Stannis Baratheon, a claimant to the Iron Throne of Westeros, occupies the Wall at the realm's northern border, having helped to repel an invasion of wildlings from the northern wilderness. Stannis executes Mance Rayder, the leader of the wildlings, for refusing to submit to him, and marches his army south to seek support in his bid for the throne.
Jon Snow, the newly elected Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, the order that defends the Wall, prepares the defense against the Others, hostile inhuman creatures from the far north. Jon negotiates with wildling leader Tormund Giantsbane to let the wildlings past the Wall in exchange for their assistance in defending it. This results in a fragile peace but creates unrest among the Night's Watch, who have considered the wildlings their enemies for centuries.
Stannis's advisor, the sorceress Melisandre, warns Jon that his half-sister, Arya Stark, is in trouble. Mance is revealed to be alive, thanks to Melisandre's magical trickery. He is sent to the Starks' ancestral castle Winterfell, now occupied by the enemy Boltons, to rescue Arya. However, the girl in Melisandre's visions turns out to be Alys Karstark, a young noblewoman fleeing to the Wall to escape her treacherous uncle. To protect Alys and aid the wildlings' integration into Westerosi society, Jon arranges for Alys to marry Sigorn of Thenn, a wildling leader.
Jon receives a taunting letter from Ramsay Bolton, who claims to have crushed Stannis's army at Winterfell. Threatening attack, Ramsay demands that Jon send him Stannis's wife, daughter, and other hostages, in addition to Arya and Jon's foster-brother Theon Greyjoy, the latter two whom Jon hasn't seen in years. Jon decides to march on Ramsay himself and asks for volunteers to accompany him. His officers view Jon's intent to march on Ramsay as a betrayal of the Watch's neutrality and he is stabbed in a mutiny.
Meanwhile, Jon's crippled half-brother Bran Stark, traveling north of the Wall, is led to the last surviving Children of the Forest, the non-human natives of Westeros. They introduce Bran and his companions to the "last greenseer", an ancient man intertwined with the roots of a weirwood tree. He helps Bran learn clairvoyant "greensight", enabling Bran to witness the past and present through the eyes of the weirwood trees that grow throughout the North.
Having killed his father Tywin, the Hand of the King, the dwarf Tyrion Lannister is smuggled out of Westeros to the city of Pentos by the spymaster Varys, where he is sheltered by the merchant Illyrio Mopatis. Tyrion is sent south with a party ostensibly to aid the exiled princess Daenerys Targaryen, who controls the only living dragons, in claiming the Iron Throne. Tyrion learns that Varys and Illyrio have hidden the presumed-dead Aegon Targaryen, son of Daenerys's late brother Prince Rhaegar, and intend to install him as king of Westeros with Daenerys's aid. Tyrion persuades Aegon to invade Westeros immediately, without waiting for Daenerys. Soon afterward, Tyrion is kidnapped by Daenerys's disgraced advisor Jorah Mormont, who intends to deliver him to Daenerys in order to regain her favor.
In the Free City of Braavos, Arya is an acolyte of the guild of assassins known as the Faceless Men. When they temporarily afflict her with blindness, Arya develops her sense of hearing, and realizes that she can "see" through cats the same way she could with her pet direwolf, Nymeria. After her sight is restored, Arya is tasked with assassinating a corrupt merchant while magically disguised with another girl's face. After doing so, Arya is declared an apprentice of the Faceless Men, to be sent to another assassin to continue her training.
Daenerys has conquered the city of Meereen and banned slavery, but struggles to maintain peace among various factions within the city, including the Sons of the Harpy, a violent Meereenese resistance group, and with the neighboring city of Yunkai.
Daenerys' dragons have become increasingly dangerous, and she reluctantly confines them in a dungeon for the safety of her people. Drogon, the largest, evades capture and flies off. Despite her sexual relationship with the mercenary Daario Naharis, Daenerys marries the Meereenese nobleman Hizdahr zo Loraq to secure an alliance to appease the Sons of the Harpy.
Quentyn Martell, the son of the Prince of Dorne in southern Westeros, arrives in Meereen in hopes of renewing the alliance between Daenerys's family and his, but he is unable to maintain her attention. Jorah and Tyrion are shipwrecked, kidnapped, and sold to a Yunkish slave trader. Tyrion escapes from the Yunkish army besieging Meereen, joins the Second Sons mercenary group, and secures their support for Daenerys. Meanwhile, another Westerosi, Victarion Greyjoy, sails for Meereen, intending to marry Daenerys and use her dragons to overthrow his brother, the king of the Ironborn.
At Hizdahr's insistence, Daenerys reopens the city's "fighting pits" for gladiatorial combat, but the noise and carnage attract Drogon. In the resulting chaos, Daenerys climbs onto Drogon to calm him but he flies away with her. Hizdahr is implicated in an attempt to poison Daenerys. Her advisor, Barristan Selmy, removes Hizdahr from power, and the Sons of the Harpy resume their killing. Barristan prepares for battle with the armies outside Meereen. Quentyn attempts to prove his worth by riding one of the remaining dragons but is killed and both dragons are released.
Drogon flies Daenerys to the Dothraki Sea, the grassland controlled by the nomadic Dothraki people. After several days, Daenerys encounters a Dothraki horde led by Khal Jhaqo.
In the North, Roose Bolton has overthrown House Stark and assumed authority as the Warden of the North after allying with House Frey. Much of the region is occupied by Ironborn invaders. Under Jon Snow's advice, Stannis wins the support of northern mountain clans by pledging to recapture Winterfell and fighting off the Ironborn. With their support, Stannis captures Asha Greyjoy, Victarion's niece, and marches his forces toward Winterfell to attack the Boltons, but his advance is halted by heavy snowstorms.
Stannis's advisor Davos Seaworth is sent to win the support of the wealthy lord Wyman Manderly, who pretends to execute Davos to curry favor with the Lannister regime that controls the Iron Throne. In a secret meeting, Manderly tells Davos that he and other Northern vassals intend to feign submission to the Boltons and Lannisters while plotting revenge for Robb Stark's death and the restoration of Stark rule. Revealing to Davos that young Rickon Stark is in hiding on the remote island of Skagos, Manderly pledges to support Stannis if Davos can retrieve Rickon and unite the Starks' supporters around him.
Theon Greyjoy is a prisoner of the Boltons, and is mutilated and tortured by Roose's sadistic son Ramsay, who renames Theon "Reek". To cement his rule over the North, Roose has Ramsay supposedly married to Arya Stark, but the girl is actually Jeyne Poole, a friend of Arya's sister Sansa, who is forced to impersonate Arya and is physically and sexually tormented by Ramsay. A disguised Mance Rayder arrives at Winterfell and enlists Theon to help him free the false Arya. Theon and Jeyne escape, leaping from the castle wall into the snow to be captured by Stannis's forces.
Jaime Lannister, the uncle (and, secretly, father) of the young king Tommen Baratheon, negotiates the surrender of the last of the late Robb Stark's allies, nominally putting an end to the Stark–Lannister war in the Riverlands. Brienne of Tarth, whom Jaime had sent to search for Sansa Stark, finds Jaime and tells him Sansa is in danger; he follows after her.
After Tyrion convinces Aegon to attack Westeros, Aegon and his forces capture several castles in the Stormlands with little resistance. Meanwhile, Aegon's foster father Jon Connington is secretly succumbing to greyscale, a deadly and infectious disease.
Doran Martell, the prince of Dorne, sends two of his nieces north to the capital city of King's Landing to infiltrate the Faith and the government and work in Dorne's interests.
Cersei Lannister, Tommen's mother and queen regent, has been arrested by the Faith on charges of fornication and conspiracy. To gain release from her imprisonment, she confesses to several of the lesser charges against her, but does not confess to having murdered her husband King Robert Baratheon, nor that her children are the product of incest. As a condition of her release, Cersei is forced to humiliate herself by walking naked across the city. Meanwhile, Cersei's ally, the ex-maester Qyburn, has created "Ser Robert Strong", an eight-foot-tall figure encased in armor, to be an unbeatable champion in Cersei's upcoming trial by combat.
Having taken control of the government, Cersei's uncle Kevan Lannister and the Grand Maester Pycelle attempt to undo the damage caused by Cersei's misrule. However, Varys reappears and murders both Kevan and Pycelle, revealing that he has been plotting for years for the Lannisters to destroy themselves so that Aegon Targaryen can take the throne, having been raised to be an ideal ruler. The book ends with Varys sending his child spies to finish Kevan off.
In addition to the maps published in previous books, the book includes a new map of the previously-unmapped area of the Free Cities on the eastern continent. Like the previous four volumes in the ''Ice and Fire'' series, the book includes an appendix with a complete list of characters.
British international terrorist Charles Rane (Payne), whose career has been dubbed as "The Rane of Terror" by the media, is arrested by the FBI and local authorities in Miami, just as he is about to undergo plastic surgery in order to evade law enforcement. The FBI make plans to return Rane to Los Angeles for him to stand trial.
Widowed and reputed police officer, decorated soldier, and retired U.S. Secret Service agent John Cutter (Snipes) is constantly haunted by the memories of his wife's death in a convenience store robbery and has launched a course specializing in training flight attendants in self-defense. After one class, Cutter is approached by an old friend, Sly Delvecchio (Tom Sizemore), who offers Cutter the vice presidency of a new antiterrorism unit for his company, Atlantic International Airlines. Cutter is reluctant, but Delvecchio and the company's president, Stuart Ramsey (Bruce Greenwood), eventually convince him to accept the offer.
Cutter boards as the 57th passenger on an Atlantic International flight to Los Angeles (a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar), where one of his students, Marti Slayton (Datcher), is one of the flight attendants. Rane and his two FBI escorts are also aboard. After the flight takes off, several henchpersons in Rane's employ, posing as flight attendants and passengers, kill the FBI agents, release Rane, and secure the plane by also killing the captain. Cutter, in the lavatory at the time, manages to use the plane's on-board phone to warn Delvecchio of the situation, but Cutter is soon caught by one of Rane's henchmen.
Cutter overpowers the henchman and takes his weapon; he then uses the agent (in a chokehold) as a shield to confront Rane, but an indifferent Rane shows his ruthlessness by mercilessly murdering a passenger in cold blood. Cutter realizes he is outmatched and escapes with Marti to the cargo hold, while Rane kills the henchman that Cutter overpowered, ranting his "incompetence". Cutter dispatches another of Rane's men, Vincent, who is disguised as a caterer. Cutter trips circuitry to dump the plane's fuel, forcing Rane to order the surviving pilots to land at a small Louisiana airfield. As Cutter and Marti prepare to escape upon touchdown, Marti is caught by Forget and he kicks Cutter out of the plane. The local sheriff, Leonard Biggs (Ernie Lively) and his deputies arrest Cutter, thinking he is a terrorist, and takes him to the airport building.
Rane contacts the field's tower and demands refueling, for which he promises half the passengers will be freed. For every five minutes of resistance or indecision, Rane will order five passengers to be executed. Rane also fasely asserts that Cutter is one of his own men turned against him. Biggs gives the go-ahead for refueling, and as the passengers are freed, Rane and some of his men escape from the plane. Cutter recognizes the passenger release as a diversion, escapes from the sheriff, and chases Rane and his men into a local county fair. FBI agents arrive and confirm Cutter's true identity to Biggs. Cutter is able to kill one of Rane's men and gets into a fight with Rane before police arrive and capture him.
Back at the tower, Rane announces that if he does not contact the plane and give flight clearance, his men aboard have been instructed to kill the rest of the hostages. The FBI agents arrange to return Rane to the plane, escorted by two agents, with plans to have a sniper take down Rane and allow them to storm the plane to save the hostages. However, the sniper is Vincent, who kills the escorts, but is shot dead by Cutter, and Rane makes it inside safely. Rane orders the pilots to take off, while Cutter, with Biggs' help, manages to jump from a car onto the speeding plane (through the nose landing gear) before it takes off.
Inside, Cutter deals with more of Rane's accomplices before getting into a fight with Rane. A bullet blows one of the plane's windows causing explosive decompression, and a door blows out. Cutter manages to get Rane close to the open door and kicks him out of the plane, which sends Rane, screaming in terror, out into the night sky where he falls to his death. The plane quickly returns to the airfield, where the FBI agents secure Sabrina Ritchie, Rane's only remaining agent, and the remaining hostages are freed. Amid congratulations and celebration, Marti and Cutter make their quiet escape into the distance hand-in-hand, but not before Chief Biggs offers them a ride.
According to the game's manual, an evil magician named Abadon was able to use his power to summon groups of evil beasts, and then built a castle for himself. He then sent out his followers to rid the peace-loving land of Merlwood of its most powerful wizards, a task that was accomplished with ease. While this was going on, a young man named Paul, an apprentice magician who lives in the land of Serenna, is preparing to go on a quest to travel across the land to learn all of the secrets from the ancient masters. However, he hears of the purging of wizards by Abadon, and instead sets out as the last wizard alive to defeat Abadon.
Three years after the first film, 20-year-old Charley Brewster, as a result of psychiatric therapy, now believes that Jerry Dandrige was nothing but a serial killer posing as a vampire. As a result, he comes to believe that vampires never existed.
College student Charley, along with his new girlfriend, Alex Young, go to visit Peter Vincent, who is again a burnt-out vampire killer on ''Fright Night'', much to the chagrin of Charley. While visiting Peter's apartment Charley sees three large crates being offloaded from a truck. On the way out from Peter's apartment, Charley sees four strange people walk past him, into an elevator. Charley instantly becomes drawn to one of the four, the alluring Regine. Charley drives Alex back to her dorm and begins to make out with her, only to see himself kissing Regine and pull away. An upset Alex storms off, not realizing that something is following her. Another girl leaves the dorm as Alex enters, and she is followed and killed by one of Regine's vampires, Belle. Alex, meanwhile, is unaware that Louie, another of Regine's group, is scaling up the wall outside her window, but he is startled and falls when Alex inadvertently slams her window shut on his hands. Bozworth, a bug-eating servant of Regine, makes fun of Louie before consuming some bugs.
Later that night, Charley dreams that Regine comes to visit him, only to turn into a vampire and bite him. The next day, Charley talks to his psychiatrist, Dr. Harrison, who assures him that what he dreamed was only natural. Alex finds Charley bowling, per doctor's orders, and Charley agrees to go to the symphony with her. On his way there, however, he sees his friend Richie with Regine and opts to follow him. Charley climbs up to a fire escape outside of Regine's apartment, only to be horrified when he sees Regine and Belle attack and drain Richie's blood. Charley runs off to find Peter, and the two of them arm themselves with crosses and crash Regine's party.
There, Charley finds Richie, but is shocked to find him alive and well, with no bite marks on his neck. Regine makes her entrance, doing an erotic dance with a mesmerized Charley. She introduces herself to Peter and Charley, and claims to be a performance artist in town for some shows. Satisfied that what he thought was Regine attacking Richie was nothing but an act, Charley leaves when he remembers his date with Alex. Peter elects to stay behind and while looking around, he notes that there are people in the corners of the room biting others on the neck. Noting the odd behavior, he draws his pocket mirror and finds that Regine and Belle, who are dancing in the middle of the dance floor, cast no reflections.
Storming out of the party, Peter runs into Regine waiting for him outside. As he runs down the stairwell Peter again comes face-to-face with Regine, who reveals herself as a vampire, the sister of Jerry Dandrige, and has come to take her revenge on both Charley and Peter. Peter runs back home and hides, resolving to tell Charley in the morning what has just transpired. Charley, meanwhile, after being turned away from the symphony, returns home and falls asleep, only to be visited by Regine, who bites him on the neck while he sleeps. Charley, content with the explanation that Regine is a performance artist, is once again in denial. He begins to discuss the situation with Alex when Peter arrives to try to warn the couple about Regine but neither believe him. Peter states that he has warned them and runs back to his home, packs his belongings and departs.
Meanwhile, Charley has started to show signs of being a vampire as he is becoming sensitive to garlic and sunlight. After failing to talk to his psychiatrist, he overhears a news report about Richie's body being discovered the previous night. Now believing that everything is real, Charley goes to see Peter, only to find that Peter has gone. Louie is once again stalking Alex. Louie reveals his true nature to Alex and Charley and stalks them in the school library, only to flee after Alex injures him by cramming wild roses, which are harmful to vampires, into his mouth. Alex and Charley are then arrested by campus officers.
Peter, meanwhile, is also arrested by the cops after he shows up on the set of ''Fright Night'' and attempting to kill its new host, Regine, on live TV. Everyone thinks he's lost his sanity as he says, "I have to kill the vampire"; and ends up in a state hospital. Alex is bailed out by Dr. Harrison and goes to post bail for Charley, only to find that he has already been bailed out by Regine. Alex and Dr. Harrison head to the state hospital when the doctor reveals that he is in fact a vampire. He tries to bite Alex only for her to turn the tables on him and run him through with a piece of wood. She then assumes his identity as a doctor and tries to have Peter released from the hospital. A distraction intentionally caused by one of the hospital's patients, Fritzy (who actually believes Peter's story about him being a vampire hunter) allows them to escape the place.
Alex and Peter head to Regine's lair in order to save Charley. They find a disoriented Charley, who is slowly turning into a vampire. They rescue him and manage to kill a now undead Richie, Belle, Bozworth and Louie before confronting Regine. She attempts to escape into her coffin, but finds that Charley and Alex have lined it with Communion wafers. Regine knocks Alex unconscious and attempts to turn Charley into a vampire, but Peter destroys her with sunlight.
Some time later, Charley and Alex discuss the previous day's events, with Alex joking that no one would ever believe them. They ponder if there are more vampires out there, but agree to continue on with their lives while being prepared, just in case. They embrace each other as a bat can be heard flying away.
Detective Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub) flies to New York City to find criminal Warrick Tennyson (Frank Collison). In the preceding episode, criminal Dale "The Whale" Biederbeck (Tim Curry) told Monk that Tennyson was involved in the murder of Monk's wife, Trudy. On the trip, Monk is accompanied by his nurse Sharona Fleming (Bitty Schram), and police officers Captain Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine) and Lieutenant Disher (Jason Gray-Stanford). They stay at the same hotel as the Latvian ambassador, who is subsequently discovered shot to death along with his two bodyguards. Police Captain Walter Cage (Mykelti Williamson) asks for Monk's help in solving the murder. Monk notices the ambassador's coat is damp, even though it had been dry minutes before the murder.
The four retrace the ambassador's movements that day, discovering that he had stopped at a bar before arriving at the hotel. Then, Stottlemeyer and Disher go back to the precinct to try to get a bead on Tennyson's location while Monk and Sharona discover that the ambassador's final words meant "This is not my coat". Stottlemeyer breaks into Cage's office to discover that Tennyson is dying in a hospital and has days left to live. Stottlemeyer confronts Cage, who says the only way he will allow access to Tennyson is if Monk solves the ambassador's murder.
Monk is briefly separated from the group after accidentally boarding the wrong train at Hoyt–Schermerhorn Streets. While reuniting with his partners he notices Steven Leight (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) being interviewed on a TV screen in Times Square about the recent murder of his wife. Noticing Leight eating a mint from the same bar the ambassador had last been seen, Monk insists Steven Leight is the ambassador's murderer, despite the lack of supporting evidence. To support his theory, Monk proposes that Leight stole his wife's jewelry to stage a robbery, then proceeded to the bar before calling the police. He asserts Leight and the ambassador were wearing essentially identical coats, and that they must have been switched accidentally at the bar. As rain falls, Leight locates the ambassador's hotel room, and subsequently kills both him and his bodyguards, and switches the newly wet coat with his own.
Subsequently, a ballistics report confirms that Leight's wife and the ambassador were killed with the same gun and Leight is arrested. Having solved the case, Monk is allowed to visit Tennyson who remembers being hired by a man who had six fingers on his right hand. Tennyson asks for forgiveness, but Monk cannot bring himself to give it. He turns off Tennyson's morphine drip saying, "This is me, turning off your morphine;" but a few moments later, he says, "This is Trudy, the woman you killed, turning it back on," and does.
The foursome prepares to leave New York, having gotten a step further in solving Monk's most important case.
Following the rebuilding of the Gaulish village after Brutus' attack in the previous story, Chief Vitalstatistix is trying to give a speech, when he is interrupted by the bard Cacofonix, whose song causes rain. This introduces Watziznehm the fakir, who falls from his flying carpet. Watziznehm explains he was searching for the village because he needs to make it rain in his country, a kingdom in the Ganges Valley, within the following 1001 hours, otherwise Princess Orinjade, daughter of Rajah Wotzit, will be sacrificed to the gods. This prophecy is part of an evil scheme by Grand Vizier Hoodunnit, to seize the throne.
Vitalstatistix agrees to send the rain-making Cacofonix to India, accompanied by Asterix, Obelix, and Dogmatix. All five mount the flying carpet; but their journey is often interrupted either by Obelix's insistence on stopping for food, by Cacofonix's attempts to sing, and once by a lightning strike which forces them to replace the carpet. The Gauls eventually arrive in India with exactly 30 hours, 30 minutes, and 30 seconds to save Orinjade; but Cacofonix has lost his voice during the journey, and Rajah Wotzit's doctors proclaim that to regain his voice, Cacofonix must take an overnight bath in a combination of elephant milk, dung and hair. Accordingly, the Gauls and Watziznehm take Cacofonix to elephant-trainer Howdoo and set up the bath; but Hoodunnit sends his henchmen to kidnap the bard and take him to an elephants' graveyard to be trampled by the wild elephant herd.
Watziznehm, Asterix and Obelix set out to rescue the bard, but they are stopped by Owzat, Hoodunnit's fakir sidekick. While Watziznehm and Owzat curse each other, Asterix and Obelix escape to Howdoo, with whom they embark to the elephants' graveyard. After delays by tigers, monkeys, a rhinoceros and Hoodunnit's henchmen, they find Cacofonix alive and well, his smell having placated the elephants. Meanwhile, Watziznehm defeats Owzat and recovers the Gauls on his flying carpet.
At the execution grounds, Asterix saves Orinjade, while Watziznehm intercepts Hoodunnit. Cacofonix recovers his voice after a dose of magic potion, and sings, causing rain. At the victory feast in the palace, Obelix surmises that his fellow villagers might be having their customary banquet, this time without him. This is proven true; and at the banquet, some of the Gauls begin to express a desire to retrieve the bard, in fear of a drought, and Fulliautomatix the blacksmith, Cacofonix's habitual menace, appears to be missing him.
