southwest of Cairo, Egypt, is visited, as are the Mareotid lakes south of Alexandria. King Amasis of Egypt, Memphis, and the bull god Apis are invoked. The forces of creation and destruction are resolved. The objective is a synthesis or union of contradictions.

The Witch is the daughter of the Atlantides, who in Greek mythology are called the Pleiades, the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione. Her home, the Atlas Mountains, are a range that stretches across north Africa, from Morocco and Algeria to Tunisia. Her "choice sport" was to "glide adown" the Nile River into Egypt and Aethiopia with "tame water-snakes" and "ghastly alligators". She observed mankind at sleep. Injustice and inequality were noted: "And pale imaginings of visioned wrong;/ And all the code of Custom's lawless law/ Written upon the brows of old and young." It is this oppression and exploitation that trouble mankind's existence: "'This ... is the strife/ Which stirs the liquid surface of man's life.'"

The "visionary rhyme" recounts the pranks the Witch plays on mankind. Like Shelley himself, the Witch was able to perceive the fears and desires of mankind: "In mine own heart I saw as in a glass/ The hearts of others." She is able to see the "naked beauty" of the human soul. The Witch gave a "strange panacea in a crystal bowl" to those who were the most beautiful and imparted "strange dreams" to those who were less beautiful. The Witch sought to change man's perception of death. Death was not to be feared. The Witch took a coffin and "threw it with contempt into a ditch." The grave was "as a green and overarching bower/ Lit by the gems of many a starry flower." She sought to make the world more just and fair by making "more vain" all those purposes which were "harsh and crooked". The "miser" would place "all his evil gain" on a "beggar's lap". The "scribe" would reveal his own lies. Priests would reject dogma and "old cant". The king would place an ape on his throne and dress him up in his vestments while a "mock-bird" repeated the "chatterings of the monkey". War would be practised no more as soldiers turned their swords into ploughshares on "red anvils". Finally, "timid lovers" would see the "fulfilment of their inmost thought." These are the pranks the Witch "played among the cities of mortal men." The Witch was able to envision and foresee a future Utopia for all mankind.

A melodrama based on a novel. A widow in an aristocratic family has an affair with a servant and bears him a son. The widow's in-laws drive the servant and his son away. As a man, the widow's son comes to visit her, but, bound by the custom that she must remain celibate after her husband's death, she cannot acknowledge him.

Danny Wilkins and his mother live in a mobile home in a rural community. While playing in the creek in Possum Meadows, Danny meets a man in a grey outfit, who says his name is Scout. He is unfamiliar with such things as frogs, and Danny has to explain to him. When Danny tells his mom about Scout, she is furious with him for trusting a stranger and warns him to stay away from Scout. Outside, Scout studies birds and fish. He points at a deer, which disappears.

That evening Scout arrives for dinner. Mrs. Wilkins starts to send him away, but abruptly changes her mind and invites him inside. Their dog growls at Scout but he puts his hand out, at which the dog whimpers and cowers. During dinner, they converse about Scout's family and how Mrs. Wilkins must work, so Danny is alone for a few hours when he gets home from school. Scout tells them he is from a large industrial firm looking for a place to locate and he stays in a motor home near Possum Meadows. Danny insists on loaning Scout his flashlight when he leaves. Mrs. Wilkins tells Danny that she wants him not to go see Scout after school.

The next day, Danny comes home to find his dog gone. Scout shows up with the flashlight and asks Danny to come with him, claiming Mrs. Wilkins and the dog are at his house and they are going to have dinner together. Danny is suspicious but goes along anyway. Mrs. Wilkins arrives home, finding Danny gone and the flashlight on the porch. She finds Scout at the creek and demands to know what he has done with Danny, but he says Danny was not home when he returned the flashlight. He proposes to look for Danny in the woods while she looks along the creek.

Inside Scout's motor home are the dog, the deer, and Danny, all frozen. Scout, in an alien language, reports to his home world that he is prepared to return with his specimens. Scout asks about the well-being of his family and says he misses them. Mrs. Wilkins searches in the dark for Danny. She comes upon a spaceship which flies into space. She begins crying, believing Danny might be aboard. However, she finds him lying in the grass, having been returned by Scout out of respect for the familial bond between him and his mother.

Builder Steve Cranston is living in a homeless shelter with his family. He has virtually given up hope and makes minimal effort at finding jobs. Moreover, the homeless shelter is about to close. After an argument with his wife Elaine, Steve takes a walk. He overhears a security services repairman mention that he was unable to restore the alarm system of the nearby house. Steve slips inside the gate before it closes, and searches the house until he finds a wallet filled with cash. The owner of the house, Frederick Perry, sees Steve's muddy footprints, gets his gun, and finds Steve. Steve assaults Frederick with a bottle, but Frederick shoots him.

Steve awakens the next morning in Frederick's bed. The butler addresses Steve as Frederick Perry, even though Steve sees his own reflection in the mirror. Steve also sees himself in a photo with Frederick's lover, whom he has never met. He calls the shelter to discover that Elaine is at the hospital since her husband was shot. Steve goes to the hospital and talks to Elaine, but she and his daughter see him as Frederick. He goes into the room to see the real Frederick in a coma, but Elaine kicks him out.

Steve meets with Frederick's lawyer, who tells him of the massive profits he has just made. Steve tells him to use some of it to buy out the shelter so it will not close. Later on, Steve becomes disoriented and collapses. He wakes up in the hospital with Elaine and their daughter. They once again know him as Steve. He learns from Elaine that Frederick dropped the charges and donated the money to save the shelter, and that the director of the shelter is hiring him to do work on the building now that they have extra money.

An anti-communist film based on a play by Kim Su-yeong from 1948. The film depicts conflict between the generations in a village. The elders want their children to follow the old ways, but the children pursue a newer way of life and end up supporting their parents.

Tom Skelton, a young man, opens a charter fishing business in Key West, Florida. He enters into a rivalry with a local sea captain named Dance and his partner Carter, who steal one of the new fishing guide's clients. Skelton retaliates by burning Dance's boat.

The game takes place in London, England. Horzine Biotech, a biotechnology company, is contracted to conduct experiments of a military nature involving mass cloning and genetic manipulation. Something goes horribly wrong during the process of the experimentation, and human subjects begin to exhibit grotesque mutations and disfigurement. They become increasingly hostile, and eventually overrun the internal security forces of the corporation.

Hours later, the first waves of the specimens break out onto the surface, disrupting a peace protest outside the well-known military contractor. Despite the best efforts of the local police, the civilians are quickly overwhelmed and consumed by the seemingly endless supply of clones now streaming from the gaping maw of Horzine Biotech's headquarters. Having escaped their sterile prison, the creatures begin to fan out to neighboring areas, devouring the helpless citizens of London while the Metropolitan Police fruitlessly attempt to fight back.

Desperate to contain the outbreak from reaching overseas as planned by the mutated and cybernetically enhanced scientist Dr. Kevin "The Patriarch" Clamely, the British government quickly begins to organize ragtag teams of surviving British Army soldiers and Special Branch police officers to fight back against the hordes of mutated "specimens." The player takes the role of a member of one of these teams as they partake in a variety of missions in and around the city of London.

Choi Yoon-jae (Oh Ji-ho) ends up in a car accident causing the passenger, his wife Kyu-eun (Kim So-yeon), to go into a coma. Park Yeon-seo (Jung Ryeo-won), Kyu-eun's best friend, is secretly in love with Yoon-jae. While Kyu-eun is in a coma, Yoon-jae and Yeon-seo begin an affair.

In the midst of investigating a serial murder case, detective Park Sang-kyu (Jin Yi-han) confiscates a clump of wild berries from a smuggler, suspecting that these colorless odorless berries are key to solving the mystery behind the murder. Meanwhile, leading merchant Yang Man-oh (Lee Chun-hee) expands his power and influence by accusing his rival Hong of illegal doings to the police bureau. Shortly after, the city of Hansung is terrorized once again when another corpse is found in the marketplace. Detective Park suspects that the perpetrator is using the berries to murder victims. But as he begins to unlock the puzzle, he discovers that there is more to the case than meets the eye.