Marge lectures Bart on the importance of town pride after he writes his name in wet cement. Soon he realizes the joys of living in Springfield and is upset by anti-Springfield taunts coming from neighboring Shelbyville. Grampa explains this rivalry can be traced to the establishment of the two towns: Jebediah Springfield wanted a town which promoted chastity and abstinence, but Shelbyville Manhattan, founder of Shelbyville, was a proponent of cousin marriage.
The next day, Springfield's lemon tree is stolen by a gang of boys from Shelbyville. Bart leads Milhouse, Nelson, Martin, Todd and Database to Shelbyville to find the tree and return it to Springfield. Bart's posse locates the tree in an impound lot where the leader of the gang that stole the tree lives. Using Ned Flanders' RV, Homer leads the boys' fathers to their sons in Shelbyville. The fathers and sons demand their tree be returned, but the owner of the impound lot taunts them and refuses to surrender it.
Using a Trojan Horse strategy, Bart parks the RV outside a hospital, where it is impounded to the lot. When night falls, the Springfield men and boys emerge from the RV and tie the lemon tree to its top. The lot owner catches them but they manage to escape and return the tree to Springfield.
In the aftermath, the town elders of Springfield and Shelbyville provide their own endings to the tale. In Springfield, Grandpa lauds the triumphant return of the tree by the "heroes of Springfield"; Bart and Milhouse celebrate with a glass of lemonade made from a few drops of lemon juice (and a large amount of sugar). In Shelbyville, an old man makes up a story about the tree being haunted to cover the embarrassment of losing to their rivals of Springfield. The Shelbyville kids drink turnip juice instead, much to their disgust.
Like its predecessor ''Thief: The Dark Project'', ''Thief II'' is set in a steampunk metropolis called the City, whose appearance resembles that of both medieval and Victorian era cities. Magic and steam technology exist side by side, and three factions—the manipulative and enigmatic Keepers, the technology-focused Hammerites and the "pagan" worshippers of the Pan-like Trickster god—are in operation. ''Thief II'' takes place one year after the first game. In the aftermath of the Trickster's defeat and the failure of his plan to revert the world to a wild, primitive state, a schism in the Hammerite religion spawns the "Mechanist" sect, which fanatically values technological progress. The new inventions of the Mechanists are used by a resurgent police force to crack down on crime. The pagans are in disarray, and have been driven into the wilderness beyond the City. From there, they engage in guerrilla warfare against the Mechanists. The Keeper faction is dormant as the game begins.
The game continues the story of Garrett (voiced by Stephen Russell), the cynical master thief who defeated the Trickster. Pursuing Garrett is the new sheriff, Gorman Truart (voiced by Sam Babbitt), who has imposed a zero tolerance policy on crime. Viktoria (voiced by Terri Brosius), the former ally of the Trickster, eventually joins with Garrett to combat the Mechanists. The game's primary antagonist is the founder of the Mechanists, Father Karras (also voiced by Russell), a mentally unstable inventor who despises the natural world.
The game begins as Garrett continues his life as a thief. However, he is betrayed by his fence and ambushed after an early mission, and he determines that Truart, the local sheriff, is hunting him. Keepers take Garrett to hear a prophecy about the "Metal Age", which he ignores. As Garrett leaves, Artemus, the Keeper who brought him into the order, informs him that Truart had been hired to kill him, and he gives Garrett a letter that directs him to eavesdrop on a Mechanist meeting. There, Garrett overhears Truart and Father Karras discussing the conversion of street people into mindless "Servants", who wear masks that emit a red vapor capable of reducing themselves and any nearby organic material to rust. Truart promises to provide Karras with twenty victims for the Servant project, not realizing that Karras is recording his words for use in blackmail. Garrett steals the recording from a safe deposit box, in order to coerce Truart into revealing his employer.
However, Garrett finds Truart murdered at his estate. Evidence at the crime scene leads him to spy on the police officer Lt. Mosley. Garrett sees Mosley deliver a suspicious letter, which is carried through a portal by a wounded pagan. Garrett enters the portal and finds himself outside the City, and he follows the pagan's trail of blood to Viktoria, who persuades Garrett to join her against the Mechanists. On a lead from Viktoria, he infiltrates Karras' office to learn about the "Cetus Project", and inadvertently discovers that Karras is giving Servants to the City's nobles. Garrett travels to a Mechanist base to find out more about the Cetus Project, which is revealed to be a submarine. In order to locate and kidnap a high-ranking Mechanist named Brother Cavador, Garrett stows away in the vehicle.
After delivering Cavador to Viktoria, Garrett steals a Servant mask to learn about a Mechanist technology called a "Cultivator". Meanwhile, Karras hides inside the Mechanist cathedral in preparation for his plan. Garrett and Viktoria learn that it is the Cultivators inside Servant masks which emit red vapor, or "rust gas". Karras had provided Servants to nobles with gardens in order to set off an apocalyptic chain reaction. Viktoria plans to lure the Servants into the hermetically sealed Mechanist cathedral before Karras activates their masks, but Garrett believes this to be too dangerous and leaves. Viktoria goes to the cathedral alone and dies while filling it with plants, and Garrett completes her plan, killing Karras in the rust gas. Afterward, Garrett is approached by Artemus, who explains that Karras' scheme and Viktoria's death had been prophesied. Garrett demands to know the rest of the Keepers' prophecies as the game ends.
The main story concerns an innocent young man, Nur-e-Din (Franco Merli), who comes to fall in love with a beautiful slave girl, Zumurrud (Ines Pellegrini), who selected him as her master. After a foolish error of his causes her to be abducted, he travels in search of her. Meanwhile, Zumurrud manages to escape and, disguised as a man, comes to a far-away kingdom where she becomes king. Various other travellers recount their own tragic and romantic experiences, including a young man who becomes enraptured by a mysterious woman on his wedding day, and the prince Shazaman (Alberto Argentino), who wants to free a woman from a demon (Franco Citti) and for whom two women sacrifice their lives. Interwoven are Nur-e-Din's continuing search for Zumurrud and his (mostly erotic) adventures. In the end, he arrives at the far-away kingdom and is reunited with Zumurrud.
The film comprises 16 scenes:
''Truth lies not in one dream, but in many dreams.'' - verse from the 1001 Nights and opening title
''Omega Factor'' features elements from ''Astro Boy'' s different incarnations. The concept of robot rights, Dr. Tenma's ultimate plan for Astro and the robot city of Robotonia in Antarctica are lifted from the ''Astro Boy'' 2003 TV series. Plotlines from other Tezuka series include a time travel plot lifted from ''Marine Express'', a journey to the lost continent of Mu, and a subplot involving Duke Red's daughter and her role in the "Death Mask" orbital platform. The game is divided into two episodes: Birth and Rebirth. The Birth episode follows Astro's adventures and other characters he interacts with, and ends with robots being destroyed by a device called Death Mask, after it determines that the robots are too dangerous to be left alive, leaving Sharaku able to conquer the Earth. In Rebirth, Astro is revived by a being called Phoenix, and has Astro go back to the beginning of the story and try to stop the Death Mask, giving him the ability to go back and forward in time to do so.
The story includes characters from Tezuka's entire canon of work. The characters are listed in the "Omega Factor", an in-game encyclopedia of the ''Astro Boy'' fictional universe, which provides a detailed character biography, including each character's appearances and roles in Tezuka's works.
As with the first novel, the book focuses on the efforts of Mitchell Gant to steal the fictional prototype MiG-31 Firefox Soviet aircraft. At the climax of ''Firefox'', Gant engaged in combat with a second MiG-31; the second novel begins mere moments later, with Gant discovering that his aircraft sustained damage in the dogfight and is losing fuel rapidly. After a brief engagement with two Soviet MiG-25s, Gant lands the Firefox on a frozen lake in neutral Finland, whereupon the weight of the aircraft causes it to break through the ice and become submerged.
Upon fleeing the lake, Gant is captured by the KGB and taken back to the Soviet Union, while a NATO task force attempts to recover the Firefox from the lake before its location is discovered by the Soviets. In Moscow, Gant is interrogated by KGB Colonel Dmitri Priabin (who had a minor role in ''Firefox'') and Soviet Air Force General Vladimirov, the officer charged with recovering the Firefox. Gant resists the interrogation, and eventually escapes from the KGB facility. Meanwhile, Priabin has discovered that his lover, Anna, has been passing information to the Americans under the codename ''Burgoyne'', but he keeps this to himself.
After Gant's escape, Anna is ordered by the British, under threat of death, to find and help Gant escape from the Soviet Union. A member of the Jewish dissident network finds Gant and delivers him to Anna, who arranges for them to travel by train to Leningrad, where Harris, a British agent, will drive Gant to the Finnish border. Priabin discovers that Anna is helping Gant, and pursues them alone.
Priabin catches up with them and attempts to kill Gant, who points out that if he is killed or recaptured, Anna will also be killed by her handlers. Gant offers to arrange for the Company to release Anna as an informant, in exchange for Anna accompanying him over the border, to which Priabin reluctantly agrees.
Near the border, Priabin returns and kills Harris. While Gant searches for Harris, Priabin rashly tries to force Anna to return to Moscow with him, despite her protests. Gant returns after finding Harris' body and knocks out Priabin, leaving him by the roadside. At the border, Gant and Anna are allowed to cross. Priabin, now obsessed with killing Gant, arrives and orders the border guards to fire at Gant's car, but end up killing Anna instead, while Gant escapes across the border.
By this time, the Soviets have discovered the location of the Firefox. Vladimirov attempts to capture it intact, but is overruled by the First Secretary, who orders its destruction. Gant learns that due to bad weather, the mission to recover the Firefox has failed, and they are resorting to dismantling what they can before the Soviets arrive. Gant, not willing to let those who have helped him to have died in vain, declares that he will fly the Firefox from the lake.
The aircraft is prepared for flight, but it is discovered that the anti-radar capability is no longer functioning. Nonetheless, Gant successfully takes off, narrowly avoiding destruction by MiL-24 helicopters, and is then pursued by MiGs into Norway. With the aircraft's systems deteriorating, Gant attempts to land at Bardufoss, but it is closed due to the weather, so Gant heads for his original destination of RAF Scampton, using the Firefox's speed advantage to outrun the MiGs. Gant is almost killed again when his oxygen supply malfunctions, and is barely able to activate the emergency supply. Despite MiGs being scrambled from Rostock to intercept him, the RAF reach Gant first, and escort him to safety.
Unlike its predecessor, ''Firefox Down'' did not become a feature film. The book, however, depicts the MiG-31 from the movie on the cover and the text of the novel describes it as black, as it was in the movie, rather than the original silver.
Satisfied at Camelot's conditions, Merlin (Sam Neill) decides to go on vacation in order to rejuvenate. This vacation nap is supposed to last a few months, but when Merlin awakes, he finds he has slept for fifty years. Upon his return to Camelot, he discovers a downtrodden place. Almost all of those he knew have died; Lord Weston (Garwin Sanford) runs the kingdom; and the Holy Grail has departed from the castle. However, Merlin's protective enchantments have held invaders in check.
A young thief named Jack (John Reardon) and his tagalong pig Sir Snout stowaway in a cart entering Camelot, angering its driver Squire Brian. Jack is no ordinary vagrant, as he possesses some rudimentary magical skills. Jack enters the chamber of Yvonne (Tegan Moss), granddaughter of Sir Gawain and steals a pendant. Yvonne enters and while Jack hides, Master Graham (Christopher Jacot), a local blacksmith whom she loves, visits her. Jack then attempts to steal Merlin's wand while Merlin concentrates on the whereabouts of the Grail. Merlin senses the visitor, and at first evicts him, but later apprentices Jack after a vision of the Holy Grail appears to both of them.
The only training the film shows is Merlin tempting Jack with food while telling Jack to resist his hunger and seek a ring that was lost in the castle (which turns out to be the former Round Table). It is around this time that Jack learns the truth of Brian, who is actually Brianna (Meghan Ory). She disguises herself in order to avenge a wrong done to her family.
In his search for the grail, Merlin suspects something is afoul in Camelot that caused the Grail to depart. Merlin confronts Yvonne (who is to be married to Lord Weston when the Grail returns) and her guardian Master Burton (Andrew Jackson). Later while touching the Grail's stand, Merlin sees a vision in which he learns the truth of his absence. The Lady of the Lake (Miranda Richardson) enchanted him and created Jack. Thus, Jack's father is Merlin and his mother is the Lady (this differs from the first film in that the Lady was an almost uninterested party while Merlin battled with her sister Queen Mab).
Barbarians threaten Camelot's door, and knights including Brian want to use an enchanted cave in order to surprise the invaders, who they think are building a dam to drown the kingdom. Jack agrees to lift Merlin's enchantment on the passage, but the knights find no construction. In the meantime, the barbarians directed by the Lady of the Lake enter the passage and breach Camelot's walls, which are vulnerable from the inside.
Realizing the impending doom, Merlin tells Jack the truth of his origins. Merlin & Jack coordinate to magic a bridge over the barbarian army to safety, but when Brianna is put in danger, Merlin tells Jack to go to her and completes the bridge alone (an effort that fatally drains him) commanding the townspeople, including Jack, to escape. As Jack steps off the bridge he breaks the spell to foil the pursuers. Meanwhile, Merlin was left in the walls of Camelot and is decapitated by Rauskaug (Alexander Kalugin), the leader of the barbarians.
The remaining people of Camelot have traveled the countryside for several months, seeking the Grail while fleeing their enemy. Jack is frustrated that his concentration does not give him insight, so the Lady of the Lake sends him a vision of the Grail's whereabouts. The group goes there, to discover that the water is cursed and several knights are murdered by a beast as they attempt to swim to the Grail's cave. Meanwhile, the Lady has told Rauskaug of their location and the barbarians begin their pursuit.
The film centers on the crimes of the Camelot's guardians, which they believe prevent their reaching of the Grail. Yvonne's parents presented her as Gawain's kin but this ruse is discovered when she begs Jack to explore her past through visions. Through these it is discovered that Master Burton and Lord Weston had oppressed the surrounding peoples with taxes, unfair trade, and devious agreements. This is the source of Brianna's anger, as her family was robbed of its property through such a contract.
Before Jack goes through Yvonne's past, Yvonne and Graham (Yvonne's true love) go behind a tree and kiss. In that time Jack and Brianna decide to give in to love and start to kiss. They are caught kissing by the other two. Jack tries to put it off as a joke, but though Yvonne and Graham now know Brian is a girl, they don't tell anyone.
In the meantime, Burton hopes to betroth Yvonne to a Scottish king and indenture the remaining citizens of Camelot to that lord for personal gain. Yvonne and Jack reveal Burton and his wife's past treachery, and instead of a quick execution Jack hopes a trial will cleanse Camelot of its sins. Instead Brianna takes justice into her own hands and kills the pair as the barbarians approach.
While the two sides battle, Lord Weston accompanies Jack to the cave. Jack parts the waterfall, and they enter the cave. Jack warns Weston that he is the true stain on Camelot and advises him not to take the grail. When Weston touches it, his impurity turns him to dust. The Lady of the Lake appears and offers Jack a chance to become powerful. Instead he rejects his mother (apparently killing her) and makes a wish of the Grail: Jack says that the Grail may do what it wishes with him, if it will only end the destruction outside. The Grail accepts this unselfish act, and reanimates the dead warriors on both sides. Graham holds it aloft and promises a new Camelot will be built.
Graham and Yvonne marry. During the reconstruction, Sir Snout tells Jack to speak the name of the land of the dead (Tartarus) in order to see his father. Jack goes to Merlin, and the two are allowed to spend the time they didn't have as father and son. The film concludes by hinting that Jack and Brianna are now married and probably going to have children. The film ends when Jack picks up Brianna as she blows out a candle, ending the movie.
Toby Grummett, a director, is in rural Spain, struggling with the production of a commercial featuring Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. After an unsuccessful day of shooting, Toby's superior, the Boss, introduces him to a Romani street merchant who sells him an old DVD of ''The Man Who Killed Don Quixote''. By coincidence, Toby wrote and directed the film ten years earlier as a student. Toby watches the film while in bed with the Boss's wife, Jacqui. When the Boss returns to the hotel room, Toby barely escapes without being recognized.
A flashback shows student Toby casting elderly cobbler Javier as Don Quixote. Javier initially falters in his characterization, but upon rushing to defend Angelica when a member of Toby's crew plays a prank on the teenage waitress, succeeds in embodying that "I am Don Quixote".
Toby realizes that his current shoot is near the shooting location of ''The Man Who Killed Don Quixote''. Taking a motorbike to Los Sueños, he learns that Angelica has moved away from her father Raul. Toby meets Javier, now working as a tourist attraction. He discovers that Javier has become convinced that he is the real Don Quixote, and that Toby is his squire, Sancho Panza. Quixote accidentally causes a fire that spreads through the town, as Toby escapes on the motorbike.
On the set, police are investigating the "break in" of Jacqui's room. The police notice that Toby's bike was the one spotted in Los Sueños and take him in for questioning. En route, they encounter Don Quixote on his horse Rocinante, who demands that the officers release Toby. When they dismiss him, Quixote attacks, culminating in one of the officers being shot and the Romani man stealing the police car. Quixote supplies Toby with a donkey and clothes from the set, and they set off for adventures.
Quixote notices a windmill and believes it is a giant attacking a woman. Receiving a head wound after being knocked by one of the windmill's blades, Quixote and Toby are led by the woman to a decrepit ruin occupied by impoverished people. The leader, Barbero, welcomes them warmly but locks them in an attic. That night, Toby comes to suspect that they are secretly terrorists, but soon finds that the ruin has transformed into a 17th-century village. Toby manages to evade some guards, then awakens the next morning, the night's events having seemingly been a dream, and learns that the residents are not terrorists but fearful undocumented immigrants. Quixote, having experienced Toby's "dream", is regaling them with a tale of it.
Moving on with Quixote, Toby finds a bag of old Spanish gold and attempts to hide it, but accidentally falls down a ravine into a cave. There he re-encounters Angelica, who tells him that she works as an escort. She mounts a horse and rides off, with Toby chasing her.
Quixote finds Toby, and joins him on a quest to find Angelica, but soon enters a jousting match with the "Knight of Mirrors", revealed to be Raul. He and several Los Sueños townspeople had been disguising themselves in an attempt to get Javier to come home. After Quixote rides off, Raul punches Toby for indirectly causing his daughter to become an escort.
Waking up, Toby finds Quixote whipping himself with thorns to prove his love to Dulcinea del Toboso. Healing his wounds by a river, Toby is found by Jacqui on horseback, dressed for a costume party thrown by Alexei Miiskin, a Russian vodka company owner entering a business deal with the Boss. Arriving at Miiskin's castle, Toby learns that Angelica is Miiskin's "property" and sees him behave cruelly towards Angelica and Quixote. Toby tries to convince both of them to leave but Quixote refuses and Angelica is captured. Toby rescues Angelica, but finds it is Jacqui wearing a mask, who reveals that Angelica is being burned alive by Miiskin as part of his entertainment. Toby accidentally knocks Quixote out of a window; dying on the ground, Quixote gives Toby his sword, telling him that he never truly saw him as lowly. Angelica's burning is shown to be a special effect and Quixote dies while Toby recalls Quixote's claim of immortality.
The next morning, Toby, now Quixote, attacks three windmills, believing them to be giants, with Angelica at his side. The two agree to call her Sancho Panza and they ride into the sunset.
An unnamed man, simply called "The Man in the Cube" (Richard Schaal), is trapped in a cube-like white room as he asks if anyone can hear him. A stool is brought in by a maintenance man named Arnie (Hugh Webster) who discovers it covered in strawberry jam as he wipes it down. After Arnie leaves, the Man tries to find the door. He encounters a variety of people come through various hidden doors in which each one claim that he can get out through his own door.
His first visitor is a woman named Margaret (Lolo Farell) who claims that the man is her husband Ted as she appears with parents (Alice Hill and Moe Margolese) are also present. Her door closes on the Man before she can get him out.
The Man then meets Mr. Thomas (Rex Sevenoaks), the manager of this entire establishment. When asked about the Cube, Mr. Thomas states that he has asked himself that question many times where it is too good to be true. Mr. Thomas shows the Man the Call Button that he should push if he ever needs anything. Mr. Thomas then works to deny the fact that there are other Cubes like this while stating that while some people are quite content and stay in the Cube, others would wish to leave. As Mr. Thomas leaves, he tells the Man that he must find his own door.
Arnie returns again where he gives the Man a telephone and states that he can get him anything he wants. Arnie exclaims that the only trouble with this establishment is that there is no organization and The Man wouldn't believe the weirdos that run it. He also talks about the four tons of chocolate rabbits while mentioning that he's been working here for 14 years where there hasn't been a request for chocolate rabbits. As Arnie goes outside to call the Man to see if the telephone is working, the Man sees a brief opening until the telephone rings and Mr. Thomas briefly appears to give the receiver to him before leaving. The Man answers it and Arnie tells him that the telephone is in business. The Man discovers that his telephone only calls up Arnie. When the Man throws it towards the wall, Arnie opens it as it flies through as Arnie rewards his accuracy by giving him a chocolate rabbit.
Two police officers consisting of a police sergeant (Jon Granik) and Officer Fritz (Guy Sanvido) from the MPD enter with a search warrant. They find different things in the panels of the Cube like smuggled diamonds in the chocolate rabbit, a stack of gold bullion from the Bank of Munich, vital plans of the X-74 (which was classified top secret), microfilm documenting the entire National Security System, an arsenal (consisting of machine guns, sten guns, dynamite), and a bound and gagged Dr. Kingsley (who was missing for two weeks as part of a ransom). The Man is then handcuffed by the police sergeant in an uncomfortable way as the police officers leave with everything while telling the Man to wait until they return.
A house painter and decorator named Miss Bix (Sandra Scott) comes in while the Man tries to get out of his handcuffs as Arnie comes in with the mustard paint in order to decorate the Cube. She then changes her mind and wants tangerine paint as the Man struggles to get his leg out from the position the handcuffs have him in. Upon trying to hold back the info on how long the Man will be in the Cube, Miss Bix changes her mind about the paint and has shellac sprayed onto the already white Cube as she leaves. Arnie states to the Man that he is actually spraying deodorant and that Miss Bix can't tell the difference. Before leaving, Arnie stops the Man from following him since this is Arnie's door.
A guitarist (Ralph Endersby) comes in and gives the Man the keys to the handcuffs which frees the Man. Upon finding a bed that manifested, the Man rests on it while the guitarist practices his music. The guitarist is then joined by the rest of his band as they sing a song to the Man about never getting out of the Cube. After the band leaves, Mr. Thomas briefly enters telling the Man that the "Rest Period" is over.
A prisoner named Watson (Jack Van Evera) enters the Cube having escaped from his Cube. He notices that the Man hasn't been here for long while mentioning how his Cube had squares while the Man's Cube has rectangles. Watson tells the Man that he had to tell how many times has passed by making marks in his thumbnail which didn't work when he lost his thumbnails. Watson decides to return to his Cube to see if he left anything behind. When the Man states that if he re-enters his Cube where he won't get out again, Watson ranted about having to depend on the squares. Watson decides to go back to his Cube. When Mr. Thomas enters asking if someone else was in his Cube, the Man states that there was a visitor. Mr. Thomas states that other visitor was acting and introduces him to Jack Van Evera who asks Mr. Thomas if they can take out the part about the thumbnails. As they leave, Jack asks Mr. Thomas what the rest of these Cubes are for anyway. Before leaving, Mr. Thomas states "He was only kidding. You know that."
A seductress named Cora (Eliza Creighton) enters as a couch and a liquor cabinet suddenly appear. Cora states that she always comes to the Cube. The Man sits down on the couch. As they make out, a physician named Dr. Bradowski (Eric Clavering) enters with Dr. Bingham (Moe Margolese) and a nurse (Jean Christopher) run some medical tests on the Man while Cora leaves. The doctors tell the Man his results before leaving to tend to a platypus.
A professor (Don McGill) enters stating that him being here is either part of a teleplay or he's hallucinating. He even shows him the ending with him in the Cube with a girl before leaving.
A black militant (Don Crawford) enters where he finds the Man's Cube is all white thinking that it's a mausoleum for whiteness while claiming that the Man will die in the Cube. The Man claims that this isn't his place and had nothing to do with the Cube's construction. When the black militant wants the Man to go out the door, the Man states that he can't since it's the black militant's door. The black militant then leaves quoting "You make me sick".
A classy party manifests in the Man's cube. When Mr. Thomas arrives offering tonic to the guests, the Man tries to get some only to be blocked by a barrier. A female partygoer named Mrs. Stratton (Alice Hill) exclaims that Mr. Thomas is projected and states that nobody having a party in the Man's Cube is real. The image of the party then disappears as it shows the Man on his stool.
After a panel briefly opens where an old man (Eric Clavering) asks if he has considered that he is dead and this is what his afterlife is like, the Man is visited by a scientist (William Osler) who asks the Man to define reality for him. When the Man claims that the hammer doesn't exist, the scientist proves him wrong by throwing the hammer at one of the cube's walls causing a hole in it. Arnie reprimands the scientist for breaking the wall and gives him his hammer back while he gets the wall fixed. Upon being unable to convince the Man, the scientist leaves hoping that the Man rots in the Cube. Arnie fixes the hole and leaves stating that the scientist is a real pain in the neck.
A woman named Liza (Trudy Young) enters where she gives the Man a hint on how to get out which is "it's going to get worse before it gets better". Her other hint is "don't trust anybody" as she turns into an elderly-like appearance (Ruth Springford). After she leaves, Mr. Thomas enters stating that the Man's time is up and that he must leave. As the Man tries to leave through the door that Mr. Thomas claims to be the Man's door, the Man has his suspicions in which if he steps out the door, two gorillas in ballerina dresses would grab him, drag him back into the cube, throw him to the ground, and dance around him singing "Home! Sweet Home!" The Man attempts to step out and is assaulted by the ballerina-dressed gorillas (depicted as two men in gorilla suits) in the manner that he described where they substitute "home" with "the Cube." Mr. Thomas leaves stating that the Man is getting pretty good at predicting these things.
Two comics (Jon Granik and Guy Sanvido) enter and tell jokes to the audience. They then turn their attention to the Man when they find that he wasn't joining in on the laughter. The Man stated that he just didn't feel like laughing. The comics then laugh at the Man before leaving.
A kid on a tricycle rides around the Cube mocking the Man stating that he's never going to get out of the Cube and then leaves.
A monk (Jerry Nelson) enters and disperses his wisdom onto the Man while stating that he is part of the "All." Before leaving, the monk gives the Man an orb called the Ramadar which is supposed to hold the meaning of life. After the monk leaves, the Ramadar only makes a grinding noise. The Man smashes it with the stool to find that inexplicably it is made of strawberry jam inside. Arnie comes in and cleans up the broken Ramadar stating that most people break their Ramadar. Arnie then leaves with the broken Ramadar and the broken stool. After six people bring in a coffin, the Man finds a gun is left in the room. Grabbing the gun, the man attempts to shoot himself and ink squirts onto his face.
All the people he had encountered enter and laugh at him as Arnie states that this is all a joke. Enraged, he tells them he's had enough with their tricks and that no matter what happens he knows he is real. The Man then leaves the Cube as the people applaud him. The Man is then escorted into an office so that the head of the organization can sign his release. Once there, the Man reflects on the revelation of his own realness. He accidentally cuts himself with a knife while demonstrating and is asked to taste his blood. He does so and discovers his blood is strawberry jam. The head of the organization and his office fade away to reveal the Man is still trapped in the cube.
As the credits roll, the Man wanders around the room one last time and then sits down on the floor apparently resigned to his fate of never getting out while the band's song is reprised in the background.
Cybergirl is a Blue superheroine Human Prototype 6000 living under the secret identity of ordinary teenage girl Ashley Campbell. In reality, she is a "Human Prototype 6000" from a distant planet.
Her powers include super-human strength, super-human speed, and the ability to interface directly with electronic devices and computers; she is also able to physically change her appearance between that of the blue-haired, ethereal-looking Cybergirl and the less conspicuous, mousy-haired Ashley, and can alter her clothing at will.
She was originally known as the Cyber Replicant Human Prototype 6000, the only one of her model to be built. Not only are her powers far and above that of earlier models, she has a much wider emotional scope than her predecessors. She ran away from her planet of origin in order to explore the beings she was modeled after, namely humans.
Two other Evil Red Replicants called Isaac and Xanda are sent after her and their sole mission is to destroy her. She lands on Earth in the fictional city of River City, Australia which is modeled on and filmed in Brisbane. She meets Jackson and Hugh Campbell, who take her in, and she adopts the name Cybergirl as her superheroine identity. Jackson calls her "Cy" and she later uses her powers to make herself look more human; this identity is called Ashley, in which she poses as Jackson's cousin and Hugh's niece. The only other person besides Hugh and Jackson to know her identity is Kat, her friend and neighbour.
She is pursued not only by Xanda and Isaac but also by a powerful software mogul named Rhyss. She is well loved by the populace of River City, however, and she enjoys the approval of Mayor Buxton, whose twin daughters Emerald and Sapphire are big fans of the superheroine. Ironically they snub her, as Ashley, at school.
''Jagged Alliance'' takes place on the fictional South Atlantic island of Metavira, a former nuclear testing site. The nuclear tests altered some trees on the island and several years later it was discovered by a scientist, Brenda Richards, that those trees, known as Fallow trees, produce unique sap that proves to be a medical marvel. However, Brenda also discovered that the trees could not reproduce.
Her assistant, Lucas Santino, realised how profitable this sap would be. He managed to convince Jack Richards, the leader of the scientific mission, that it would be beneficial to have two independent science teams. Santino consequently established a new base on the other side of the island. He immediately began to recruit new people and gradually took over the island by force.
When the game begins, the player is contacted by Jack Richards and is invited to the island. There, Brenda and her father request that the player hires mercenaries through the Association of International Mercenaries (A.I.M.) to reclaim the island from Santino's forces sector by sector.
Baron Wolf von Frankenstein, son of Henry Frankenstein, relocates his wife Elsa and their young son Peter to the family castle. Wolf wants to redeem his father's reputation but finds this will be more difficult than he thought after he encounters hostility from the villagers, who resent him for the destruction his father's monster wreaked years ago. Wolf's only other friend is the local police Inspector Krogh, who wears an artificial arm because Frankenstein's creature ripped out his real arm when he was a child. While investigating his father's castle, Wolf meets Ygor, an embittered blacksmith who survived being hanged for graverobbing and has a deformed neck as a result. Wolf finds the monster's comatose body in the crypt where his grandfather and father were buried; his father's sarcophagus bears the phrase "Heinrich von Frankenstein: Maker of Monsters" written in chalk. He decides to revive the monster to prove his father was correct and to restore honor to his family. Wolf uses a torch to scratch out the word "Monsters" on the casket and writes "Men" beneath it.
Wolf revives the monster but it only responds to Ygor's commands and commits a series of murders, the victims of which were jurors at Ygor's trial. Krogh strongly suspects Wolf has created a murderous monster similar to his father's due to marks on the victims' bodies but Wolf denies it and tries to frame Ygor as the murderer. Krogh doesn't believe Ygor is the killer and so arrests Wolf for the disappearance of the Frankenstein family butler, Benson. Krogh then orders Wolf not to leave the castle. Nevertheless, Wolf is determined to throw Ygor off of his property and begins searching the castle for him. Later Wolf finds Ygor in the castle's laboratory and shoots him after Ygor threatens him with a hammer. Ygor collapses, apparently dead. The monster abducts Wolf's son in revenge but cannot bring himself to kill the child. Krogh and Wolf pursue the monster to the laboratory where a struggle ensues during which the monster tears out Krogh's false arm. Wolf swings on a rope and knocks the monster into a pit of molten sulfur beneath the laboratory, saving his son. Wolf leaves the keys of the Frankenstein castle to the villagers, who turn out to cheer the family as they leave by train.
Superintendent Chalmers visits Principal Skinner at Springfield Elementary School to show off his newly purchased 1979 Honda Accord. Chalmers is distraught when he discovers the car's hood ornament is missing. Skinner orders a search of every student's locker which reveals that Nelson Muntz, the school bully, is the culprit. As punishment, Nelson is forced to return all stolen items found in his locker to their owners and perform janitorial work with Groundskeeper Willie.
Lisa is caught staring at Nelson during band practice and unwittingly causes a commotion among the band students. After she receives detention and is forced to write a contrite message on a chalkboard, she realizes she has a crush on Nelson and gets Milhouse to pass a love note to him in class. Nelson thinks Milhouse wrote the love note and beats him. Lisa confesses to Nelson that she wrote the note and soon she spends more time with him, inviting him to her house and even visiting Nelson's own.
At Marge Simpson's suggestion, Lisa vows to turn Nelson from a troublemaker into a sweet, well-behaved young man. She forcibly dresses him in sharp clothing and takes him to the Springfield Observatory. To distract Lisa, Nelson kisses her, but finds he has fallen for Lisa in the process. However, the influence of Nelson's friends Jimbo, Dolph and Kearney prevails when they convince him to vandalize Principal Skinner's house. After Skinner calls the police, the four boys flee. Nelson takes refuge at Lisa's house and insists he is innocent; Lisa believes him until he accidentally reveals he was involved in the boys' prank. Lisa realizes that she cannot reform Nelson and gently ends their relationship. On her way home she runs into Milhouse, who is delighted to hear that she is no longer seeing Nelson.
In the subplot, Chief Wiggum arrests a scam artist for telemarketing fraud. Homer witnesses the arrest and retrieves the discarded autodialer from a trash bin. He uses the machine for a telemarketing scheme to persuade everyone to send him money under the name "Happy Dude". His phone calls annoy the whole town and Chief Wiggum catches him. Instead of confiscating the autodialer and taking Homer into custody, he shoots it and asks Homer to bring it to his court hearing lest the charges be dismissed for lack of evidence. In the closing credits, the repaired autodialer plays Homer's new, court-ordered message asking residents to forgive him by sending money to "Sorry Dude".
Years after witnessing his father being executed by guillotine, Hans is working as an assistant to the failed Doctor Baron Victor Frankenstein. Frankenstein, with the help of Dr. Hertz, is in the process of discovering a way of trapping the soul of a recently deceased person. Frankenstein believes he can transfer that soul into another recently deceased body to restore it to life.
Hans is also the lover of Christina, daughter of cowardly innkeeper Kleve. Christina's entire left side is disfigured and partly paralysed. Young dandies Anton, Johann and Karl frequent Kleve's inn and cause a disturbance. Johann threatens to have his father revoke Kleve's license if he complains. The three insist that they be served by Christina and mock her for her deformities. The taunting angers Hans, who fights the three of them and cuts Anton's face with a knife. Instead of helping Hans against the thugs, Kleve runs away and fetches the police.
Eventually, the dandies decide to leave the inn. They return in the night to steal wine from the inn and when Kleve catches them in the act, they beat him to death.
Meanwhile, Hans spends the night with Christina, and in the morning sees her leave on the stagecoach. Returning to town, Hans sees a crowd outside Kleve's tavern and, based on no evidence, is immediately presumed a suspect in the murder. Hans is arrested. He will not reveal his time with Christina as an alibi and, known for his short temper, is tried. The trial is a farce and Hans is convicted. Despite Frankenstein and Hertz's defenses against the accusations, Hans is executed by guillotine. Seeing this as an opportunity, Frankenstein gets hold of Hans' fresh corpse and traps his soul.
Distraught over Hans's death, Christina drowns herself in the river. The peasants fish out her body and bring it to Hertz to see if he can do anything. Frankenstein and Hertz transfer Hans' soul into her body. Over months of complex and intensive treatment, they cure her physical deformities. The result is a physically healthy woman with no memory of her past life. Frankenstein insists on telling her nothing but her name and keeping her in Hertz's house. Despite coming to her senses regarding her identity, Christina is taken over by the spirit of the vengeful Hans.
Christina kills Anton and Karl, driven mostly by the ghostly insistence of Hans. Frankenstein and Hertz become suspicious of her behaviour and take her to the guillotine where Hans and his father were executed. However, they believe she subconsciously retains the memories of Hans' father's death rather than of Hans himself. By the time Frankenstein realises the truth, he finds her already murdering Johann. Despite Frankenstein's pleas, Christina knows she now has no one and nothing left to live for and drowns herself again. Frankenstein, disappointed and having apparently learned a lesson, walks away silently.
After watching the latest McBain film, Grampa suffers a mild heart attack while arguing with a cinema clerk. Thinking he might die, he confesses a long-hidden secret: Homer has a half-brother. Before Grampa married Homer's mother, he and a carnival prostitute had a son whom they left at the Shelbyville Orphanage. Determined to find his brother, Homer visits the orphanage and learns that Grampa's love child, named Herbert, was adopted by a Mr. and Mrs. Powell.
Herbert "Herb" Powell — who looks like Homer except he is taller, slimmer and has more hair — owns Powell Motors, a Detroit automobile manufacturer. Herb is overjoyed to learn Homer is his half-brother and invites the Simpsons to stay at his mansion. Bart, Lisa, and Maggie are enthralled by Herb's wealthy lifestyle and kind personality, but Marge worries wealth will spoil her children. After Herb decides that Homer, an average American, is the perfect person to design his company's new car, he gives him free rein to design it. When Herb's design team ignores Homer's outlandish suggestions, Herb encourages Homer to take command of the project and incorporate his own ideas in the final design.
When the new car is unveiled with great fanfare, Herb is horrified to find it is a badly designed monstrosity that costs US$82,000 (approximately US$171,000 in 2022), forcing Powell Motors into bankruptcy. The bank forecloses on Herb's mansion and he loses everything he worked for. As Herb leaves Detroit on a bus, he angrily disowns Homer as a brother. Grampa arrives and scolds Homer for ruining Herb's life. While Homer drives the family home, Bart tells him his car is great. Homer is relieved to learn at least one person likes it.
In Connecticut in the 1920s, Martin is about to be married to Fay. When an old flame, Alice, visits him, Fay knocks him out with a champagne bottle in a jealous fit. As Martin dreams, he is seemingly in the court of King Arthur in 528 A.D. Dubbed "Sir Boss" by Arthur, Martin is directed to industrialize Camelot, which he does, including telephones, and radios. He falls in love with "Demoiselle Alisande" ("Alice") but the king's evil sister, "Morgan Le Fay" ("Fay"), kidnaps her. As Martin rescues her, he wakes up and realizes that it was Alice that he loved all along.
The 1943 revival was revised by Rodgers and Hart. The setting was changed to a more topical war-time setting, and the show art showed a knight and his damsel in a jeep. Also, "Morgan Le Fay" was turned into a "singing sorceress" anti-heroine, and the song "To Keep My Love Alive" was written especially for this revival, for Vivienne Segal to perform.
The Guardian Gobots are continuing their work on rebuilding their home planet of Gobotron when a mysterious ship crashes on the planet. Leader-1, Turbo, and Scooter investigate, and find it to be occupied by a pair of transforming robotic rocks with protosaur essences - Solitaire and her valet Nuggit. They have come seeking the Guardians' help to save their planet, Quartex, from the evil Rock Lord Magmar, who is killing the other Rock Lords in order to take their power sceptres. He places these in a machine designed to channel all their power into his own sceptre.
The Guardians agree to help, but the conversation is spied upon by the Renegade Fitor. Gobotron is soon attacked by the Renegade fleet, and Cy-Kill and a team of Renegades capture Solitaire, Small Foot and the GoBots' human allies Nick and A.J. With Nuggit as their guide, Leader-1, Turbo, Scooter, and Matt set off on a rescue mission.
On Quartex, after relieving a vanquished Rock Lord of his sceptre, Magmar now only requires three more to complete his own. One is held by the Lord of Fossils, another by Solitaire, and the last by Boulder and his forces; the only opposition left. His troops vote to attack Boulder and be done with him, but Boulder learns of the upcoming attack, and is able to launch an effective counter defence that sees Magmar on the verge of defeat.
Meanwhile, Cy-Kill attempts to get information out of Solitaire, and despite her best efforts manages to link up with Magmar and strike an alliance, turning the battle against Boulder. The good Rock Lords flee, and after their defeat at the hands of the Renegades are initially very skeptical about the Guardians' intentions when they land on Quartex. However, Nuggit is able to convince Boulder and the rest of the Guardians true intentions and the two sides form an alliance.
The Renegades and Magmar soon attack in Thruster, and Leader-1 and Turbo engage in aerial combat, but receive damage that impairs their ability to fly or convert to vehicle mode. Thruster eventually withdraws on the belief that the Guardians and their allies have been wiped-out, but they survive and proceed towards the kingdom of Fossils before it is attacked. Cy-Kill and Magmar, however, strike first and seize the Fossil Lord's sceptre, leaving our heroes at a loss on what to do next.
Meanwhile on Rogue Star, after Nick and A.J. escape from their cell, they free Small Foot, and the three carry out various acts of sabotage before escaping in a Renegade Spacehawk fighter. They land on Quartex and hook up with Leader-1 and the rest. Cannibalizing the fighter for all its parts, Scooter is able to construct energy projectile weapons for Boulder and his troops, and fully repairs Leader-1 and Turbo.
Now ready and with the element of surprise, the allies march on Stonehead, Magmar's fort. Meanwhile, Cy-Kill finally hands Solitaire's Sceptre to Magmar to fully power his own (Boulder's sceptre, which they believed lost and was described as necessary to Magmar's goals, is all but forgotten). Once the sceptre is powered, Cy-Kill and his Renegades make their move to seize it for themselves.
Solitaire, who is present to be executed, escapes in the shoot out, and rejoins Boulder and the rest as they finally crash the party. The Renegades flee with the stolen sceptre, but the Guardians pursue. Discovering that Thruster has been wrecked by the Guardians prior to their attack, Cy-Kill attempts to use Magmar's sceptre against them. But the energy discharges are too much and he is unable to control or even release his hold.
A well placed shot by Leader-1 separates the two, and the Renegades finally retreat while the sceptre's power disperses. Magmar and his minions remain at large, but are no longer unopposed. With their mission complete, the Guardians bid farewell to the Rock Lords and return to Gobotron.
As Hurricane Barbara approaches Springfield, panicked citizens ransack the Kwik-E-Mart. After the storm, the Simpsons leave their basement to find their home unscathed. Their next-door neighbor, Ned Flanders, emerges from a heap of rubble to find his house destroyed, forcing the Flanders family to take shelter in the church basement. Ned's house is uninsured as he regards insurance as a form of gambling. Ned is further discouraged after learning that his business, The Leftorium, was looted after the storm. Distraught, Ned asks Rev. Lovejoy if God is punishing him like Job, despite his strict adherence to his faith.
The next day, Marge surprises the Flanders family with a new home, which the residents of Springfield have built, though shoddily. Homer and Chief Wiggum had installed a toilet next to the fridge for easy access, Apu installed all of the electrical wiring into only one room, Bart and Lisa designed Rod and Todd’s room with non-removeable load bearing poster art, Moe painted the dirt after running out of floorboards and Barney built a miniature room that was meant to be Ned and Maude's master bedroom. When Homer leans on the front door, the house then collapses. Finally the lens in Ned's glasses breaks and his rage boils over after he is unable to calm himself down, furiously berating all the townspeople's flaws and failures after years of politeness.
Worried he is losing his mind and feeling terrible for his outburst, Ned voluntarily commits himself to a mental hospital. He is visited by his childhood psychiatrist, Dr. Foster, who recalls Ned's childhood as an out-of-control brat raised by beatnik parents. Ned's treatment, the University of Minnesota Spankalogical Protocol, involved eight months of continuous spanking by Foster. The treatment worked too well and left Ned unable to express anger until the losses he suffered from the storm made him erupt in repressed violent rage.
Foster realizes that his earlier approach was flawed and enlists Homer to help Ned express his emotions. Foster thinks Homer is perfect for this treatment because of his and Ned's mutual dislike. After several scripted insults fail to rile Ned's anger, Homer disparages his apparent like of everything, to which Ned admits he hates two things: the post office and his parents. Foster declares Ned cured and releases him from the asylum.
Outside the hospital, Ned is greeted by the townsfolk of Springfield. Ned promises to tell people when they offend him instead of stifling his anger, to Foster's approval, and cheerily adds he will run them down with his car if they anger him.
Martin Prince invites his classmates to his birthday party, but it ends badly after most of the partygoers get food poisoning from diseased oysters and end up leaving by ambulance due to the oysters being served instead of cake. After the party, Bart, who fed his oysters to the Prince family cat, sees Principal Seymour Skinner and Edna Krabappel kissing in Martin's pink playhouse. Bart plans to reveal what he saw, but Edna and Seymour fear they will be fired if anyone discovers their romance. They swear him to secrecy in exchange for putting Milhouse's name on his permanent record.
Edna and Seymour use Bart as their gofer. When Edna and Seymour accidentally run into Superintendent Chalmers whilst on a date at the cinema, Seymour fetches Bart, who had been sleeping, so that Edna and Seymour could claim that they were supervising a field trip. Bart is humiliated in front of his classmates after Seymour forces him to say "I love you, Edna Krabappel" aloud as if the message were his own. Fed up, Bart gathers the entire school in front of a janitor's closet and opens the door to reveal that Seymour and Edna are making out.