The three main characters of this drama pose the question of what a "righteous life" is in the era of political and social turmoil of the late Joseon Dynasty, when progressive thinking and the Confucian social reform movement "Silhak" began penetrating into Joseon from the Qing Dynasty. It was also a period when the 400-year Joseon Dynasty was gradually losing ground, unable to respond to external and internal changes in the wake of the Japanese invasion of the 16th century and the Manchu War, resulting in clashes between the king, who dreamed of restoring his authority through powerful reforms aimed at improving the lives of the people at the grassroots level, and conservative political forces, which felt threatened by the self-justified royal authority.

The game begins with Jack collapsing on a dock after disembarking from a tugboat, and is confronted by members of the Grant City Triad, who intend to kill him as revenge for earlier events. Shadow, Jack's dog, brutally kills all of the Triad members who try to attack Jack on his way to a bar where he meets his friend, an EMT named Faith Sands, and goes into the story of what happened in the game. He flashes back to a terrorist takeover of Temple Tower, where he disobeys orders from Captain Inness and charges in, killing members of the Union gang, saving hostages and pursuing Riggs, the leader of the gang, to the roof where he escapes via a futuristic helicopter. Jack believes Riggs has military training after seeing how the Union were armed and organized. Jack is saved from Inness firing him by SWAT Captain Redwater, who is a friend of Jack and his father, Frank Slate, who takes Jack and Shadow to investigate a lead on Riggs. They discover plans and simulated versions of the Temple Tower studio, and are drawn into a gunfight when Redwater arrives with the SWAT.

After holding out until more SWAT teams arrive, Frank and Jack pursue Riggs and a Triad member, splitting up to do so. Jack succeeds in arresting the Triad, but finds Frank mortally wounded nearby. Faith arrives and tries to save Frank, but fails, and Jack storms off after beating up the Triad brutally and goes to find out why his father was killed. He stops an attempted Triad bombing at Grant City Central, defeats their leader, Tseng, in hand-to-hand combat, and then returns to the area where his father was killed. He discovers that Riggs is a member of the newly formed GAC (Grant City Anti Crime Unit), which was formed by Julian Temple and now approved by the city to deal with crime in ways that go against standard ethics and protocol. Jack fights his way past GAC soldiers and destroys GAC dropships, but is knocked out by Redwater, who kills Riggs after hearing a recorded conversation between Temple and Riggs, who plot to kill Redwater. Jack manages to escape the slowly rising dropship he and Redwater are on, and Redwater's fate is left unknown when the C4 Jack attached to the ship detonates while being tossed away by Redwater.

The game picks up at the bar, where Jack reveals that he detects Faith has deceived him, and she admits she was persuaded by the GAC to help locate him. Faith is wounded by a sniper, and Jack manages to evacuate her on a helicopter she called before being shot, and is dropped off at Temple Tower, where he arrests Temple, who tries to bribe him into letting him go by revealing that Redwater killed Frank, choosing to follow his father's way instead of killing Temple in cold blood. He takes Temple to the precinct he and his father work at, and discovers all regular and SWAT officers have been imprisoned for resisting GAC control. Jack imprisons Temple and frees the officers, who help to free the precinct and call patrol officers back to fight off attacking GAC troops-with help from Captain Inness, who is now glad to work Jack's way and even sends out the transmission to call for backup. Jack takes a dead GAC soldier's armor and sneaks into the GAC Alpha Base in a rundown hospital on an island. He manages to make a distraction that lets the GCPD storm the base while Jack provides sniper cover for Inness, Shadow, and a SWAT team that manages to break into the main area. Jack helps to fight off multiple GAC troops and then pursues Redwater.

Jack takes control of a GAC Tank Armor and fights his way through dozens of GAC while furiously arguing with Redwater, offering him the chance to surrender like Frank would have done. Redwater refuses, stating that he did what he did for the good of the city and that Frank never would have understood, and Jack responds by fighting his way through a group of snipers as he chases Redwater on foot to a lighthouse. Redwater tries to kill Jack with a mounted machine gun, but Shadow bites Redwater's arm only to be wounded, forcing Jack to proceed alone and unarmed against Redwater, who cuts Jack across the eye with a knife and leaves a scar. Jack and Redwater fight, stealing the knife from each other repeatedly, until Jack stabs Redwater fatally, which results in him falling to his death. The game ends with Jack and Faith attending Frank's funeral, and Jack is left to look out at Grant City with Shadow next to him, promising his father he will be with him soon.