Word quickly spreads throughout Springfield, with the story the students tell growing more illicit and exaggerated. After hearing his son Ralph's risqué version involving the two "making babies", Chief Wiggum reports it to Superintendent Chalmers. Chalmers gives Seymour an ultimatum: either he ends his relationship with Edna or they both will be fired. Seymour decides that love trumps his professional goals, so Chalmers fires them and demands they leave the building by day's end.
Bart feels guilty when he learns that Edna and Seymour have lost their jobs. After Seymour apologizes to Bart for embarrassing him, Bart encourages him to stand up for himself. With Bart's help, Seymour and Edna barricade themselves inside the school, contact the media and make their demands: they want their jobs back and the townspeople to stop interfering with their relationship. When several parents protest that their children saw them having sexual intercourse in the janitor's closet, Seymour insists that is untrue because he is a 44-year-old virgin. Everyone is speechless, but they think it must be true because it is so embarrassing for anyone to admit. Realizing that they have overreacted, the residents leave peacefully.
Chalmers agrees to reinstate Seymour and Edna, but asks them to "keep the lewdness at a minimum" during school hours. They thank Bart for helping them but tell him they are breaking up, fearing the entire town judging their relationship publicly. When a disappointed Bart leaves, they observe grade-school children will believe anything they are told before entering the janitor's closet for another tryst.
The game and comic book are about the teenage son of the Grim Reaper, named Death Jr. (DJ for short). His father tried many times (all of them failed) to stop his son from creating chaos at every school he has been in. Now is DJ's last chance. If he creates chaos one more time, he'll be sent to military school. He meets new friends at this school: Pandora, a girl with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and a thing for locked boxes; Stigmartha, a girl who has holes in her hands and bleeds from them whenever she's nervous; Smith and Weston, conjoined twins who are very smart and conjoined at the head; the Seep, an armless, legless, foul-mouthed kid in a vat; and the Dead Guppy, a character who speaks for himself.
The friends go on a field trip to a museum, where they find a locked box that Pandora wants opened, so DJ opens it to impress her. Unfortunately, all hell breaks loose and demons run amok. It's up to DJ to stop them and revert the town back to normal, all the while making sure Dad doesn't find out.
Spencer Armacost (Johnny Depp) is an astronaut working for NASA, and his wife Jillian (Charlize Theron) is a second-grade teacher. While he and Alex Streck (Nick Cassavetes) are walking in space on a mission, an explosion knocks out their communication with the command center.
They land safely, but when their spouses arrive to see them they are in the hospital; both asleep until they recover. Armacost eventually wakes up without problems, but Streck has a medical emergency requiring him to have an electrical cardioversion. Neither speak about the in-flight emergency. Armacost accepts a position with a New York-based company, McClaren. At a farewell party, Streck's aggressive behavior catches Jillian's attention before he suddenly dies from what NASA attributes to a stroke. Streck's wife, Natalie (Donna Murphy), electrocutes herself in the bath with a radio.
In New York at a party, Jillian asks Spencer to tell her about the space walk incident. He answers vaguely, and then has aggressive sex with her. Soon afterward, she finds out she is pregnant with twins. She tells the doctor that earlier in her life, after her parents died, she sought psychiatric care because she started to see her loved ones dead, including herself.
Sherman Reese (Joe Morton) has been terminated from NASA because he continued to insist that something was wrong with Spencer, though all tests came back normal. Reese confronts Jillian to warn her, and she leaves in fear, wanting to believe he is crazy but knowing he is right about Spencer being different. Jillian calls Reese and he tells her that Natalie was pregnant with twins at the time of her suicide. Jillian asks what the autopsy showed about the twins and Reese tells Jillian that he needs to meet her in person to show her. Spencer intercepts him, and he goes missing. As a backup plan, he has sent her a key to a self storage locker that has a VHS video cassette that explains that there was a signal in space near Spencer and Streck when they lost contact with NASA. He believes the signal was an alien that wanted to get to Earth and traveled as a sound wave through space, taking over Spencer's body. He believes it will use her twins to pilot the McClaren plane that it is designing that disables warfare machinery. Jillian attempts a medical abortion but is thwarted by Spencer who slaps her. She throws herself down a flight of stairs and wakes up in the hospital. Spencer tells her that the twins survived the fall and intimidates her to keep silent about what had happened.
In a dream, Jillian sees her sister, Nan (Clea DuVall), killed by Spencer when she questions why he has Reese's briefcase. Jillian leaves the hospital on her own but Spencer follows her because of his connection with the twins inside her. At home, Jillian barricades the door and goes into the room where she dreamed her sister was killed. She sees her body on the floor, but then it is gone, presumably a vision. When Spencer breaks his way into the apartment, she has flooded the kitchen floor with water, with a radio in the sink and an extension cord plugged into the wall. She holds the ends of the cords in each hand and tells Spencer to stay away from her. She notices bloody nail marks on Spencer's hand and she knows that her sister really is dead, as she dreamed. She tells Spencer she does not know who he is, that he killed her sister and her husband. He tells her he did, and that he lives inside of her now. Water begins pouring down from the ceiling, as Jillian turned on all of the water in the bathroom upstairs. Spencer is engulfed in the water, Jillian lifts her feet off the wet floor, connects the cords and electrocutes the alien. The alien leaves Spencer's body and transmits into Jillian.
Jillian has remarried and her twin sons are off on their first day of school. Her sons look back before boarding the bus with a look on their face before they smile and are on their way. Jillian assures the stepfather that he is now their father.
When a white woman accuses him of raping her, Traver, a black clarinetist in a touring jazz band, steals a small boat to escape a lynch mob. He travels until the outboard motor runs out of gas, at which point he paddles to an island off the Carolina coast that is a private game preserve. It is not hunting season, so the island's only inhabitants are the caretakers Miller and Pee-Wee and Pee-Wee's teenage granddaughter Evalyn.
Pee-Wee dies the same morning Traver comes to the island. Miller says he did not approve of how the elderly drunkard was raising Evvie, and he intends to put her in the care of the church and send her to the mainland so she can attend school. After he has her clean herself up and brush her wild hair, however, he notices she is growing up and comes on to her. Evvie escapes Miller's cabin and locks herself in hers with Pee-Wee's corpse.
The next day, Jackson arrives on the island with supplies. He and Miller bury Pee-Wee, and Miller leaves with Jackson to alert the authorities to the death. Miller had told Evvie that she could go to town with Jackson, but now says he changed his mind.
Thinking herself alone on the island, Evvie goes to work at the apiary until Traver appears and begs her for something to eat. She is initially frightened, but the dime he pays her for some honey and an apple puts her at ease, and she takes him back to Miller's cabin for a real meal. Evvie tries to stop Traver from taking some food and gas and a shotgun with him when he goes, though she relents when he gives her twenty dollars. Traver accidentally shoots a hole in his boat and gets supplies to repair it from Evvie.
Miller returns in the morning, and Evvie, who does not think Traver is still on the island, tells him about Traver's visit. She does not mention the twenty dollars, so Miller takes a rifle and goes to look for the thief. Traver had fallen asleep before finishing his repairs, but he is just about to leave when he hears Miller approaching. He gets away on foot, and Miller shoots four holes in the boat and begins to track Traver through the woods. Sighting Traver crossing a swamp in a boat he has found, Miller fires a shot. Although Traver splashes into the water, he emerges unscathed out of Miller's view.
That night, Miller presents Evvie with a new dress and some high heel shoes. He tries to kiss her, but she pulls away, and he sees the twenty-dollar bill pinned to the inside of Evvie's old dress. Miller angrily demands to know what Evvie gave Traver in exchange for so much money, not believing the truth. After Evvie goes to bed, Traver bursts in with the shotgun to get his motor, which Miller had taken, and Miller's rifle. He explains he is not a thief because he paid for the supplies he took, inadvertently corroborating Evvie's story.
In the morning, Miller gives Evvie the money back. She goes to see Traver, who is fixing his boat, but their conversation is interrupted when Miller shows up. The tension is defused somewhat when the men discover they were both in the army and took part in the liberation of Italy during WWII.
Later, Traver comes to the cabins to keep an eye on Miller while his boat soaks overnight. Evvie gets Traver to play his clarinet, and she dances until Miller gets a hand grenade and throws it. He says he has two more, so Traver does not have the upper hand, even with the guns, and should just give them back, which Traver does that evening. Miller moves Evvie into his cabin so Traver can stay in hers, and, while Traver plays the clarinet, Miller rapes Evvie.
There is a rainstorm the following day, and, to interrupt a fraught racial conversation, Evvie asks Traver to play some music. When he goes to get his clarinet, Jackson arrives unexpectedly with Reverend Fleetwood, who has come to perform a funeral service and take Evvie to a children's home. Jackson mentions that a black musician raped a white woman, and Miller realizes why Traver is on the island. Traver snuck away when the visitors came, so Miller and Jackson do not find him in Evvie's cabin, and they decide to wait until morning to continue their search, as it is still raining and Jackson has the keys to his boat and Miller has Traver's motor and oars.
While Miller and Jackson hunt Traver, the Reverend, who has suspicions about Miller's treatment of Evvie, baptizes Evvie, though she fails to see the value of the ritual. Evvie and the Reverend find Traver stuck in one of Miller's animal traps and bring him to the cabins to address his wounded leg. Traver declares his innocence and the Reverend believes him after he says who made the claim against him, as the woman is a drunk and falsely accused a white man of raping her two years ago. Miller and Jackson return and tie Traver up, planning to take him to the mainland the next day. The Reverend says he will testify on Traver's behalf, but Traver says he does not expect to live long enough to see his trial.
After dark, Traver convinces Evvie to set him free. The Reverend confronts Miller about Evvie and Miller confirms the rape, though he defends his actions and asks the Reverend not to report him. After Jackson, who is an even bigger racist than Miller, leaves to find and kill Traver in the morning, the Reverend appeals to Miller, ending by pointing out what a hypocrite he is being. Miller asks if the Reverend would still turn him in if he married Evvie, and the Reverend says he would have to ask his superiors.
Miller finds Jackson, takes his gun, and tells him to get off the island. Traver, who slept in a shed, limps up to Evvie and the Reverend just as Miller returns to the cabins. To everyone's surprise, Miller gives Traver his oars to use as crutches and offers to carry his motor to his boat so he can leave. Evvie goes with the Reverend, but Miller says he will visit her in town soon.
Jackson intercepts Traver and attacks him with a knife. Traver defends himself with an oar and gets the knife, but he is able to stop himself from killing Jackson. Evvie and the Reverend leave with Jackson and Miller helps Traver launch his boat, leaving Miller alone on the island.
After a spectacular and mysterious cosmic event, ants of different species undergo rapid evolution, develop a cross-species hive mind and build seven strange towers with geometrically perfect designs in the Arizona desert. Except for one family, the local human population flees the strangely acting ants. Scientists James R. Lesko and Ernest D. Hubbs set up a computerized lab in a sealed dome located in an area of significant ant activity in Arizona. The ant colony and the scientific team fight each other, though the ants are the more effective aggressors.
The narrative uses the scientific team as the main protagonists, but there are also ant protagonists going about their duties in the colony. The ants immunize themselves to the humans' chemical weapons and soon infiltrate their lab. Teams of ants penetrate the computers of the lab and short them out. After Lesko decodes an ant message, Kendra Eldridge (a young woman who has taken refuge with the scientists), becomes convinced that her actions have enraged the ants. Seeking to save the two scientists, she abandons the lab and apparently sacrifices herself.
Hubbs and Lesko begin to have different plans for dealing with the ants. While Lesko thinks he can communicate with the ants by means of messages written in mathematics, Hubbs plans to wipe out a hill he believes to be the ants' central hive. Delirious from a venomous ant sting, Hubbs can barely get his boots on, but is determined to attack the hive and kill the ant queen. Instead, Hubbs literally falls into a trap – a deep pit that the ants fill with earth. Helpless to save Hubbs and convinced that the ants will soon move into desert areas where their growth will exceed man's ability to control them, Lesko chooses to follow Hubbs's plan. He sets out to the hive with a canister of insecticide. Descending into the hive, Lesko hunts for the queen, but instead finds Kendra reaching out from under the sand. The two embrace and Lesko realizes that, far from destroying the human race, the ants' plan is to adapt the human race and make them a part of the ants' world. In a voice-over, Lesko states that he and Kendra do not know what plans the ants have, but they are awaiting instructions.
Prior to the game's events, Doctor Eggman builds a robotic assistant''Sonic Advance 3'' instruction manual, p. 4. named Gemerl, using parts from the robot Emerl who was destroyed in ''Sonic Battle''. Eggman attempts an experiment using the Chaos Emeralds to perform the Chaos Control technique, but it goes awry and tears the world apart. This action separates Sonic and Tails from Amy, Knuckles, and Cream, all of whom Eggman finds and captures, intending to create a segment of his impending empire on each chunk of the planet. Sonic and Tails travel through the game's seven levels to recapture their friends and retrieve the Emeralds.
The final boss fight takes place at the Altar Emerald temple. If the player defeats Eggman there without having all seven Chaos Emeralds, Eggman and Gemerl escape and fall off the edge of the temple. Peace is restored to the world, and Omochao snaps a picture of the five heroes. However, the game alerts the player that the Emeralds must still be collected for the true ending. If the player defeats Eggman at the temple with all the Chaos Emeralds, Gemerl stops running away with Eggman and attacks Sonic, causing the Emeralds to scatter. Gemerl uses them to take on a giant, orb-shaped form, but Sonic also uses their power to attain his Super Sonic form. With Eggman's help, Super Sonic destroys Gemerl. Tails later finds Gemerl's broken body on a beach, repairing and reprogramming it. The game ends as Cream plays with the now non-aggressive Gemerl at her mother Vanilla's house.
In 1931, the working-class family Andersson of Ådalen are taking part in a massive sympathy strike for workers in the town Marma. Harald, the father of the family, catches fish and manages to support his family while maintaining a good mood. Kjell, the oldest son, works at the office of the local sawmill manager, and is taught about classical music, impressionism and French pronunciation by the manager's wife. He plays in a jazz band with his friend Nisse with whom he also discusses things like girls, erogenous zones and hypnosis. As spring commences, the manager's daughter Anna comes home for school holiday. She and Kjell fall in love, and she becomes pregnant with his child.
When the sawmill is to deliver a big order to America, strikebreakers are called in from other towns. The local strikers become furious and police has to be called in to protect the strikebreakers. Still they are attacked by an angry crowd while working at the Sandviken wharf outside Kramfors. Some are thrown into the water, while others are beaten bloody. Harald takes care of an injured strikebreaker, but is confronted by a group of angry workers. He tries to argue for them to calm down and rely on discussion instead of violence, but they do not agree with his stance.
Because of the turbulence, military troops arrive to ensure safety. It is also decided by the County Administrative Board that the strikebreakers should be prohibited from working, but this information doesn't reach the upset locals, who decide to march to the locality where the strikebreakers are staying to get rid of them. When the military troops fail in persuading the participants to stop, they open fire.
Five people are killed and five more are injured. Among the dead are Harald Andersson, Nisse and a young girl who had only been a bystander. Around the same time, Anna returns from Stockholm where she has had an abortion arranged by her mother. When Kjell is told about the abortion by Anna's father, he interprets it as if he isn't accepted within the bourgeois idyll.
A general strike is proclaimed. While Kjell is occupied as a strike guard, he meets the man who had previously argued with his father. The man claims that the father wasn't innocent, since he had helped to divide the workers. Not until now they were united. Kjell does not agree, instead claiming that education is the key to a better society. Slowly, the Andersson family recover from the loss, and eventually the factories open again.
It is a spin off of the original line set 2 years after the events of N.E.S.T.S. saga, an alternate saga to the Ash.
Addis was the most powerful gang in Southtown. Its leader, a man known only as Fate, was considered a modern-day Robin Hood to the poor and downtrodden. He himself had adopted two twin brothers, Alba and Soiree Meira, and trained them to be successors to his legacy. Six months before the in-game events, Fate is killed by Duke, the leader of the up-and-coming Mephistopheles gang. Duke then proceeds to exploit the poor to serve his thirst for power.
In the present day, the "Mephistopheles Fighting Tournament" is beginning, with the venue being all of Southtown. The participants (minus the Meira Brothers and Lien) believe that the tournament is being sponsored by a charity organization known as the Metatron Foundation, but they soon learn that its true sponsor is the Mephistopheles gang. Alba, Soiree and Lien are contacted directly by Hyena, so they know Metatron has nothing to do with this.
Guerrilla War followed the adventures of two unnamed rebel commandos (Che Guevara and Fidel Castro in the Japanese version) as they raid an unnamed Caribbean Island in order to free it from the rule of an unnamed tyrannical dictator. Along the way the players vanquish hordes of enemy soldiers while attempting to rescue hostages (with large score reductions for any hostages killed in the crossfire), collecting weapons from troopers and operating tanks.
Returning from Missouri as a medical school dropout, Meg Kennedy (Mira Sorvino) moves to Staten Island, New York City, staying with her grandmother due to not having found a place for herself. With the recommendation of Mrs. Saladino, a woman who looks after Meg's grandmother, Meg takes work at an Italian restaurant, run by Gio Esposito (Joseph Siravo). At first, Meg makes mistakes and fails to live up to Esposito's expectations. However, she soon proves her worth by saving the life of a restaurant patron from a gunshot wound. Meg becomes a well known waitress by the restaurant's customers and saves enough money from her tips to buy her own apartment.
Meg befriends two other waitresses including Kate (Melora Walters), who aspires to be a Broadway star, and Raychel (Mariah Carey), an outspoken, brassy women. The three become close friends making a pact to meet once a year at a particular bar. Meg also opens up to them about recent loss of her fiancé. Despite this, Meg becomes aware that the restaurant is not only mob-owned, but also a front for drug-dealing operations of which Raychel and possibly Kate appear to be aware. Struggling to pull her life together, Meg finds it harder to accept monetary tokens from restaurant owner Mr. Santalino (Arthur J. Nascarella), while also fending off the romantic attentions of his son, Frankie (Christian Maelen).
Things come to a breaking point when Esposito drunkenly punches Meg in the face. Mr. Santalino and Frankie kills Esposito while Meg watches in horror. Frankie forces Meg at gunpoint to cut Esposito's body up into little pieces so they can dispose of his body in a meat grinder. Meg later tells Kate everything that happened and lets her know that she plans on leaving town. Kate tries to stop her but in the process reveals that she is actually an undercover police officer and that she had recorded everything Meg said. The police then tap Meg's necklace and put her back undercover at the restaurant, hoping that Mr. Santalino or Frankie will confess to the murder of Esposito.
That night, during her shift, Meg pretends to have a headache and goes to get an aspirin from Frankie but fails to get a confession from him. Meg tries to warn Raychel, who was promoted to manager, to get out of the restaurant before the police come but is interrupted by Frankie and his drinking friends. Meg later sees Mr. Santalino, and gets a confession out of him. Meg thanks him for his heroics and he subsequently promises to do what he did to Esposito to any other man who lays a finger on her. However, in the process, Mr. Santalino notices Kate watching and he rips Meg's necklace off, horrified at her betrayal. In a gun fight, Kate shoots Frankie dead while she is also shot. Meg attempts to save Kate's life but Mr. Santalino drags her away and attempts to shoot her. Before he can do so, Raychel shoots him dead but she is consequently arrested. Meg tries to use a knife to save Kate's lungs from filling up with blood, but is ultimately shot by Kate's partner, Garcia, who consequently realises that Meg was saving her.
A year later, Raychel lays flowers at Meg's gravestone. Kate, who survived thanks to Meg, visits Raychel at the bar the friends made a pact to meet every year. Kate lets Raychel know that she was the reason she got off on probation. Kate then reveals Meg, who is alive and well and Meg jokes that she'd have to kill Raychel if she told her how she survived. The three friends share a drink together and express their adoration for each other.
''Voyager'' discovers a planet that nineteen years before suffered a major ecological disaster. The crew finds a set of stasis pods containing five of the planet's inhabitants; two are dead from heart attacks, and the other three should have been reawakened already. Since the planet has recovered from the disaster, Captain Kathryn Janeway decides to revive the other three, but the crew cannot wake them, their brains tied to a central computer connecting all the pods. B'Elanna Torres and Harry Kim volunteer to occupy the other pods and be connected to the central computer.
They find themselves experiencing a virtual reality, a strange, dark circus-like atmosphere. A sadistic clown appears to lead the group of computer-generated characters, attempting to bring the new arrivals to play. Torres and Kim learn from the aliens that the virtual reality was intended to make a utopia based on their thoughts, but grew on their fears instead and gained the power to induce death. Torres makes a deal with the clown to leave stasis to explain the situation to ''Voyager'', leaving Kim and the aliens behind as hostages.
The clown, while waiting, prepares to torture Kim. Just as the clown is about to slice him with a scalpel, his hand is stopped by The Doctor, who as a hologram is immune to the simulation's powers. The Doctor explains that Janeway is prepared to provide the clown a simulated brain in exchange for Kim and the aliens. However, the clown reads from his captives' minds that a simulated brain will not be the same as a real one, and refuses. Before the Doctor returns to report to Janeway, one of the aliens provides a subtle hint of how to dismantle the computer system.
With this information, Torres begins to shut down the simulation. The clown notices the deception as elements of the program are removed, and kills the alien that gave the hint. Janeway stops Torres before the clown takes another life. The Doctor, after communicating with the crew, informs the clown that Janeway will offer herself as a brain for the system in exchange for the remaining hostages. The clown agrees, and soon Janeway appears in the simulation while the remaining hostages are freed. Too late, the clown realizes that Janeway too is a hologram, her mind only minimally connected to the system. With no living being left connected, the crew finish disabling the computer. As the clown fades away, the Janeway hologram tells him that in the end, fear wants to be defeated.
Zorg (Jean-Hugues Anglade) is a thirty-something aspiring writer making a living as a handyman for a community of beach houses in the seaside resort at Gruissan on France's mediterranean coast. He meets 19-year-old Betty (Béatrice Dalle), a volatile and impulsive young woman, and the two begin a passionate affair, living in his borrowed shack on the beach. Following a row with him where she tears apart and smashes up the house, she finds the manuscript of his first novel; she reads it in one long sitting and decides that he is a genius. However, after another argument with his boss, she empties the shack and burns it down. The two decamp to the outskirts of Paris, where her friend Lisa (Consuelo de Haviland) has a small hotel. Betty laboriously types out Zorg's novel and submits it to various publishers. They meet Lisa's new boyfriend Eddy (Gérard Darmon), and the four have many fun times, often fuelled by alcohol. They find work in Eddy's pizzeria, but a fight erupts in which Betty stabs a customer with a fork. Zorg tries to slap her back to her senses.
Though Zorg hides the rejection letters, Betty finds one and, going to the publisher's house, slashes his face. Zorg induces him to drop charges by threatening him with violence, saying that she is the only good thing in his life and she is all he has. Eddy's mother dies and the friends go to the funeral in Marvejols. There, Eddy asks Zorg and Betty if they will live in the dead woman's house and look after her piano shop. Zorg enjoys the quiet provincial life and makes friends with the grocer Bob (Jacques Mathou), his sex-starved wife Annie (Clémentine Célarié), and various offbeat characters, but Betty's violent mood swings are a concern. One day, after an irritating comment from Zorg, she punches out a window with her bare hand and goes on a screaming flight through the town. Happiness seems on the horizon when a home test suggests that Betty is pregnant, but a lab test is negative and she sinks into depression and tells him that she is hearing voices talking to her in her head. Zorg, masquerading as a woman, robs an armoured cash collection van delivery headquarters, holding the guards at gunpoint, and tying them up. He attempts to use the money to buy Betty's happiness, but she fails to respond and enacts yet another prosecutable offence by luring a small boy away from his mother and taking him to a toy store. Zorg finds her and they both flee from the authorities as they rush to rescue the boy.
One day, Zorg comes home to find blood all over the place and Betty gone. Bob tells him she has gouged out an eye and is in the hospital. Rushing there, Zorg finds her under heavy sedation and is told to come back the next day. Going home, he receives a phone call from a publisher accepting his manuscript. On his next visit to the hospital, he finds Betty restrained and catatonic. He becomes agitated and a doctor tells him that she will need prolonged treatment and may never recover her sanity. Zorg reacts by blaming her illness on the medication being administered and physically attacks the doctor. He is forcefully ejected from the hospital after a violent struggle with three orderlies. Returning in disguise, he whispers his farewells and smothers Betty with a pillow. Going home, he sits down to continue his current book.
Zek, the Grand Nagus of the Ferengi Alliance, arrives at Deep Space Nine and seems to take an interest in Quark. He tells Quark that he wants to use Quark's bar for a conference, where he announces that Quark will be his successor. The Nagus then dies, apparently making Quark's appointment permanent.
Quark has a hard time adjusting to his new position, but he becomes popular among the Ferengi entrepreneurs by giving away lucrative business opportunities. Zek's son Krax and Quark's brother Rom attempt to kill Quark and are stopped by Zek, who appears before them still very much alive. Quark's appointment was a test to see how his son would respond in his absence, and as Zek says, "You failed! ''Miserably!''" Quark congratulates Rom for having the "lobes" to try to kill him.
Meanwhile, Commander Sisko is trying to cope with the friendship between his son Jake and Rom's son Nog. His problem is seemingly solved when Rom orders Nog not to attend school; however, Jake and Nog begin spending even more time together. Jake will only tell Sisko that what they are doing is "private." In the end, Sisko finds he has nothing to worry about when he finds Jake teaching Nog how to read.
Heiress Joanna Stayton is accustomed to a wealthy life with her own yacht and fortune, along with her husband Grant Stayton III. While waiting for her yacht to be repaired in the fictional town of Elk Cove, Oregon, Joanna hires local carpenter Dean Proffitt, a widower with four sons, to remodel her closet. Dean produces quality work, which she dismisses because he used oak instead of cedar, despite her not having requested this at the start.
Dean agrees to redo the closet if he is paid for the work he has already done, to no avail. The two have an argument, during which he berates her for her entitled attitude. This results in an angry Joanna throwing Dean and his tool kit into the water. That night, as the yacht sails away, Joanna goes on deck to retrieve a wedding ring, but loses her balance and falls overboard. She is later fished out of the water by a garbage scow. Now suffering from amnesia, Joanna is taken to the local hospital. Grant learns of this and heads to pick Joanna up, but after seeing her mental state, he decides otherwise. Intending to have her fortune to himself, he returns to the yacht and has parties with younger women, .
After seeing her story on the news, Dean seeks revenge by encouraging Joanna to work off her unpaid bill. He goes to the hospital and tells her that she is his wife Annie and the mother of his four sons. She reluctantly goes home with him and is appalled by his residence.
Joanna initially has difficulty dealing with Dean's sons and the heavy load of chores, but she soon adapts. As she masters her responsibilities, she learns about the boys' school and family issues, and that Dean is secretly working two jobs to make ends meet. She falls in love with him and starts to care about his sons. She streamlines the money problems with more efficient budgeting and convinces Dean to be a more responsible father .
Joanna makes Dean's dream come true by helping him design a miniature golf course. He also falls in love with her, but does not tell her about her real identity, fearing that she will leave. Four months later, Joanna's mother Edith learns what happened and threatens to have Grant hunted down. He is forced to end the partying and return to Elk Cove to retrieve Joanna, whose memory is restored upon seeing him. Realizing that she was manipulated, a distraught Joanna returns with Grant to their yacht, which heads for New York.
Joanna finds her old lifestyle boring and is uncomfortable with how rude Grant and Edith treat the boat staff. She apologizes to her butler Andrew and the crew for her spiteful treatment towards them, and soon realizes how happy she was with Dean and his sons, prompting her to turn the yacht back towards Elk Cove.
The next morning, Grant finds out that Joanna has changed course and becomes insane. While taking charge of the boat, he admits to purposely abandoning Joanna and having numerous affairs with other women in her absence.
Dean and the boys arrive on a Coast Guard boat to rescue Joanna, but are called away due to a sighting of salmon poachers. She is stunned the boat is turning around, thinking Dean changed his mind. He runs to the back of the boat and calls out to Joanna. He then jumps into the water to swim to her, and she does the same. An insane Grant furiously takes aim at Joanna with a bow and arrow, only to be booted overboard by Andrew.
Dean initially believes Joanna gave up her rich life for him, but she tells him the money and the boat are hers. The two are then brought on board the Coast Guard boat, and they stand above his four sons who are making out their Christmas lists. Dean asks Joanna what he could possibly give her that she doesn't already have. She answers, "A little girl", and they kiss while the boat sails off into the sunset.
A newsreel plays, summing up the gangster life of John Dillinger in detail. At the end of the newsreel, Dillinger's father walks onto the stage and speaks to the movie audience about his son's childhood back in Indiana, which he says was ordinary and not very eventful, but concedes that his son had ambitions and wanted to go his own way. The young Dillinger left his town to find his fortune in Indianapolis, but soon ran out of money. The scene fades to a restaurant, where John is on a date and finds himself humiliated by the waiter who refuses to accept a check for the meal; John excuses himself, runs into a nearby grocery store and robs it for $7.20 in cash. He makes the clerk at the store believe he has a gun in his hand under the jacket.
John is soon arrested for this felony, and he is sentenced to prison. When incarcerated, he becomes good friends with Specs Green, his cell mate. Specs is an infamous bank robber whose gang Marco Minnelli, Doc Madison and Kirk Otto are also in the same prison. John is impressed by Specs and his experience and intelligence, and begins to look up to him as a father figure.
Because John has a much shorter sentence, he decides he will be the gang's outside help when he is released, intending to facilitate their escape. As soon as John is free, he holds up the box office at a movie theater. Before he does, he flirts with the female clerk, Helen Rogers, with the result that she refuses to identify him in the police line-up after the robbery. Instead she goes on a date with John.
John continues his criminal spree of robberies for money to finance the escape of Specs' gang. When he has enough, he devises a plan to smuggle a barrel of firearms to the gang at their quarry job site. The plan succeeds, they add John to their gang, then start a crime wave of robberies in the American Midwest.
Specs sends John to scout for new targets because he is the only one not recognized by the witnesses at the quarry at the time of the gang's escape. John checks out the Farmer's Trust Bank, where he poses as a potential customer to get inside the office. He reports back to the gang that the security system is too sophisticated for them to bypass.
Specs still wants to hit the bank, and getting tired of John's ego and trigger-happiness, he decides to get help from outside the gang. John suggests another way to get into the bank – with gas bombs. John convinces the rest of the gang of his way, and they successfully rob the bank. Back at the hideout, John demands the leader's usual double share of the loot. After John is captured but escapes from jail, he kills Specs and takes his place as the leader of the gang. Running low on cash, they decide to rob a mail train. In the process, gang member Kirk Otto is killed.
The gang part for a few weeks to lay low, and John and Helen go on a big shopping spree. They meet with the rest of the gang at a cabin lodge owned by Kirk's surrogate parents. They stay there for a while, but when the elderly couple calls the police, Dillinger kills them. Later, they realize that the police are closing in on them, so they plan to head to the Western States and continue robbing banks. Before going, Dillinger and his girlfriend spend an evening at the Biograph movie theater in Chicago. Exiting the theater, Dillinger sees the police coming after him. In a gunfight, he is killed in an alley, his only money is $7.20 the same as what he took in his first robbery.
The story revolves around a supercomputer being built in a secret government lab working on a project called ''Trinity''. When one of the project's scientists dies, David Tennant, the ethical caretaker, discovers that he had been killed for his refusal to accept the project's ultimate aim; a merger of the human mind and the machine, in order to produce an unrivalled super computing machine. Tennant subsequently tries to piece together the truth behind the project while he and his psychiatrist Dr. Rachel Weiss are pursued around the globe.
Tennant suffers from a series of regression episodes, which are considered to be seizures by his doctor, who says they are caused by overexposure to a super-MRI scan. During these episodes, he has strangely vivid dreams, in which he witnesses the beginning of the universe (the Big Bang) and the history of mankind. Subsequent dreams seem to be memories of Jesus of Nazareth, something that Tennant, an atheist, finds strange and bewildering. They take a bizarre turn when he sees himself as an NSA assassin sent to kill him, and also as his dead friend, Andrew Fielding, in his last moments.
In the end, it seems that someone was in fact showing him these dreams, to tell him something.
Krusty the Clown threatens to stop broadcasting ''The Itchy & Scratchy Show'' because the cartoon causes his ratings to nosedive during that segment of his show. Cartoon producer Roger Meyers convenes a focus group to discover why ''The Itchy & Scratchy Show'' has lost its appeal. In the focus group, Lisa explains that the characters have lost their impact on audiences after being on the air for so long.
Meyers decides that the cartoon needs a new character: Poochie, a dog with an "attitude" who surfs, raps, and plays electric guitar. At Bart and Lisa's suggestion, Homer auditions for Poochie's voice and gets the part. To promote Poochie, he and voice actor June Bellamy (the voice of Itchy and Scratchy) make several publicity stops, where they encounter the show's hardcore fans. Homer invites his friends and relatives to watch the first ''Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show''. However, the cartoon is full of asinine antics, with none of the show's flair or trademark violence. Unimpressed by the manic Poochie character, Homer's friends say little as they leave.
Meyers decides to kill off Poochie, but Homer resolves to save him. In the next recording session, Homer goes off-script and implores the audience to give Poochie a chance. The show's production team appears moved by Homer's plea. However, when the episode airs, Meyers has dubbed Homer's voice, Poochie gets clumsily removed from the short, by levitating vertically, because his planet needed him, and a handwritten Intertitle explains, "Poochie died on the way back to his home planet", presumably from Asphyxia. The studio audience cheers as Krusty displays an Affidavit swearing Poochie will never return. Homer feels betrayed but attributes the affair to the fickle nature of show business. The network then runs classic ''Itchy & Scratchy''; Bart and Lisa laugh before deciding to watch something else.
It follows the story of Murdoch, a middle-aged man who takes to his bed for "metaphysical reasons". A series of visitors come and see him in his 'horizontal' state: his mother, his brother, his nosey neighbour 'Snoopy', a life insurance salesman, his local minister, a "medical specialist", and Death – a cheerful, sunny man. The death of his mother shakes him out of his bed and into life, and while his friendship with Death, who is having issues of his own, develops, Murdoch sets about falling in love.
In Green Town, Illinois, two young boys, a reserved Will Halloway, and somewhat rebellious Jim Nightshade, leave from an after-school detention for "whispering in class" and hurry off for home. The boys live next door to each other and were born a minute apart on Halloween. Will lives with his grey-haired father Charles and mother while Jim lives with his single mother; it is heavily implied that his father walked out on them. A lightning rod salesman named Tom Fury arrives and sells one to Jim, claiming that it will protect him from an upcoming storm. The boys soon hear of a carnival coming to town led by the ominous Mr. Dark.
The carnival arrives and is set up overnight. Will and Jim notice that many of the residents seem oddly entranced by some of the attractions such as the amputee bartender Ed who sees his missing arm and leg return in a mirror and the boys' teacher Miss Foley who wishes to regain her youth. Will and Jim see a carousel that is closed off and are confronted by Mr. Dark who quickly becomes suspicious of them. Later, they witness Mr. Dark using the carousel on his assistant Mr. Cooger who reverts to a little boy. Will and Jim head off to see Foley, but she is with her "nephew" who is actually Cooger and are forced to leave.
Foley suddenly becomes younger, but loses her vision and is taken by Cooger to Dark. Will gets into an argument with Jim when the latter reveals that he has always been envious of the former being older and wants to use the carousel. However, they witness Fury being tortured by Mr. Dark who wants the secret of the upcoming storm and uses his other assistant the Dust Witch to seduce him, but to no avail. The boys run when they are found out and try to go to bed. In the middle of the night, the two are attacked by spiders, but the lightning rod that Fury gave Jim earlier saves them.
In the morning, Mr. Dark leads his carnival, now consisting of some of the townspeople, in a parade though Will and Jim deduce that it is a search party for them. Charles eventually figures out that the boys are in trouble and when confronted by Mr. Dark manages to deter him. Charles, Will and Jim head to the library where the former reveals that the carnival had come to town before and that his own father had fought them. Mr. Dark arrives searching for Will and Jim and offers Charles his youth back, but he resists. He knocks out Charles and makes off with the boys back to the carnival. Charles regains himself and heads to the carnival just as the storm arrives. He runs into Jim's mother and deters her before she too succumbs to Mr. Dark's powers.
Charles heads into the hall of mirrors where Mr. Dark continues to taunt him about his age. However, Will declares his love for his father and repels the Dust Witch, allowing Fury to escape his imprisonment and impale her with a lightning rod. Will and Charles find Mr. Dark attempting to use the carousel with Jim in tow, but they rescue him just as lightning strikes the ride. As Mr. Dark begins to age and decay, Will and Charles express happiness to awaken Jim and the three flee just as the carnival begins to get sucked away into a giant twister. Will, Jim and Charles head back into town and begin to happily dance back home, with the danger now over.
Away for two years, a woman named Mary (Ava Gardner) returns to her home in a small town (a 'whistle stop'). She attempts to reconcile with Kenny Veech (George Raft), her former romantic interest, but he is jealous and bitter, particularly after she takes up with Veech's mortal enemy, nightclub owner Lew Lentz (Tom Conway).
Gitlo (Victor McLaglen), a friend of Kenny's who works for Lentz, talks Kenny into a scheme to rob and kill Lentz at a train station as he leaves for Detroit, then hide his corpse to make Mary believe he chose not to return. Mary manages to foil Veech's plans, but she remains torn between the two men.
Seeking vengeance, Lentz tries to pin a murder on Veech and Gitlo, who barely make a getaway. Gitlo and Lentz end up killing one another, and Mary finds Veech recovering from a gunshot wound to the arm he had suffered while making his and Gitlo's escape. The movie ends with them arm-in-arm, walking away to live happily ever after.
Two young squirrels ask their grandfather (voiced by Mel Blanc) on Christmas Eve who the "men" are in the lyric "Peace on Earth, good will to men." The grandfather squirrel then tells them a history of the human race, focusing on the never-ending wars men waged. Ultimately the wars do end, with the deaths of the last men on Earth, two soldiers shooting each other, one shoots the other soldier and the injured soldier kills the last, but slowly dies as he sinks into a watery foxhole while his hand grasps into the water. Afterwards, the surviving animals discover a copy of an implied Bible in the ruins of a church. Inspired by the book's teachings, they decide to rebuild a society dedicated to peace and nonviolence (using the helmets of the soldiers to construct houses). The short features a version of "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" with rewritten lyrics, and a trio of carolers sing this song outside of the squirrels' house.
Eccentric American scientist Dr. Calvin Webber (Christopher Walken) believes nuclear war with the Soviet Union is imminent, and builds a secret fallout shelter beneath his backyard in 1962. Alarmed by the Cuban Missile Crisis, Calvin takes his pregnant wife Helen (Sissy Spacek) into the shelter. An unexpected mechanical failure aboard an F-86 Sabre causes the aircraft to lose control. The pilot ejects from the plane, which proceeds to crash into the house; Calvin assumes the worst and activates the shelter’s time-locks for 35 years. With the house completely destroyed by the crash, the Webbers' neighbors and authorities assume they were killed and their property is left abandoned.
Helen gives birth to Adam, who is immersed in culture up to 1962, including TV reruns of ''I Love Lucy'' and ''The Honeymooners'' and listening to pop standards by Perry Como and Dean Martin. A diner, which opens in 1965, is built above the shelter, where Melker (Joey Slotnick) works for Mom (Dale Raoul) as a soda jerk. The diner becomes a pizzeria, then a punk club named Purgatory as the suburban neighborhood deteriorates throughout the decades into an inner city ghetto. Mom eventually gives the club to Melker; the establishment closes and by 1995, he is an alcoholic living in its condemned remains.
When the shelter unlocks in 1997, Calvin mistakes the now-blighted neighborhood where his home once was for a post-apocalyptic wasteland of irradiated mutants and decides the family must stay underground. With supplies running out and Calvin falling ill, Adam (Brendan Fraser) leaves the shelter for the first time. He meets Melker, who encountered Calvin the previous night, bursting through the floor in his radiation suit. Melker now worships Calvin and the elevator. Marveling at the outside world, Adam purchases supplies, but cannot remember his way back to the pub.
Trying to sell his father's classic baseball cards at a hobby shop, Adam meets Eve Rustikov (Alicia Silverstone). She stops the store owner (Bill Gratton) from cheating Adam and is fired. Eve drives Adam to a Holiday Inn in exchange for a rare card, but returns the next morning out of guilt. Adam asks her to help purchase supplies. Unaware of the value of money, Adam agrees to her request for $1,000 a week. He also asks Eve to help him find a wife from Pasadena, California, per his mother's advice, who is "not a mutant". Adam meets Eve's gay housemate and best friend Troy (Dave Foley), who provides him with advice and a fashion makeover.
Eve and Troy take Adam to a 1940s swing-style nightclub to find him a wife. Adam attracts the attention of several women, including Eve's nemesis Sophie (Carmen Moré). Jealous, Eve reconnects with her ex-boyfriend Cliff (Nathan Fillion), who goads Adam into an altercation, relenting when Adam demonstrates his boxing skills, having trained every day with his father. Eve leaves. Troy returns home and explains Adam went home with Sophie. Adam returns, explaining that he politely rejected Sophie's advances, as he could only think about Eve. He and Eve kiss, but when Adam admits the truth about his past and his desire to take her to be his wife "underground", she asks him to leave.
Finding the pub, where Melker preaches to a full congregation, Adam returns to Eve's house, where she is waiting with Dr. Nina Aron (Jenifer Lewis) and her assistant to have him committed. Initially cooperating, Adam escapes asking Eve and Troy to collect his things and pay his hotel bill. In his hotel room, Troy and Eve find toiletries and clothing from the 1960s and absurdly valuable stock certificates in companies like IBM (which Calvin had written off as "worthless"), and deduce that Adam is not crazy and was telling the truth the whole time.
As Melker and his cult load supplies into the shelter, Calvin prepares to seal his family inside again. Eve spots Adam outside the pub; they embrace, and Adam takes her to meet his parents. Impressed with Eve, Calvin and Helen agree to set the shelter's locks for two months while Adam and Eve make arrangements.
During this time, Adam and Eve sell the stocks to build his parents a new home in the country, identical to their house that was destroyed, and purchase and restore a red 1960 Cadillac convertible. They help Melker rebuild the pub into a '50s-themed nightclub after convincing him that Adam is not God.
Adam reveals there was never an atomic war, the "bomb" was not a bomb and instead was a plane that had crashed into their house, and the Soviet Union collapsed. Unconvinced, Calvin plans to build a new fallout shelter as Eve watches while playing with her engagement ring.
Professor Pac learns that the evil forces have taken control of the Enchanted Castle, using black magic. The princess has vanished, and a witch named Mesmerelda is planning on stealing all four Gems of Virtue (Generosity, Truth, Wisdom, and Courage) to control the "four wonders" (areas of Pac-Land). These four areas each have enemies in them, and are blocked by mysterious force fields. Professor Pac creates a device called the Pactrometer, which allows Ms. Pac-Man to go to these areas to recover the gems before Mesmerelda can get them first. However, as the Professor is telling Ms. Pac-Man this, he gets sucked into a mirror by the witch, leaving Ms. Pac-Man with the Pactrometer. As she journeys through the areas, she is helped by video messages that the Professor placed in the Pactrometer, and by holograms of Professor Pac.
As Ms. Pac-Man gathers the last of the gems, they are stolen by Mesmerelda. A battle ensues and the witch is defeated and runs away, leaving behind a key. Without the key, Mesmerelda is unable to get into the castle to reach her crystal ball, and thus cannot use the gems.
Ms. Pac-Man returns to fight for the gems, and this time wins, regaining the gems. With them and the Pactrometer, the witch's spell is broken, and Mesmerelda returns to her true form as the princess. Professor Pac, Ms. Pac-Man, and the princess proceed to celebrate their victory.