A year after the Californian mountain village of Drago was destroyed by a fire, sinister murders begin to occur in the neighboring town of Pinyon. A teenage boy named Malcolm, a survivor of the Drago fire, is found living in the woods. The former leader of the Drago community and the one responsible for the deaths, Derak, finds Malcolm and tries to tell him of his werewolf heritage and bring him back to his people; fellow survivors of Drago like themselves.

Malcolm is hospitalized and placed under the care of resident psychiatric specialist Dr. Holly Lang, who becomes his friend. However, an ambitious and unscrupulous doctor, Wayne Pastory, abducts Malcolm so that he can experiment on him and learn more about werewolves. At a secret clinic, Malcolm is tortured as Pastory conducts cruel experiments on him. Due to his young age, Malcolm is only partially able to transform into a werewolf. Holly discovers the whereabouts of the clinic and tries to rescue Malcolm, but she is attacked by Pastory's henchman. Just as he is about to rape her, Derak in werewolf form bursts in and kills the henchman. Malcolm is freed by Holly, who is subsequently rescued herself by the Pinyon sheriff, Gavin Ramsay. Malcolm runs away before they or Derak can take him back to Pinyon.

Over the course of the next year, Malcolm lives as a drifter, wandering throughout California. He eventually meets a man named Bateman Styles who works for a traveling carnival. Seeing that Malcolm has certain "abilities", Styles offers him a job working in the carnival freak show as "Grolo - The Animal Boy". Malcolm, without any money or a place to live, accepts and the show becomes a minor success. The increased publicity leads to Malcolm's picture being published in the press, which is seen by Holly, who travels to see him. She offers Malcolm the choice of returning to Pinyon with her, which Malcolm accepts. However, the publicity has also attracted the attention of Pastory, who has been dismissed from the Pinyon Hospital over his dubious activities, but is still keen to resume his experiments. He travels to the carnival and tries to make a deal with Styles, who refuses. Pastory tries to strangle Styles, who then has a heart attack and dies. Malcolm, who is hiding nearby, partially transforms and kills Pastory, but is surprised to find that Derak has also tracked him down and still wants him to join their people. In order to persuade him, Derak has kidnapped Holly. This prompts Ramsay to travel to the carnival to find her. He learns from a female Drago survivor named Lupe that Derak is holding Holly hostage in the mountains until Malcolm joins them. Ramsay makes Lupe take him to where they are hiding, though she begins to transform into a werewolf on the way; forcing Ramsay to shoot her with a silver bullet.

In Derak's mountain lair, Malcolm arrives and fights with him, then Derak reveals he is his father. The two change into werewolves, but end up killing each other just as Ramsay arrives and rescues Holly, while the other members of Derak's group head off into the forest, having lost their leader.

''HushHush'' revolves around the lives of wanna-be celebrities as they break into the world of showbiz.

During the Third Age of Elven Princes of Lower Earth, a band of noble warriors Vidar the Elf Lord (Boyd), Penthiselea the Warrior Princess (Winkleman, later Ingrid Oliver) and Dean the Dwarf (Eldon) plan to save Lower Earth from the evil rule of Lord Darkness by searching for the Sword of Asnagar, "for whoso'er wields the sword shall rule all of Lower Earth." However, they first have to discover "The Chosen One" who will lead them to the Sword, whose name is "Amis". Amis is a dog belonging to Sam Porter, a misanthropic fantasy novelist in the real world.

Vidar, Penthiselea and Dean travel via a portal to take Amis, who is with Sam at a book signing in Totnes High Street, to Lower Earth. When they take Amis, Sam follows them and both Sam and Amis arrive in Lower Earth. When they arrive in Lower Earth, Amis is transformed into a human (played by Lamb), retaining many of his canine traits, such as becoming excited when there is a knock at the door, and being totally devoted to Sam. Sam believes he has been kidnapped by deranged fans until he sees the world outside the room in which he awakes. He asks to be sent back home, but is told that the portal is closed and can only be opened by the same Sword of Asnagar that Amis must seek.