The play opens Hippolytus cleaning semen and snot with socks that are lying about his room. He is described as 'fat' and his room is in disarray. Shortly thereafter Phaedra, his step-mother, is talking to a doctor about Hippolytus's wellbeing. The doctor deduces Phaedra's romantic affection for her step-son and warns her against consummating her affection. She confides in her daughter, Strophe, who likewise warns Phaedra against pursuing an affair with Hippolytus. Phaedra approaches Hippolytus, regardless of the warnings she has heard. Hippolytus openly speaks about his multiple sexual partners and reinforces how he doesn't care for any of them and won't care for Phaedra. Phaedra confesses her love for him, but he spurns her, telling her she will only be hurt. She then proceeds to perform fellatio on him. He is initially unresponsive, but when he reaches his climax he asserts himself in the act. During the interaction Hippolytus informs Phaedra that he has had sex with his step-sister, Strophe, and that Strophe, Phaedra's biological daughter, has also had sex with Theseus, Phaedra's husband and Hippolytus's father. It is later revealed that Strophe had sex with Theseus on the night Theseus and Phaedra were married. Afterwards, Phaedra kills herself, leaving behind a note that states Hippolytus has raped her. Strophe confronts Hippolytus about the accusation, but he refuses to deny or confirm the allegation, though the subtext implies that he did not. Whilst in prison, Hippolytus speaks with a priest who eventually performs fellatio on Hippolytus. In the final sequence Theseus has returned home and disguises himself in a crowd. Strophe, unbeknownst to Theseus, has done the same. She publicly defends Hippolytus and Theseus responds by raping and killing her. The enraged mob rips Hippolytus limb from limb, and his father disembowels him. Afterwards, when Theseus sees the corpses, he realizes that it was Strophe who he had just raped and killed and expresses regret before cutting his own throat. The play ends as a vulture flies down to consume the corpse of Hippolytus.
The Thai government hires a group of Chinese mercenaries led by Chan Chung to capture a powerful drug lord from the Golden Triangle Area near the Vietnamese border with Laos. The mercenaries manage to capture the drug lord, but his men are trying to set him free. Along the way the heroes cross into Vietnam and must face a sadistic Vietnamese colonel as well as protect the family of Chang Chung which lives in a village near the border.
Min-ah (Im Soo-jung) is a young woman who has become reserved and aloof to the world as a result of her chronic illness and deformed hand. The film quietly portrays the unconventional, yet endearing relationship between Min-ah and her mother Mi-sook (Lee Mi-sook), as well as Min-ah's development as she is befriended by the high-spirited and carefree photographer Young-jae (Kim Rae-won) who moves into their apartment complex.
Brad Whitewood Sr. is a career criminal and the leader of his family's gang of rural back-door criminals. Sr's criminal enterprises intersect when his son, Brad Whitewood Jr., a floundering, out-of-work teenager living in near squalor with his mother, grandmother, brother and mother's boyfriend, comes to stay with him. When his father shows up in a flashy car with a pocket full of hundred dollar bills, Brad Jr. formulates a desire to join his father's life of crime. At first Jr. starts a gang with his brother, Tommy, fencing their stolen goods through Brad Sr.'s criminal network. As a result of entanglements with his 16-year-old girlfriend, Terry, Brad Jr. seeks full entry into his father's gang, but after witnessing a murder he tries to back out. Eventually Brad Jr's gang is arrested while attempting to steal tractors, and the FBI and local law enforcement attempt to lean on Brad Jr. to get him to turn evidence on his father's gang.
During Brad Jr.'s time in jail, Brad Sr. becomes convinced that Terry is a risk to his activities, thinking that Brad Jr. may confide details to Terry and that she has a big mouth. In an attempt to destroy her relationship with Brad Jr., Brad Sr. rapes Terry after getting her drunk and stoned. After a prison visit where Terry, accompanied by Brad Jr's mother, has a conversation with Brad Jr., it seems that Brad Jr. begins to cooperate with the police. The members of Brad Jr's gang are subpoenaed, and Brad Sr. feels his only recourse is to eliminate them. The gang kills Lucas, Aggie and Tommy. Brad Jr. and Terry plan to flee to Montana, but they are ambushed. Terry is killed, and Brad Jr. is seriously wounded. Brad Jr. confronts his father armed with his father's gun, intending on killing him, but decides instead to cooperate with police.
Ultimately Brad Jr. sits on the witness stand in his father's trial.
The entity that instigated the first Secret War, the Beyonder, visits Earth in search of enlightenment and inevitably comes into conflict with Earth's superhumans and the cosmic entities that exist in the Marvel Universe. At first, the Beyonder tries to figure out the meaning of the simple everyday tasks humans do, such as: eating, sleeping, using the bathroom, etc, then the Beyonder works for a mobster and becomes very powerful and obsessed with gadgets. The Earth's heroes are very suspicious of him and this causes the Beyonder to retreat to a lone island. Mephisto recruits an army of supervillains with boosted strength, but the Thing fights them off after he is given augmented strength as well. The Beyonder falls in love with Dazzler, and tries to start a relationship with Boom Boom, but both turn him down. It is also explained how Doctor Doom, who was killed in the "normal" timeline, was able to appear in the first ''Secret Wars''. The Beyonder recreates Doom's body from its disintegrated particles and sends him back in time to the start of the ''Secret Wars'', causing Doom to live them in reverse order.
The Beyonder is eventually dealt with, although the heroes also have to prevent the destruction of the planet as a consequence of his actions. Beyonder attempts to become a human while still retaining all his powers. The demon Mephisto attempts to destroy him while in this form since he is now "merely human."
A sequel in the form of a single issue revealed that the Beyonder was an evolved Cosmic Cube and evolved into a being called Kosmos.
Although predominantly taking place some years after it concluded, the show is based partly on the New Romantic scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s. At its core is the life and career of colourful pop star Boy George (who rose to global prominence in the early 1980s with his band Culture Club) and his contemporaries, including performance artist and club promoter Leigh Bowery, pop singer Marilyn, Blitz nightclub host Steve Strange (later of the electro-pop group Visage), and Philip Sallon, punk groupie and Mud Club promoter. Although George was intimate with the central figures, artistic license around relationships and time frames was taken for continuity; for example, Bowery never attended the Blitz nightclub, as he was living in Australia at the time.
The show begins with Philip Sallon introducing us to all the New Romantics in London's Soho district ("Freak/Ode To Attention Seekers").
Next we enter the James family home where Billy lives with his mom, Josie, and dad, Derek who is unemployed thanks to the Thatcher era. Billy's dad starts ranting about Billy being a waste of space and starts to mock him because he wants to be a photographer. Billy finally snaps and decides it's time to leave home and move to London and discover himself. He packs his bag and says goodbye to his long suffering mom and leaves ("Safe In the City").
Billy is in London. Whilst walking around the streets, he runs into a cross-dressing drug dealer named Petal, but Phillip drags Billy away from him. Philip tells Billy he knows of a place where he can stay, a squat with a few other people living there.
On arriving at the squat Billy is met by the fiery Kim, a punk looking girl who wants to be a fashion designer. She says he can't live there as it's full, but George, her roommate, decides Billy can stay with them. George is wearing heavy makeup and what can only be described as a white toga; Billy is fascinated by him. George explains to Billy that his father is a builder so he was never happy with how George turned out, but his mother is a different story. Billy goes to the kitchen with Kim whilst George reflects on his mother's unconditional love towards him ("Stranger In This World"). When Billy reenters the room George kisses Billy taking him by surprise and Billy runs off.
At the local night club we meet Steve Strange who is acting as bouncer. Kim, Billy, Philip, and George arrive at the club for a big night out. Billy is fascinated by the club's patrons and begins to take pictures of everyone. Steve Strange premieres his new hit record "Fade To Grey", but the rest of the revelers are sick of hearing the song so they pull the plug halfway through his performance. Petal turns up dealing drugs but the bouncer kicks him out after a disturbance. The audience is then introduced to another popular face on the New Romantic scene, Marilyn, a man who dresses like Marilyn Monroe ("Genocide Peroxide"). We then meet Jane who works for the magazine ID, she asks George for a quote about the New Romantic scene and he gives one.
During the night we go into the men's bathroom at the club to find Leigh Bowery, an outrageous fashion designer and performance artist who traveled from his home land, Australia, to be a part of the New Romantic scene. He explains to the audience that he can't get enough of boys with pretty faces. Billy enters the bathroom and is amazed by Leigh's outlandish look ("I'll Have You All"). Leigh is instantly attracted to the good looking photographer and gives him his number.
Time has swiftly moved on and Kim and Billy are closer than ever. Billy is taking pictures of Kim modeling her latest creations. The two are falling for each other ("Love Is a Question Mark"). Just when they are about to take their actions further, George comes home and makes a scene by flirting with Billy and insisting he should be with him. George and Kim start to argue with each other. Billy is sick of it and runs off.
Out on the street late at night, cross-dressing drug dealer Petal is selling drugs ("Shelter"). Billy walks the streets after running out on Kim and George bumps into Petal. He expresses his disgust at Petal's dealing and almost winds up getting attacked by Petal but luckily Billy manages to get away.
Billy's mom is on the phone with Kim and the two talk about their love for Billy. Josie just wants to know that her son is ok. Kim reassures her that he's fine. On her own Kim starts to question whether Billy will still like her even if she removes all her makeup and opens up to him, a prospect terrifying to her ("Pretty Lies").
When Billy sees Kim without the make up he is shocked out how beautiful she looks. Kim apologizes for her and George arguing and explains it's just how they are and that they love each really. Kim explains to Billy that she is a virgin, and before you know it the two are in the bedroom and couldn't be happier.
George, annoyed that Billy wants to be with Kim instead of him, joins Marilyn and heads down to Selfridges, a department store, to do some shopping. George tells Marilyn that he's met a drummer who wants him to sing in his band, Marilyn is excited for him, if not a little jealous. After a quick run in with the sales girl who is disgusted at the appearance of both men the two discuss their fantasies of being famous ("Guttersnipe").
Josie is at home missing Billy and wondering where her life went so wrong, she doesn't love her abusive husband anymore, the only night out she gets is down the local pub, and her life is just going in no direction ("Talk Amongst Yourselves"). Josie then calls Billy, but he's out and Phillip answers the phone instead. He invites Josie down to London to come and see Billy at Philips club and Josie wholeheartedly decides to go and visit her son.
Its time for George to record his demo with his new group Culture Club and the session goes well, apart from the producer stopping one song after realizing that George was singing about another man. So he records a different song to keep the producer happy ("Do You Really Want To Hurt Me"). Culture Club start to rise to fame and their single hits number 1. Billy sees George at the club and tries to talk to him but after George felt Billy picked Kim over him George isn't so forthcoming. Eventually George lets Billy take his picture and Billy flirts outrageously, but it appears he is just using George.
George runs into Jane who used to work for ID magazine now works for the Sun, Jane never used to give him any attention in ID magazine but now he's a star she's begging him for an interview. Jane storms out and as she does Billy bumps into her and tells her he's got some pictures of George and asks if the paper would buy them. Jane isn't interested but, she hands Billy her card if he ever has any juicy stories about George and leaves.
Billy tries to talk to George again and asks if he could put a word in for him at his record company to be a photographer. George annoyed that Billy has barely asked him how he is, leaves annoyed. Billy not knowing what to do calls Leigh Bowery who told him to call if he was ever at a loose end. Leigh tells him to come round and that he will make Billy's dreams a reality. Leigh is entering his latest creation in to a talent contest called the Miss Mud Day Queen Ball and wants Billy to model for him. Leigh tells Billy that he can get him in front of the camera instead of behind it, he just has to do everything Leigh tells him to.
When Billy gets to Leigh's house, Leigh and his slaves begin to give Billy a makeover to turn him in to a star of the New Romantic scene ("Touched By The Hand Of Cool"). Leigh tells Billy he will make him the talk of the town and proceeds to call everyone telling them that Billy is now one of his models and will be in the show. Rumors also start to fly that Billy is sleeping with Leigh, which get back to Kim leaving her heartbroken ("Church Of The Poisoned Mind").
It's the day of the Miss Mud Day Queen Ball and Leigh's collection wins the contest, modeling it is Billy now nicknamed Spartacus. Leigh also announces he is opening a club called Taboo. In walks Kim and Billy's mother, shocked at what they see and Leigh makes Kim believe that the two have been sleeping with each other. Kim is outraged and his mother is disappointed in him and the two leave Billy alone ("Stranger In This World Reprise").
Taboo is now open and everyone who is anyone is there ("Everything Taboo"). Kim and Josie, who has decided to leave Billy's dad and stay with Kim in London, go to the club to see what all the fuss is about. Whilst at the club Josie and Kim decide to team up and create a fashion line of their own and rent a flat from Philip who is with them. Billy is now hanging out with Boy George and Kim sees them together and presumes that they are sleeping together. Billy tries to apologise to Kim about the Leigh Bowery incident but Kim doesn't want to hear it, she claims that he is just using people who can help his career. Billy tells Leigh he doesn't want to work as his model anymore as he's unhappy and wants Kim back and Leigh calls him ungrateful. Josie tells Billy she is ashamed of him and annoyed at what he's done to Kim.
George now deeply affected by fame has begun to take drugs specifically with Petal and Marilyn at the club. George gives Billy drugs and Billy asks George if he can work at Virgin Records and be the official Boy George photographer. George agrees and tells Billy to go to Virgin and tell them that he's working for George now and Billy is thrilled.
Josie and Kim are at home and their business is starting to take off. Josie is like a new woman full of ambition, shes found a true friend in Kim and in Philip. Then there's a knock at the door and it's Josie's husband, Derek. He wants her to come home but Josie stands up to him. He takes an instant dislike to Philip and Kim and verbally abuses them causing Josie to kick him out. Josie is shocked she has just stood up to him after all these years ("Independent Woman").
Back in George's Apartment he and Marilyn are having a drug binge and George's habit has gotten completely out of control. Billy enters annoyed at George after going to Virgin Records expecting a job but realizing George had not set it up. He tells George enough is enough and that he's killing himself with the drugs ("I See Through You"). Billy storms out with Marilyn leaving George alone.
Walking home from the shop Philip sees Josie's husband at the bus stop. Philip tells Derek that Josie did the right thing ending it with him. Derek beats Philip up in the street and spits on him, leaving Philip bruised and bloodied ("Petrified").
Leigh's live-in helper, Sue, opens a giant curtain to reveal that Leigh has installed himself behind a sheet of glass as a work of art at an art gallery. He explains to the audience that he is art (Ich Bin Kunst). After his performance art Sue tells Leigh that he needs to go to the hospital for a check up, but Leigh won't go, he's obviously scared about his HIV positive status.
Billy has been away to New York to photograph Marilyn's first concert to launch his debut single. When he arrives in London he goes to see his Mom, Kim, and Philip. Kim still refuses to talk to Billy. Billy tells her that he can't stop thinking of her and apologizes for sleeping with George. Kim starts to come around but unfortunately her efforts are wasted as George turns up at the house and has a go at Billy for leaving him and going to New York with Marilyn. George collapses in a heap on the floor. Josie and Kim are shocked at Billy for knowing that George was abusing drugs and not trying to help him.
Billy meets up with Jane and gives her pictures of George using drugs and the full story about his addiction. He takes no money, he does it thinking that it will push George to get help. The story breaks and the media is outrage at George.
George is arrested for possession of drugs and the seriousness of his addiction hits him. George, Steve Strange, Marilyn and Billy all ponder how they have his rock bottom. George reflects how quick his life is falling apart, Marilyn thinks about his failed career, Steve realizes he's a has been, and Billy is riddled with guilt over what he has done to George ("Out Of Fashion").
At the hospital Leigh lays dying of AIDS, his trusted friend Sue is the only with him when he dies ("Il Adore").
Back on the street of London, Petal is still dealing drugs. Annoyed Billy tries to stop him selling to a young boy and ends up in fight with Petal. The dealer pulls a knife on Billy but just in the nick of time George turns up to rescue him. The two talk about everything what has happened and the mistakes they have made. Billy apologizes for informing the media about Georges addiction, but George tells him that Billy revealing the story saved his life ("Pie In The Sky").
Billy tells George how he's going to India to take some time to study with the Hare Krishners and that George should join with him if he'd like. So George, Billy, Philip, Kim, and Josie all go travel to India. After a few weeks the group decides to go home after finding the answers they were looking for, but Billy decides he's going to stay for a while and take some time to think ("Bow Down Mister").
The peace in Wonderment, Montana (a town founded by a group of ex-slaves freed after the American Civil War, the type of group historically known as Exodusters) is broken when a group of riders dressed like Ku Klux Klan nightriders attack. Among the townsfolk who fight back is Reno Jones, a man whose adventures have been depicted in more than a few dime novels.
The raids continue for days and the town makes a decision to hire gunfighters to protect them. A local Indian tribe agrees to ask a warrior they know to help. Reno Jones then sets off with a man named Marcel Fournier to contact others for help.
Jones locates the Rawhide Kid who is performing as a part of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. Jones recruits both the Rawhide Kid and Kid Colt and the three of them leave together. Not long after this, a bounty hunter going by the name Gunhawk arrives and asks about the location of Kid Colt. Gunhawk is told where the three riders are going and rides after them.
In Anaconda, Montana, Marcel Fournier talks to the Two-Gun Kid. After this conversation, the Two-Gun Kid talks to a Mr. Riley, a man who was once the masked outlaw known as the Tarantula. Their conversation reveals Riley to be the man behind the attacks. He wants the land on which Wonderment sits for a smelting plant he plans to build. This conversation also makes it clear that there is no legal avenue to save Wonderment. Later that night in the hills above Wonderment, Red Wolf agrees to give his aid.
Two days later, Reno Jones recruits the Outlaw Kid. As Jones' small group is about to leave for Wonderment, they are confronted by three Pinkerton detectives, one of whom is Caleb Hammer. They are after Kid Colt. After a short confrontation, Colt shoots all three men. Jones and his allies then ride fast out of town. As the group relaxes around their campfire that night, they are joined by the Two-Gun Kid. He tells them that two of the three Pinkertons were killed, but that Caleb Hammer survived.
Seeking to get into Wonderment by a lesser-known back entrance, the group falls into an ambush. They all make it through except Jones, who falls into a deep ravine after being shot.
The small group rides into Wonderment while it is in the middle of another attack. After fighting off the nightriders, they introduce themselves. The next morning, both Hammer and Gunhawk attempt to pass into Wonderment and are stopped by the nightriders. As they are being questioned the, Ghost Rider appears. In the chaos, Hammer and Gunhawk escape and make their way to Wonderment.
Caleb Hammer and Gunhawk arrive in Wonderment. After a brief argument, they agree to help and to collect the bounty on Kid Colt's head after the Nightriders are dealt with. At the same time, Fournier is revealed to be a spy for the Nightriders. He is killed by the Two-Gun Kid.
With their eyes in town now lost to them, the Nightriders attack ''en masse'', intending to kill everyone in town. Riley joins in, his hatred for the Ghost Rider (who was his main nemesis when he was the Tarantula) overriding his sense of preservation. In the battle, Reno Jones is revealed to be the man dressed as the Ghost Rider, Jones' ex-partner Kid Cassidy is revealed as the leader of the Nightriders and the Outlaw Kid, Gunhawk, Kid Colt, and the Two-Gun Kid are killed. Riley is shot dead and Cassidy dies in battle with Jones. The battle ends when Red Wolf leads a mass of Indian warriors into Wonderment.
The final issue ends with the Rawhide Kid and Caleb Hammer riding out of town together.
After the death of the Apache Kid, the Rawhide Kid joins forces with the new Apache Kid to find the killer.
While going through his trunk full of old mementos and souvenirs, Scrooge discovers a page that he remembers having originally torn from one of Lönnrot's notebooks when they met in Scotland in the late 19th century. His three grandnephews consult their Junior Woodchucks Guidebook and find out that the notes on the page are part of Lönnrot's notes for the Kalevala, revealing the location of the remains of the Sampo.
Upon hearing of this mythical machine that can produce grain, salt, and, most particularly, gold out of thin air, Scrooge sets out to find it. The Ducks travel to Helsinki, where the director of the Finnish Literature Society explains Lönnrot's notes to them and the location marked within.
The Ducks travel to the island of Mustasaari indicated in the notes, where they find Väinämöinen's legendary sword. Touching this sword awakens the spirit of Väinämöinen, which uses the body of whoever touched the sword as its locus of connection to the mortal world. He tells them what happened to the Sampo during the Kalevala times. Väinämöinen's magic brings Gyro Gearloose to the island and, imbued with Seppo Ilmarinen's spirit, he reassembles the Sampo.
However, the Sampo doesn't work because it's missing a part that was stolen by Louhi, now residing in the afterlife of Tuonela, the underworld. Scrooge and Donald go to Tuonela to retrieve the missing part. However, after they have left, Louhi becomes aware of the return of her ancient enemy and summons Magica De Spell to help her get the Sampo back.
Sailing back to continental Finland, Väinämöinen and the Ducks are able to fix the Sampo. Soon, the machine start producing gold from thin air. However, Magica De Spell and Louhi attack their ship. In the ensuing battle, Louhi manages to steal Väinämöinen's famous kantele, which holds such great power that she loses interest in the Sampo. As the start of her new reign, Louhi summons the sea monster Iku-Turso and orders it to wreak havoc on Helsinki. Donald goes after Iku-Turso to stop it, with the monster and Louhi being confounded by the modern city. In the process, Donald gets the kantele back and is able to lure Iku-Turso back into the sea. Gyro Gearloose and Magica de Spell are also magically sent away (but their destinations are comically mixed up, Magica finding herself in Gyro's lab in Duckburg and he emerging from her magic shop on Vesuvius).
With Louhi defeated and his kantele returned, Väinämöinen makes the ship levitate. The Ducks are thrown off the ship, except for Scrooge who clings to Sampo. Väinämöinen sees a kindred spirit in Scrooge, but asks if he is really ready to follow him beyond the Northern Lights and so forsake his "own Kalevala" (Yukon) where "a lost love still awaits you" (alluding to Scrooge's complicated relationship with Glittering Goldie). Scrooge finds that he cannot do that. Väinämöinen then lets Scrooge fall from the ship and congratulates him on having made the right choice, allowing him to keep the crank of the Sampo as a memento. Scrooge finds himself back on earth together with his nephews.
Parisian illustrator Robert becomes obsessed with a young woman, Juliette. Night after night, Robert sneaks around the house to catch a glimpse of Juliette, until one day he finally gathers the courage to introduce himself. Juliette realizes that she is not happy with her fiancé, Patrick, and leaves him to be with Robert. Robert in turn is not happy with Juliette's obtrusive advances.
One night, Patrick attacks Robert in a deserted area; Robert defends himself and knocks Patrick unconscious, leaving him on the shores of a nearby river. The next day, Robert is interrogated by the police. Patrick is missing, and suddenly Robert is the prime suspect. Nobody knows that Patrick has allied with Robert's bitter ex-wife, Véronique, to take revenge on Robert; he is hiding from the police in order to make them think Robert killed him. Robert's professional and private life falls apart after becoming a police suspect. The situation escalates when Juliette commits suicide, and Patrick launches a vendetta against Robert. In a final confrontation between the men, Véronique is accidentally killed, and although Patrick is defeated, Robert is again left as a suspect in an apparent crime scene.
''Riviera: The Promised Land'' draws from diverse mythologies, most prominently Norse, incorporating concepts such as Ragnarok and Yggdrasil into its story. The game takes place mostly on the continent of Riviera, with the characters visiting various locales such as a sinking city, a forest, and an abandoned cemetery.
''Riviera'' offers a cast of six playable characters.
is a Grim Angel, who sacrificed his black wings in order to receive his Diviner, Einherjar. He wears shorts, a vest, gloves, a cape and a scarf; he has grey-black hair and deep blue eyes. He appears to be an average teenage boy and is quite naive, an attribute that annoys both his partners Ledah and Rose. In battle, his primary weapons are swords.
is a teenage girl with a caring personality. She wears a long green skirt, and a black vest over a long-sleeved white blouse. She has long green hair tied with a matching ribbon and green eyes. Originally, she shared a house with Lina, but later made room for Ein, Cierra and Serene. She is, like Ein, kind and noble, sometimes stern and serious, and she can cook and mix herbs well, along with being the only character with healing spells. She is extremely mature, despite being the youngest of Ein's four female companions. Sometimes Fia shows signs of shyness toward others, especially Ein, for whom she nurses a soft spot. In battle, her primary weapons are rapiers and swords.
is a sweet, childlike and energetic teenage girl. She wears a flamboyant yellow short-skirt and overcoat. She has brown eyes and orange hair tied into pigtails. Lina enjoys eating, going on adventurous treasure hunts and playing lively games with her friends; she is ignorant about household chores. She constantly gets into situations in which she embarrasses herself, especially around Ein, for whom she hosts a secret infatuation. Her primary weapon in battle are bows and other long range weapons.
is an outgoing, tomboy-ish teenage girl, the same age as Ein. She is an Arc, unlike the majority of the inhabitants of Riviera, who are Sprites. She used to live on Rosalina Island with other Arcs until her entire tribe was killed by the Grim Angel Malice. She alone survives and joins Ein, for whom she develops an infatuation. Serene has large, batlike wings, a trait shared by Arcs. She wears a helmet adorned with a pair of fake cat ears on her shoulder-length dark blue/indigo hair and has blue eyes. She wears a long pale blue vest over a black body-suit and a dark blue shawl. In battle, her primary weapons are scythes and other pole-arms.
is a kind, thoughtful witch. She is the older sister figure of the group and possesses amazing magical powers. She is always optimistic but sometimes clumsy. She rescued Rose after she and Ein were separated, although she accidentally fed her a potion that removed Rose's ability to talk. For enjoyment, she studies and plays with magic. Cierra wears a typical witch's conical hat, red boots, and a revealing, serrated red dress. Her primary weapons in battle are staves and other magical weapons.
is an experienced warrior and one of three Grim Angels shown in the game. He is a strong, loyal, and very solitary man. It is suggested that he is much older than Ein and his companions, given his experience, and the choice of voice actors for him in the GBA and PSP remakes, but this is debatable. He follows the order of the seven Magi without question. This is because he traded his emotions for his Diviner, Lorelei, preventing him from reconsidering the orders given to him. Ledah is shown as aloof, cynical, and pragmatic.
The above characters are the only playable characters in the game. ''Riviera'' has several dozen supporting characters, notably Rose (Ein's familiar); Hector (the game's main villain); Malice (grim angel and Hector's henchwoman); Ursula, guardian spirit of Riviera; and the Four Accursed, who act as Stage bosses. There are also numerous Elendian citizens, fairies and undines who help Ein along the way.
A thousand years before the game takes place, a war known as Ragnarok took place. The gods of Asgard were attacked and overrun by demons from Utgard. In desperation, the gods broke an ancient covenant; they sacrificed their lives to create black-winged reapers that came to be known as Grim Angels. Each was armed with a "Diviner", a sacred weapon with which they easily vanquished the demons. After the war ended, Utgard was renamed Riviera and turned into a beautiful paradise. The gods left their knowledge and authority in the stewardship of seven Magi and their power in the care of the Sprites, the inhabitants of a peaceful Riviera.
After a thousand years of peace, rumors of the demons’ return surfaced. Hector, one of the Seven Magi, sends the Grim Angels Ein and Ledah to Riviera, accompanied by Ein's familiar, Rose. They are ordered to activate the "Retribution", a hidden power of the gods which would eliminate the demons but destroy Riviera in the process. At the end of Heaven's Gate, they meet Ursula, the guardian of Riviera. Ein falls in battle and is taken to Yggdrasil, the heart of Riviera, by Ursula. Discovering that he has a good heart, she entrusts him with the protection of Riviera.
Ein wakes up suffering from amnesia and able to recall neither his purpose nor his origin. He is nursed by Fia and Lina, residents of Elendia, which is a village near Yggdrasil. News about the rebirth of the "Accursed" – the "progenitors of evil" – reaches them and they set out to investigate. Eventually, they defeat all four and meet Serene, Cierra and even Rose along the way. Meanwhile, Ledah searches for Yggdrasil, so that he may activate the "Retribution".
Ein now expects to live peacefully in Elendia with his new-found friends, but Ursula informs them that Ledah has breached Yggdrasil and intends to destroy the three "Aquariums", the sources of Yggdrasil's power, in an attempt to activate the Retribution. The six companions (Ein, Lina, Fia, Serene, Cierra and Rose) head out to Yggdrasil. Although they manage to subdue Ledah in battle, it is the Grim Angel Malice, Hector's pawn, who deals the fatal blow. A dying Ledah warns them that Hector has tricked them all this time: he does not fulfill the will of the gods, but seeks ultimate power for himself.
They pursue Malice, but are unable to prevent her from destroying the last Aquarium. They battle her, and eventually Ledah appears to intercept one of Malice's attacks. Ledah dies soon after, telling Ein to stop Hector. The companions then race to the "Maze of Shadows" where Seth, the Sealed One, is imprisoned. There, Hector takes the life of Malice and the girl that Ein has become closest to; the last two souls required to unleash Seth. Hector intends to become the one True God, and to this end he fuses his body with that of Seth to become Seth-Rah. However, Ein and his companions are able to defeat Seth-Rah, and afterwards they are teleported back to Yggdrasil by Ursula just before the entire Maze collapses.
Upon their return, Ursula reveals that, with the death of her counterpart Seth, she too will cease to exist. Before disappearing, she resurrects the girl that Hector killed, and also charges Ein, Fia, Lina, Serene, Cierra and Rose with the continued protection of Riviera.
Since ''Riviera'' is a renai, the player can achieve multiple endings depending on his responses to his companions. Depending upon them, an ending may be achieved with Ein and the girl of choice having a special scene together. The ending with Rose is a hidden ending, as it was not in the original WSC game, and Rose doesn't have a trust stat in the game. The last frame also tells (no matter what the ending) that Rose becomes a historian in later life and records their adventures.
The movie begins as Chicago Bears rookie running back Gale Sayers (Williams) arrives at team practice as an errant punt lands near him. Fellow rookie running back Brian Piccolo (Caan) goes to retrieve the ball, and Sayers flips it to him. Before Sayers meets with coach George Halas (Jack Warden) in his office, Piccolo tells him – as a prank – that Halas has a hearing problem, and Sayers acts strangely at the meeting. Sayers pranks him back by placing mashed potatoes on his seat while Piccolo is singing his alma mater's fight song.
During practice, Piccolo struggles while Sayers shines. Sayers and Piccolo are placed as roommates, a rarity during the racial strife at the time. When they are placed together Brian is scared he didn't make the team, and Gale makes a great point saying "if you didn't make the team, we wouldn't be placed together as roommates." Their friendship flourishes, in football and in life, quickly extending to their wives, Joy Piccolo and Linda Sayers. Sayers quickly becomes a standout player, but he injures his knee in a game against the San Francisco 49ers. To aid in Sayers's recovery, Piccolo brings a weight machine to his house. In Sayers' place, Piccolo rushes for 160 yards in a 17–16 win over the Los Angeles Rams and is given the game ball. Piccolo challenges Sayers to a race across the park, where Sayers stumbles but wins. Piccolo wins the starting fullback position, meaning both he and Sayers will now be on the field together, and both excel in their roles.
Piccolo starts to lose weight and his performance declines, so he is sent to a hospital for a diagnosis. Soon after, Halas tells Sayers that Piccolo has cancer and will have part of a lung removed. In an emotional speech to his teammates, Sayers states that they will win the game for Piccolo and give him the game ball. When the players later visit the hospital, Piccolo teases them about losing the game, laughing that the line in the old movie wasn't "let’s blow one for the Gipper."
After a game against the St. Louis Cardinals, Sayers visits Joy, who reveals that Piccolo has to have another surgery for his tumor. After he is awarded the "George S. Halas Most Courageous Player Award", Sayers dedicates his award to Piccolo, telling the crowd that they had selected the wrong person for the prize and saying, "I love Brian Piccolo, and I'd like all of you to love him, too. And tonight, when you hit your knees, please ask God to love him." In a call, Sayers mentions that he gave Piccolo a pint of blood while he was in critical condition. Piccolo dies with his wife by his side. The movie ends with a flashback of Piccolo and Sayers running through the park, while Halas narrates that Piccolo died at age 26 and is remembered not for how he died but for how he lived.
After rejecting the advances of her boyfriend, William (Ron Nelson), mousy librarian Alice falls asleep reading ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland''. The White Rabbit appears to her in a dream and she follows him into Wonderland. Finding herself in a room and too large to fit through the small door, Alice drinks a potion which causes her to shrink while her dress remains the same size, leaving her naked. While chasing the White Rabbit, she falls into a river and begins to drown, but is saved by a group of local inhabitants. After making friends with them, Alice is given a new (albeit very revealing) dress before setting off after the White Rabbit again. While walking through the woods, she begins to experiment with her sexuality by stripping naked and masturbating. The White Rabbit happens upon her and takes her to meet the Mad Hatter.
After being initially uncomfortable when the Mad Hatter exposes his penis to her, Alice ultimately performs fellatio on him. She is then called to assist Humpty Dumpty, who has fallen off a wall, causing him to lose the ability to achieve an erection. The situation is rectified when Alice performs fellatio on Dumpty as well. She is then taken to meet siblings Tweedledee and Tweedledum, whom she watches having passionate but incestuous intercourse. Following this encounter, Alice, the White Rabbit, and the Mad Hatter continue on toward the King's Ball. On the way, they come across a couple having sex in an open field; Alice chastises them, but she is ignored. At the royal court, the King of Hearts converses with Alice, speaking with her about self-empowerment and ignoring the judgements of others; he ultimately seduces her.
The Queen of Hearts suddenly appears, catching Alice and the King in bed together. A hurried trial is held and Alice is "convicted" of being a virgin. As punishment, the Queen orders Alice to have sex with her. A number of sexual escapades ensue among various characters as Alice prepares to carry out her sentence, including a brief lesbian encounter between Alice and the Queen's maids. Alice and the Queen engage in lesbian sex, but, as a result of the cunnilingus she receives from Alice, the Queen experiences an orgasm so strong, it briefly incapacitates her. The Mad Hatter and the White Rabbit assist Alice in escaping the Queen, who pursues her to no avail.
Waking from her dream and thereby returning to the real world, Alice meets William again. Having experienced a sexual awakening while in Wonderland, Alice accepts William's advances and they have sex in the library. In a closing sequence, Alice travels through Wonderland naked before she and William set off toward their new home, where they live "happily ever after".
The focus of the novel is the growth of the company Event Horizon, founded by Julia's grandfather Philip Evans. Beset by industrial saboteurs, the company seeks help in the form of ex–Mindstar Brigade soldier turned private detective Greg Mandel. The company is leading the way in rebuilding a twenty-first-century England after the People's Socialist Party (PSP), a tyrannical communist government, had first crushed the country and then collapsed, leaving it in shambles. Initially hired to solve a mystery involving missing stocks from a zero-g satellite production facility, he is then re-hired to find the source of attacks on a stored personality of Philip Evans after the industrialist's death.
At a public park, a group of children are playing softball with Old Ben, an elderly but playful gentleman. When it is Old Ben's turn at bat, he hits the ball over the fence and out of sight. When they play "Spaceman", Old Ben takes on the form of a shelled monster. The kids are accustomed to Old Ben's supernatural abilities, referring to them as his "magic".
Old Ben's favorite of the children is Jenny, who walks with a leg brace. Old Ben carries her to her home, where she lives with her shrewish and unsympathetic aunt, Agnes Gann. As they approach the row house, Ben causes his roller skates to dematerialize. This phenomenon is observed by two men who are watching the house from across the street. They enter the apartment building, identify themselves as police, and question Agnes about Ben. Jenny overhears the conversation and limps upstairs to Old Ben's apartment to warn him. Old Ben takes on the form of a mouse, fooling the men into thinking he has left his apartment.
Jenny takes the "mouse" back to her room. Old Ben tells Jenny that he is an alien from another planet, and that his appearance is only a disguise, as he is a fugitive from justice. Old Ben says he must flee to another planet, but before departing he uses a device to heal Jenny's leg. The two strangers run into Jenny walking down the stairs without her brace. They recognize Old Ben's handiwork, but Jenny refuses to tell them anything. One of the men uses a device to make Jenny deathly ill, using her as bait for Ben.
Old Ben comes back to Jenny's room and makes her well again. The two men approach and address Old Ben as "Your Majesty". Old Ben admits to Jenny he is not a criminal, but the king of his planet; Ben fled because he hated the responsibility of leadership. The strangers tell Jenny that Old Ben's people love him as much as she does; they want him to return and continue his 5,000-year reign. Jenny insists that if Old Ben cannot stay with her, she will go with him. The two men say this is forbidden, but allow Old Ben a moment alone with Jenny to say goodbye after he promises not to run away. Following a plan whispered to him by Jenny, Ben transforms into her exact duplicate, forcing the men to take both of them along since they cannot tell one from the other.
Rod Serling holds up a photograph of a handsome young man, noting that the photo shows Old Ben's true appearance and that when Jenny grows up, she will become his queen.
''Blood Fever'' begins with a prologue during which a young girl named Amy Goodenough is aboard her father's yacht in the middle of the Mediterranean sea when it is boarded by a band of pirates under the command of Zoltan the Magyar. Zoltan's men ransack the vessel and murder Amy's father, who was unwilling to part with his priceless possessions. When Amy fails to get revenge by throwing a knife at Zoltan and hitting him in the shoulder, she is taken prisoner but swears she will one day succeed in achieving vengeance.
Following the events of ''SilverFin'', James Bond is back at Eton where he is now a member of a secret risk-taking club known as the Danger Society. As summer holidays approach, James is given the opportunity to go to Sardinia on a field trip with one of his professors, Peter Haight and a colleague, Cooper-ffrench. While in Sardinia Bond plans to visit his cousin Victor Delacroix (a relation of Monique Delacroix, James deceased mother).
Prior to leaving, Bond learns of the tragedy that took place on the Goodenoughs' yacht from Amy's brother Mark, who attends Eton and is a friend of Bond's. Bond also witnesses a mysterious group whose followers are marked on both of their hands with an "M" (double M), which James eventually learns is the mark of the Millenaria, a defunct secret Italian society that has had plans throughout history to restore the Roman Empire.
Once arriving in Sardinia, James and his classmates begin a tour of the country to learn its history, during which Bond is poisoned (though the reader is not aware of it at the time) and almost killed. Bond departs from his classmates to spend time with Victor, Victor's artist friend Poliponi, and his teenage servant Mauro. Victor also hosts Count Ugo Carnifex, who is later identified as the leader of the reorganized Millenaria. Carnifex achieves the funding for such a task, as well as for his palace located high in the mountains of Sardinia, and his lavish lifestyle, by hiring pirates such as Zoltan the Magyar to plunder valuable items; however, Carnifex is a fraud who cannot actually afford to compensate his "employees". Additionally, when Zoltan arrives at Carnifex's palace, Carnifex declares ownership over Amy Goodenough, much to the great annoyance of Zoltan, whom during his travels to Sardinia had formed a unique and strange bond with Amy.
Later Bond is once again reunited with his classmates who are now in a town near Carnifex's palace. One night, Bond sneaks into the palace and finds Amy's cell, but is unable to rescue her and instead informs Haight. However, Haight reveals himself to be a loyal servant of Carnifex and that he had earlier attempted to poison James for asking too many questions about the Millenaria. Carnifex subsequently tortures James by tying him up in a swamp and allowing him to be bitten by mosquitoes, reasoning that one of them will be a carrier of malaria. Bond is rescued by Mauro's sister, Vendetta, who helps him rescue Amy.
Losing patience, Zoltan turns against Carnifex by flooding his palace. Carnifex is killed when the waters sweep his sea plane into him. After the destruction of the palace, Bond and Amy return to Victor Delacroix's villa, but are ambushed by Haight. Bond and Amy are saved by Zoltan, who gives his life for their protection in the process. Amy and Bond arrive at Victor's villa, where Carnifex's sister Jana is waiting for them. Bond tricks her by jumping into the sea, while Victor distracts her. Jana slips and falls into a bed of sea urchins, where she finally dies from the pain and poison. As Bond and Amy wade to the surface, Amy suddenly steps on a sea urchin. Bond knows exactly how to remove it.
Carruthers, a minor official in the Foreign Office, is contacted by an acquaintance, Davies, asking him to join in a yachting holiday in the Baltic Sea. Carruthers agrees, as his other plans for a holiday have fallen through, and because of a heartbreak due to a woman he courted becoming engaged to another man.
He arrives to find that Davies has a small sailing boat (the vessel is named ''Dulcibella'', a reference to Childers's own sister of that name), not the comfortable crewed yacht that he expected. However, Carruthers agrees to go on the trip and joins Davies in Flensburg on the Baltic, whence they head for the Frisian Islands, off the coast of Germany. Carruthers has to learn quickly how to sail the small boat.
Davies gradually reveals that he suspects that the Germans are undertaking something sinister in the German Frisian islands. This is based on his belief that he was nearly wrecked by a German yacht luring him into a shoal in rough weather during a previous trip. The yacht was owned and captained by a mysterious German entrepreneur called Dollmann, whom Davies suspects of being in fact an expatriate Englishman posing as a German. The situation was further complicated by Davies having fallen deeply in love with Dollmann's daughter, Clara – who, Davies is sure, is not involved in whatever nefarious scheme her father is engaged upon. In any case, Davies is suspicious about what would motivate Dollmann to try to kill him, and believed that it is some scheme involving the German Imperial government. Having failed to interest anyone in the British government in the incident, Davies feels it is his patriotic duty to investigate further on his own – hence the invitation to Carruthers.
Carruthers and Davies spend some time exploring the shallow tidal waters of the Frisian Islands, moving closer to the mysterious site where there is a rumoured secret treasure recovery project in progress on the island of Memmert. The two men discover that Dollmann is involved in the recovery project. Carruthers and Davies try to approach Memmert. They are warned away by a German Navy patrol boat, the ''Blitz'', and its commander von Brüning – who is friendly and affable, but still makes a veiled warning. This makes them all the more sure that there is something more than a treasure dig on the island. And meanwhile, they discover that not only is Dollmann indeed an Englishman, he had been an officer in the Royal Navy – evidently having had to leave Britain in hurry and take up a new life as a German.
Taking advantage of a thick fog, Davies navigates them covertly through the complicated sandbanks in a small boat to investigate the Memmert site. Carruthers investigates the island. He overhears von Brüning and Dollmann discussing something more than treasure hunting, including cryptic references to "Chatham", "Seven" and "the tide serving", and hears of a rendezvous at the Frisian railway station, several days ahead. The pair return through the fog to the ''Dulcibella'', moored at the island of Norderney. There, they find Dollmann and von Brüning have beaten them and are seemingly suspicious. However, getting in the fog from Norderney to Memmert and back is a nearly impossible feat, which only Davies' superb seamanship could have achieved, and the Germans do not seriously suspect them of having done that.
Von Brüning invites them to Dollmann's villa for a dinner, where he attempts to subtly cross-examine them to find out if they are British spies. Carruthers plays a dangerous game, admitting they are curious. But he convinces von Brüning that he believes the cover story about treasure and merely wants to see the imaginary "wreck". The party also serves to show that the Germans do not fully trust the renegade Englishman Dollmann and that there is some rift between them which might be widened.
Carruthers announces that the Foreign Office has recalled him to England. He heads off, being accompanied part of the way to the Dutch border by one of the German conspirators – outwardly an affable fellow-traveller. But instead of embarking from Amsterdam to England, he doubles back, returns to Germany in time to be present at the conspirators' rendezvous (to which Dollmann, significantly, was not invited). He manages to follow von Brüning and his men without being noticed, and trails them to a port where they board a tugboat towing a barge. Carruthers then sneaks aboard and hides, and the convoy heads to sea.
Carruthers finally puts the riddle together. The Germans are linking the canals and the railways, dredging passages through the shifting sands and hiding a fleet of tugs and barges. The only explanation is that they are preparing to secretly transport a powerful German army across the North Sea to invade Britain's east coast. He escapes after grounding the tugboat and rushes back to Davies. He finds him and explains how they must flee before the Germans come after them. They convince Dollmann and Clara to come with them to avoid Dollmann's being arrested by the Germans, who will think he has changed sides again. They promise Dollman immunity from being charged for treason in Britain – which, acting on their own and not having any authorization from the British government, they were not truly in a position to promise. As they sail across the North Sea, Dollmann commits suicide by jumping overboard, presumably to avoid disgrace and probable arrest.
An epilogue by the "editor" examines the details of a report prepared by Dollmann, outlining his plan for the invasion force. A postscript notes that the Royal Navy is finally taking countermeasures to intercept any German invasion fleet and urges haste.
In the early 1930s, a Broadway musical is in rehearsal. Mona Kent is its temperamental diva star, Joan a wise-cracking chorus girl, and Hennesy the producer/manager/director. The naive Ruby arrives from Utah, with "nothing but tap shoes in her suitcase and a prayer in her heart",Kerr, Walter. ''The New York Times'', January 5, 1969, p. D1 determined to be a Broadway star. She promptly faints into the arms of Dick, a sailor and aspiring songwriter ("It's You"). Ruby gets a job in the chorus, but Hennesy informs the cast that the theater must be torn down, and they must find another place, which turns out to be a ship, for the show. Joan and Lucky, another sailor and her former boyfriend, renew their romance ("Choo-Choo Honeymoon") while Ruby admits her feelings for Dick ("The Sailor of My Dreams"). Dick and Lucky persuade their Captain to volunteer the use of their ship ("Dames at Sea"). Mona recognizes the Captain as a former boyfriend ("The Beguine"). When Mona kisses Dick, to persuade him to give her one of his songs, Ruby notices and becomes despondent ("Raining In My Heart"). Dick explains the misunderstanding and the couple make up ("There's Something About You"). While rehearsing on the actual ship, Mona becomes seasick ("The Echo Waltz"); Ruby steps in to save the show and becomes a star ("Star Tar"). The three couples decide to marry ("Let's Have A Simple Wedding").