Sam decides to travel with Amis, Vidar, Penthiselea and Dean to find the Sword. Meanwhile, Lord Darkness (Alistair McGowan) is planning to stop them from finding the Sword, helped by his evil but dimwitted assistant Kreech (also played by Eldon). Sam proves invaluable in using his modern instincts to trick his way past various creatures barring their way. For instance, he bluffs a three-headed troll guardian of Darkness' fortress in the same way as he would a security guard at a nightclub, distracting it long enough for Dean the dwarf to attack. He also tends to expect secret tunnels and concealed doors because that's the sort of thing he would have written into one of his plots. He is often right.

Thomas, a harper from court, befriends a humble farmer and his wife. As he begins a relationship with Elspeth, their neighbor, he is whisked to Elfland, ensnared by the Fairy Queen. After seven years he returns to Gavin, Meg, and Elspeth with a parting gift from the Queen: he can only speak the truth.

Darryl Palmer is a baseball player for the Atlanta Braves. He enjoys the fame and fringe benefits of bachelor life until he meets rock singer Debby Huston, falls in love, and decides to settle down.

Debby is not ready to put her professional hopes on hold, but from the moment Darryl meets her, his own career takes off. He seeks to break professional baseball's single-season home run record and considers Debby a good-luck charm, wanting her to be there at his games.

Manager Burly DeVito appreciates that Darryl has found a settling influence in his life, but teammates Moose Granger and Manny Alvarado become increasingly aware of how obsessed Darryl is with Debby and how unhappy she has become. She feels smothered by her husband, who interferes with her career ambitions and goes into a jealous funk whenever she goes on the road.

The couple breaks up, to the detriment of Darryl's game and his pursuit of one of baseball's greatest feats. He begins to fail on a regular basis and the team's playoff chances could be in jeopardy. Burly and his players concoct a plan to have another woman, hidden by shadows, pretend to be Darryl's wife, telling him everything he wants to hear. It works temporarily, then backfires.

Debby comes back to try to work things out. Darryl does indeed hit his record-breaking home run, but whether the couple's relationship can ever be what it once was remains uncertain.

At 30 years old, Opie (James Ricardo) is a virgin whose existence is made up of watching pornography and eating junk food. One day a drug dealer named Thai (April Wade) mistakenly comes to his door. She decides to help Opie by finding him a good woman, initially (and unsuccessfully) by online personal ads. Thai and Opie end up sleeping together while high on marijuana, and then end up seeing each other regularly. Opie starts having sex with other women, including Thai's lesbian lover Dakota (Ute Werner) and a "gun-toting" nymphomaniac named Rain (Jesselynn Desmond).

Alan Walters (Christian Campbell) and his single mother, Vicky (Mary Page Keller), live next door to widower George Thomas (Richard Karn) and his daughters, J.J. (Lisa Jakub) and Delia (Cecilley Carroll). The kids are best friends, united by their dislike for Vicky's boyfriend Bob Blanford (John Lefebvre) and nosy neighbor Eve Scrimmer (Nada Despotovich), but their parents hate each other. George is a struggling children's book author, and has decided to sell their house. To prevent this, J.J. and Alan enter both families as one in a contest to find the perfect family, sponsored by Barrett's Natural Soda. The winning family would receive $100,000 cash, college tuition for all the kids, a new house, a life-time supply of Barrett's Natural Soda, and a pre-release taste of the newest flavor of soda. They pad their entry essay with many exaggerations and some lies. Ernie Barrett, the CEO of the company, shows up at the Walters' house to announce them as a finalist family. The kids are thrilled until Ernie reveals that he and Marco (Von Flores), a documentary cameraman, have come to live with them for a week, to find out if they really are the perfect family. The children are forced to tell their parents about the situation, who decide it is a bad idea. They are on their way to tell Mr. Barrett the truth when they are confronted by Sloan and Malone (Ric Reid and Peter Keleghan), who introduce themselves as FBI agents investigating Mr. Barrett for industrial espionage. They insist that it is the 'patriotic duty' of the family to continue the ruse, in order to gain Ernie's trust and obtain samples of the new soda flavor.

George and the girls quickly move into the Walters' house just in time to welcome Ernie and Marco with the camera. George and Vicky find it difficult to live together peacefully, while the children keep Ernie distracted. Alan's Grandma Matilda (Barbara Gordon) arrives to take the families to the beach for a day of fun, and attempts to play matchmaker with George and Vicky, much to their chagrin. While at the beach, Alan is approached by Sloan and Malone, who reveal that they now know about the deception going on. They threaten Alan that if he does not get them a sample of the new soda flavor, the whole family could be thrown into prison for fraud. Meanwhile, Vicky's suspicious boyfriend Bob has followed them to the beach, and insists that Vicky meet his parents this week as the next step in their relationship.

Once the families are back home, Matilda asks Ernie out for dinner the next day. George realizes he has forgotten a date with his editor, Amanda Holt (Lori Hallier), who only agrees to edit his books if he goes out with her. He makes an excuse and reschedules. The next day, kids all realize too late that all three couples are headed to the same nice restaurant for dinner. They all spend the evening attempting to prevent their dates from discovering the truth, while trying to keep the lies straight. The kids come to the rescue. Back home, Vicky and George discover that they both feel pushed into their current relationships.

Alan quits his band because they want to play songs he dislikes. George, who used to play guitar, convinces him to keep playing. The whole family attends an open mike night at a local pub, because Ernie believes that George plays there every week. George gets stage fright until Alan comes up on stage and joins him with an electric guitar. George and Alan perform You Really Got Me. After watching taped reruns of their performance at home, Ernie declairs that he has seen enough, and has decided they are his 'Perfect Family'. This upsets J.J., who tells her father that she is worried that after they turn Ernie over to the FBI, everything will go back to the way it was, and no one will be happy.

At the family barbeque the next day, Ernie has the samples of the new Barret's Natural Soda flavor. Ms. Scrimmer arrives to expose the families' deception to Ernie, and Bob shows up to confront Vicky. They fall for each other and leave together. George's editor Amanda also drops by, and since Ernie is watching, George has to maintain the lie that he's married to Vicky. She dumps him and says he'll never publish again. Alan grabs a can of the new soda and goes out front to meet Sloan and Malone. Instead of handing them the can, he accuses them of not being real FBI agents. After they threatened him at the beach, he called the FBI, who denied they were agents. Alan pours the can out, but Malone tastes some off the driveway, and reveals the new flavor to be chocolate. Marco the cameraman appears with a gun and a badge, revealing himself as a real undercover agent with the FBI. He arrests Sloan and Malone as industrial spies for Barrett's largest competitor.

Ernie declares them the official winners of the contest, but Vicky and George come clean. They insist that they are not a family. Ernie counters that they have all lived together for a week, and that they demonstrated all the qualities of a perfect family. Ernie is upset, thinking he has to start the contest over again. However, George and Vicky realize that they are perfect together, and share a kiss. They win the contest and have a beautiful wedding, with all of their friends, family, and neighbors in attendance.

Based on a novel, the film chronicles the lives of a wealthy land-owning family during the rule of Gojong.

In a pool hall after closing time, a young pool player named Jesse Cardiff practices his shot and complains about being compared to pool legend Fats Brown. He boasts that if Fats were alive he could beat him. He turns around to see Fats Brown sitting in the bar. Fats tells Jesse that because he is legendary, in a sense he lives forever. Fats goads him into a match in which if Jesse loses, he will die, but if he wins, he lives - seemingly gaining nothing from victory.

They play and the match is fairly even. With Jesse needing to sink only one more ball to win, Fats distracts him by scuffing his pool chalk, making him miss. Fats then sinks all but the last ball he needs to win. Jesse gets a shot at the last ball and hits it, but it fails to go all the way to the pocket.

Fats lines up his shot and sinks it. Jesse questions him about the life or death stakes, and Fats tells Jesse that he will indeed die, eventually. If he had beaten Fats he would have lived forever. Fats only lead Jesse to believe he would immediately die if he lost because he wanted Jesse to play his best. As Fats disappears Jesse screams that it is not over, that he will practice more, and that he will eventually win.

A religious drama about people studying and practising Catholicism in Korea during the mid 19th century despite oppression and persecution.

A historical drama about the life of a widow. 15th century life was sometimes cruel to Korean women and this story depicts a lot of the injustices that could occur as happening to Kil-Rye, the heroine.

The film is a drama about a married couple.