John Wilson in ''The New York Times'' pointed out that the music is a mixture of parody, such as the torch song "That Mister Man", pastiche ("Raining in My Heart"), and the real thing. Wilson wrote that "The pastiche songs, built around phrases borrowed from or close to actual songs of the genre, usually project an appealing period flavor." The joke was that, while spoofing the large, lavish movie musicals, ''Dames at Sea'' did it with a cast of six, two pianos and percussion, and a tiny stage.
In the 2015 Broadway production, director Randy Skinner noted that this was "the first time in New York that 'Dames at Sea' will be heard with an orchestra, and the show will have more dancing than ever before with all new dance and vocal arrangements by Rob Berman". This production opened with movie credits projected onto a screen, reproducing exactly the font used by Warner Bros. in the early 1930s. Skinner received a 2016 Tony Award nomination for his choreography.
Edmund Narraway returns to his family home, an old rectory in the north of England, for the cremation of his mother, Lydia. His brother, Otto, probably drunk, starts giggling during the service, and has to be taken outside. Edmund is disgusted rather than scandalised, yet he immediately finds himself fascinated by Otto's daughter, his own niece, who is now a teenager and, for the first time since Edmund last saw her, sexually mature. After the service Isabel, Otto's apparently neurotic wife, attempts to involve Edmund in her small and frustrated life. He at first refuses. When Edmund later talks to his self-pitying brother, he detects evidence of a sexual tension between Otto and his apprentice David Levkin. Isabel, Otto and Flora all implore Edmund to stay and help them, each for a different reason. In each case, Edmund seems at first untempted, reluctant to get involved, and aware of his own impotence against their troubles. It is finally Flora who gives Edmund a real reason, or excuse, to stay. She confides in him that she is pregnant by another student, and has only him to rely on for assistance. One by one, each character in the house manages to enveigle Edmund in a series of confessions, exposés and almost farcical in flagrante delicto discoveries. Edmund, though sexually aloof and anodyne now seems, somewhat contradictorily, highly prone to getting involved and seeing himself as an integral part of everyone else's problem, if not the means to a solution. He cuts a slightly preposterous and contemptible figure, ever more so as each character, led by David Levkin and Flora, respectively devilish and vituperative, make evident their disgust for him.
Midway through the story we have learnt that Otto is having an affair with Elsa, David's sister; Isabel and her daughter Flora have both had affairs with David, and it is he who made Flora pregnant; 'Maggie', the Italian girl, whose actual name is Maria Magistretti and who was nursemaid to Otto and Edmund, had been having a lesbian affair with Lydia, their recently deceased mother and, it transpires, she is the sole beneficiary of Lydia's will.
After all these 'secret' relationships have been revealed, Otto's response is to send David and Elsa Levkin packing. Elsa, in despair, reacts by setting fire to herself and the house. She dies, the house survives. At this surprising turn of events Otto and Edmund now seem reconciled, perhaps in misery, perhaps in astonishment. Similarly, Otto and David act civilised towards each other, and Edmund and David begin to talk honestly and respectfully to each other for the first time. David departs, leaving instructions for Elsa's funeral.
The fire and Elsa's death seem to have had a cathartic effect on everyone. Isabel finds her independence and leaves Otto. She joyfully announces that she too is pregnant by David. Flora, who ran away from home at the climax now returns to look after her rather helpless father Otto. Maggie generously agrees to split the inheritance equally with Edmund and Otto, and allows Otto to keep the house. The fire damage, incidentally, is all covered by insurance.
To crest this unexpected wave of redemption Edmund discovers that he has always actually been in love with Maria and she, conveniently, has always been in love with him. The book closes with them preparing to travel by car to Rome.
Set in the early 1900s in the fictional Catfish Row section of Charleston, South Carolina, which serves as home to a black fishing community, the story focuses on the title characters: crippled beggar Porgy, who travels about in a goat-drawn cart, and the drug-addicted Bess, who lives with stevedore Crown, the local bully. While high on cocaine supplied by Sportin' Life, Crown kills Robbins after the latter vanquishes him in a craps game; Bess urges Crown to flee. Sportin' Life suggests she accompany him to New York City, an offer Bess declines. She seeks refuge with her neighbors, all of whom refuse to help her. Porgy finally agrees to let her stay with him.
Bess and Porgy settle into domestic life together and soon fall in love. Just before a church picnic on Kittiwah Island, Sportin' Life once again approaches Bess, but Porgy warns him to leave her alone. Bess wishes to stay with Porgy, since he cannot attend the picnic because of his disability, but he urges her to go. After the picnic ends, and before Bess can leave, Crown, who has been hiding in the woods on the island, confronts her. She initially struggles to resist him but Crown rapes her. The others, not knowing just what has happened, leave and return to the mainland.
Two days later, Bess returns to Catfish Row in a state of delirium. When she recovers, she remembers what happened. Feeling that she betrayed Porgy, she begs his forgiveness. She admits she is unable to resist Crown and asks Porgy to protect her from him. Crown eventually returns to claim his woman, and when he draws his knife, Porgy strangles him. He is detained by the police merely to identify the body, but Sportin' Life, who has fed Bess cocaine, convinces her Porgy inadvertently will reveal himself to be the murderer. In her drugged state, she finally accepts his offer to take her to New York. When Porgy returns and discovers she is gone, he sets off to find her.
Mr. Mackey, the school counselor, is giving a drug and alcohol prevention lecture to the class, emphasizing that smoking, drinking, marijuana and LSD are bad. He passes a sample of marijuana around the class so that the children can learn its smell, but it is never returned (it's later revealed that Mr. Garrison stole it, as he is seen watching ''Teletubbies'' while high). As a result, Mr. Mackey is fired and later kicked out of his house, leaving him homeless. A desperate Mackey gives in to trying marijuana one night in an alley, and later LSD. Soon enough, Mr. Mackey becomes a drug-addled hippie and meets a female hippie, with whom he decides to get married. While on honeymoon in India, Mr. Mackey is captured and taken into rehab. Mr. Mackey emerges clean from rehab and is given his job back.
Meanwhile, Kyle invites Stan, Cartman and Kenny to his younger brother Ike's bris. When they learn more about what a bris is, and misconstrue it as a party where they are going to cut off his penis, Kyle tries to find a way to hide his brother from his parents and the circumcision process. Kyle puts Ike on a train to Lincoln, Nebraska and makes an Ike-style doll out of meat bones in an attempt to not arouse his parents' suspicions. This backfires when the doll is mauled by a rabid dog that subsequently gets run over by a truck, which leads Kyle's parents to think that Ike is dead. At the funeral, Kyle finds out that Ike is not his biological brother, but was adopted from Canada due to the tombstone featuring the Canadian flag. Upon discovering this, Kyle declares that Ike is no longer his brother and reveals the truth to his shocked parents, who retrieve Ike from Nebraska. Kyle is so upset, that when Kenny fell into a gravesite and the stone fell on him, Kyle flatly says his line "you bastards".
The day of the bris arrives, and Kyle is grounded for sending Ike away. When the mohel arrives to perform the bris, Ike flees to Kyle's room in terror. Seeing Ike in distress and some old pictures prompts a change of heart in Kyle, and he defends his brother fiercely before it is explained to him what a circumcision actually is, at which point Stan and Cartman decide they want to be circumcised too. They watch the process; even though the boys pass out momentarily, Kyle is relieved to see Ike unharmed. Furthermore, Kyle realizes that he considers his friends to be family too, except for Cartman, who subsequently decides that he doesn't want a circumcision after all.
Cody Griffin is an adopted teenager; his birth mother is a mermaid who left him on the Griffins' boat when he was a baby to avoid being captured. As she left, she lured a fisherman, Big John Wheatley, away and he became obsessed with finding mermaids since. Years later, Cody establishes himself as a quick swimmer on his school's swim team, and he has a girlfriend named Samantha. He is under a lot of pressure from a big swim meet coming up and because he is failing biology, he is partnered with Jess Wheatley, the class geek (and Big John's son) who is a marine biology expert.
At Cody's 13th birthday, he drinks a lot of water and he later jolts Samantha with an electric shock when he kisses her. Since that day, he begins to feel strange. As he wakes up in the morning, he turns off his alarm clock and zaps it. Ignoring it, Cody drinks from a milk container, which he notices it stuck to his hand. Jess notices scales forming on Cody's hand and says he has only seen that kind of thing on frogs and lizards. As the symptoms are getting worse, Cody goes to Jess for help, who agrees to figure out what is going on with him as long as Cody teaches him to swim in return. Jess runs various tests, learning Cody can generate electricity, hold his breath underwater for a long period of time, climb walls, talk to fish, swim extremely fast, and when wet, scales appear on his hands, arms and feet. Jess concludes that Cody is turning into a merman.
Once his adoptive parents find out about Cody's changes, they advise that he should avoid water at all costs. That includes participating in the swim meet. Cody decides to swim in the sea a day later and finds out he had grown jagged fins along his arms, which he manages to hide from Samantha by placing his arms in the sand. Despite the risks, he attends the swim meet anyway and not only wins and beats his teammate Sean, but breaks the state speed record. Cody's scales and arm fins have reappeared, however, and he causes a power surge to flee, breaking the scoreboard. Sean sees the scales and surmises Cody cheated, following the fleeing Cody into the locker room. Cody avoids him by sticking to the ceiling, but Sean claims he is determined to find out how Cody cheated. Cody safely makes it out of the school and goes home with his parents after they find out he was not in his room. Back home, they all try to turn Cody back to normal by drying him but the scales are lasting longer now.
Cody tries calming his parents by claiming nobody saw his scales, but Jess shows up and tells them he saw everything and that people are talking about Cody winning the race and running off. Samantha arrives soon afterward but faints at the sight of Cody's scales. When she awakens, she is freaked out. Cody tells her he is turning into a merman but he is still the same guy and she should not be afraid. While sworn to secrecy for Cody's safety, Samantha is disturbed by the discovery and leaves. The following night Cody takes a swim, and meets his mermaid mother; however, Big John, the obsessed fisherman, spots them and breaks up the reunion, forcing the two to retreat in opposite directions.
The next day, Cody meets Samantha at the beach. She apologizes and they kiss. Cody then walks into the water with her, saying there's something he wants to show her. With Samantha in hand, Cody's mermaid mother soon appears; however, Cody suddenly gasps in pain and stumbles back to the shore. Writhing on the ground, he tells Samantha to get his parents. After she leaves, Cody is in shock as he watches his left foot morph into a flipper and scales grow on his leg. Thinking Samantha came back, Cody is surprised when someone else is there and throws a blanket over him.
Jess comes down to where Cody was but sees he is gone. He then sees his father's boat and panics because his father had seen Cody's arms at the swim meet. On the deck of the boat, Cody is drying out and scratching his scales, begging to get into the water, but Big John throws sea water over him instead. His plan is to use Cody to lure in his mother to prove he is not crazy for believing in mermaids. His plan works when he spots Cody's mother following the boat. Jess comes on board the boat and removes the blanket, revealing Cody's legs, which have both transformed into fins. Cody asks him for help into the water. Despite trying to warn the mermaid away, Cody and Jess are unable to stop a fishing net from trapping her. Cody asks Jess to help his mother, so he takes a knife and jumps into the water to cut the net. He frees the mermaid, but his leg gets caught in the net, pulling him under. Jess passes out, but Cody jumps in and brings him to the dock where Jess's father, Cody's parents, and Samantha are. Samantha performs CPR, but is unsuccessful. Cody decides to zap Jess' heart, which successfully makes Jess come to.
Cody's mermaid mother shows up again and watches him and his family from afar. Cody explains she wants him to go with her because she is the only one who can help him with his changes. Cody's adoptive mother does not want him to leave, but he points out that he is her son, but he's more than that, showing his fins, that he's almost become a full merman. The mermaid telepathically promises to send Cody back before school starts and Cody's parents let him leave. Jess asks Cody to tell him and his dad about the aquatic life he sees, and Samantha makes Cody promise not to betray her by falling for mergirls. After saying their goodbyes, Cody and his mother reunite and Cody fully transforms into a merman. They swim off into a life below the surface.
Based on the children's novel by South Australian author 'Colin Thiele', this is a father and son story about tuna fishing of Southern Blue Fin tuna in South Australia's Port Lincoln fishing district. Accident-prone son Snook is forever making mistakes much to the chagrin of his father Pascoe. But when tragedy strikes the fishing boat during a deep sea fishing trek in the Southern Ocean, the boy is called on to become a man in a rites of sea passage to reconcile his past mishaps and save both his father and the ship from certain disaster.
Twelve-year-old Steve Pascoe is nicknamed 'Snook' by everyone in Port Lincoln. He's thin and long-faced, like the fish he's named after. At school he's no good at sport and, at home, his father scorns him. Snook joins his father and fellow crewmen on a tuna-fishing expedition, when disaster strikes. It is up to Snook to save himself and his father from a desperate situation.
The story takes place in Italy, not long after the Second World War. Young southern lawyer Peter Leverett is on vacation, and is thrilled to meet his old friend Mason Flagg on a film set in the town of Sambuco. Mason is a handsome, wealthy playboy with a glamorous life style. To Peter Leverett, a good-natured, rather gullible young man, he has always been a hero. But only a few hours after their reunion, Mason is found dead. For reasons of their own, the corrupt local police quickly label his death a suicide, but Peter suspects foul play. And to his horror and dismay, the main suspect is a fellow American named Cass Kinsolving.
Cass Kinsolving and Peter Leverett are both southerners, but strikingly different in appearance, behavior, and social background. Mild-mannered Peter is from relatively comfortable circumstances in Virginia, while brutal, profane, violent Cass was raised in grinding poverty in rural North Carolina. Their first meeting in the town of Sambuco does not bode well for their friendship, as Cass is falling-down drunk and rudely spewing threats towards Mason Flagg and his wealthy Hollywood friends. Peter is disgusted by him at the time, but some months later he begins to be troubled by the sense that brooding, enigmatic Cass Kinsolving may know something about Mason's death. Even more disturbing are the nightmares and memories that torment Peter. Recalling various unpleasant scenes from his schooldays, he begins to wonder what horrible crimes Mason may have committed to draw down the wrath of divine justice. Finally he takes action, writing to Cass in Charleston and begging for a chance to talk about the murder and other strange events in Italy. The bulk of the novel takes the form of conversations and flashbacks that take place between the two men as they talk over past events while fishing on a lake near Charleston, South Carolina.
''"What this country needs... what this great land of ours needs is something to happen to it. Something ferocious and tragic, like what happened to Jericho or the cities of the plain - something terrible I mean, son, so that when the people have been through hellfire and the crucible, and have suffered agony enough and grief, they’ll be people again, human beings, not a bunch of smug contented cows rooting at the trough."'' - William Styron, from ''Set This House on Fire''
The player takes on the role of Sergeant First Class Steve R. Hawkins, assigned to the United States Special Forces ("Green Berets") camp at a strategic location of Nui Pek in South Vietnam near the Cambodian border. Hawkins and his A-Team carry out a series of various missions against the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces. The game ends in a massive North Vietnamese attack on the team's base camp which is ultimately abandoned by all American forces.
The ground assault on Nui Pek is a recreation of the ground assault that happened at Special Forces Camp Lang Vei.
Andy and Tracy Safian are a newlywed couple living in a Victorian house that they are restoring in Western Massachusetts. He is an Associate Dean at a local women's college, while his wife teaches art to children. They hope to start a family soon. One night before making love, they notice the young boy next door at his window, seemingly watching them. They jokingly refer to him as a voyeur.
When a student on campus is attacked and seriously wounded by a serial rapist, Dr. Jed Hill, a brilliant surgeon who has recently joined the staff of the area hospital, operates and saves her life. Andy meets Jed to thank him for saving the student and realizes that they attended high school together. Andy and Jed quickly strike up a friendship. Money is tight, so Andy invites him to rent the third floor of their home, in order to finance the new plumbing. Tracy is unhappy that Andy has invited Jed to live with them. She describes Jed as arrogant. Jed brings home a woman and causes noise disturbance late at night, to Tracy’s annoyance.
Andy finds the body of one his students, who has been raped and murdered by the serial rapist. Police detective Dana Harris interviews him as a possible suspect and asks him to provide a semen sample. While leaving the police station, Andy learns that Tracy has been hospitalized for severe pain in her abdomen and is being operated on by Jed. While removing one of Tracy's ovaries, which has ruptured due to a cyst, Jed discovers Tracy is pregnant, but the surgery causes the fetus to abort. Another doctor notices that Tracy's other ovary is torsed and appears necrotic. Jed consults with Andy and advises him to agree to the removal of Tracy's second ovary, rather than risk her life. Andy painfully agrees, since this will mean that Tracy can never have children. Jed removes it, overruling the protests of other doctors that the ovary might still be healthy. After the removal, it is confirmed that the ovary was, in fact, healthy. Tracy tells Jed she's suing him for malpractice.
During a deposition in which Jed is accused of having a God complex, Jed delivers a monologue proudly claiming himself infallible as a surgeon, asserting "I am God," due to his ability to heal patients, then storms out. With Hill absent, Tracy's lawyer reveals that Jed had been in a bar the night of the operation. "Ask God how many shots of bourbon he had before he cut me open," Tracy tells the hospital's attorneys. Fearful of the negative publicity that would result from a civil trial, the hospital and Jed's insurance company settle with Andy and Tracy for $20 million. However, Tracy leaves Andy, telling him that she can't forgive him for the loss of her ability to have children.
Andy discovers that the serial rapist is a handyman at the college named Earl. After a struggle, Andy subdues him and Earl is arrested, thus clearing Andy of the crimes. In the aftermath, Dana informs Andy that his semen sample indicated that he was sterile, thereby revealing he wasn't the father of the aborted child. Andy confronts Tracy's lawyer, Dennis Riley, accusing him of having impregnated Tracy. Riley calmly asserts his innocence, but tells Andy that Tracy's mother — who she had told Andy had died 12 years ago — can answer all of his questions. Riley refuses to break lawyer-client privilege, but tells Andy to take a bottle of Scotch to her.
Andy tracks down Mrs. Kennsinger, who tells Andy that Tracy is a lifelong con artist. As a younger woman, she had an affair with a wealthy man, who paid for her to have an abortion; Tracy kept the money and had it done at a clinic, beginning her career as a con woman. Andy subsequently learns that Tracy and Jed had been carrying on an affair for some time. Tracy had arranged for Jed to move into the house so that he could begin overdosing her with a drug to intentionally cause the ovarian cyst. Andy confronts Tracy and tells her he wants half of the settlement money. Suspecting that she might try to murder him, Andy implies their next-door neighbor, the ten-year-old boy who's been their seeming voyeur, is named in his will as a potential police witness to her and Jed's nefarious activities.
Jed tells Tracy to give Andy what he wants so they can leave the country, but Tracy instead suggests murdering the boy. Jed refuses to kill a child, so Tracy shoots Jed, fatally. She then slips into the neighbor's house and attempts to suffocate the boy in his chair, only to find a dummy in his place. An enraged Tracy begins to destroy the dummy and attacks Andy after he walks in on her. They fall from the second floor, but they both survive. Detective Harris appears and arrests her, revealing that the boy's supposed agreement to testify against her was part of a sting operation to catch her in the act of attempted murder.
As Tracy is led away in handcuffs, the boy and his mother return home. As Tracy is taken to the police cruiser, Tracy sees that the boy is, in fact, blind. Andy leaves with Dana to have a drink of Scotch.
The episode opens with the relentlessly cheerful voice of the radio announcer encouraging every Villager to participate in an upcoming crafts show. Number Six is playing chess near the beach when Number Two (Leo McKern) joins him. During their conversation, a helicopter lands and an unconscious woman (Nadia Gray) is taken out on a stretcher. Later, Number Six is invited to The Green Dome where he and Number Two watch the woman wake up on the main viewing screen. Number Two says that she is the new Number Eight and that she will be Number Six's new neighbour.
When Number Six returns to his cottage, Number Eight emerges, confused, and asks for directions to The Green Dome. When she returns later, she reveals to him that her name is Nadia, but she claims to be suspicious that he is a Village spy. The following day, Nadia tries to escape by swimming out to sea but is brought back by Rover and interrogated in the hospital. In response, Number Six makes a deal, agreeing to participate more in Village life – for instance, by entering the craft show – if this puts an end to her torture.
Number Six and Nadia become closer and eventually plan to escape. She tells him that she knows the location of The Village: On the Baltic coast of Lithuania about from the Polish border.
At the craft show (where every entry except Number Six's is a depiction of Number Two in some medium), Number Six presents his work, a multi-piece abstract sculpture called "Escape". He is then awarded first prize and uses the "work units" he has won to purchase a tapestry, the entry of one of the other prize winners. At night, he and Nadia escape in his exhibit, which is really a carved boat, using the tapestry as a sail. Rover is suspiciously AWOL.
When they reach land, they meet Nadia's contact. Number Six borrows the contact's watch as his own has stopped. Number Six and Nadia then hide in a packing case as they travel to London. They end up in Number Six's old office and meet his former bosses. When they suspect him of being a double agent, Number Six agrees to tell them why he resigned if Nadia is given protection.
However, as he is about to talk, Number Six hears the familiar chimes of Big Ben. He looks at his watch and finds that it shows the same time – not the one hour time difference if the contact had actually been from Lithuania/Poland. Realising he has been tricked, he begins a search of the office and discovers a tape recorder recreating the background sounds of London. He exits the building, finding himself back in The Village, with Nadia standing with Number Two – revealing she was an operative all along.
A family in rural Texas finds a boy, Arlis, who says he is lost. They take him into their home, feed him, and give a place to sleep. But the boy later lets his father, Roy (James Caan), into the house to commit a robbery. When they are discovered, Roy brutally murders the family, which the boy witnesses. The sole survivor is a baby girl.
Time passes, and Arlis (Dennis Quaid) lives a solitary life in which he drives a truckload of goods and novelties to restock vending machines and arcade games in roadside stores and restaurants. Making a stop at a roadhouse where a rowdy party is being held, he spots Kay (Meg Ryan), a woman who pops up out of a cake at the party and then passes out because she's been drinking liquor.
Arlis ends up giving her a ride home, a long drive, while continuing to make his rounds. Upon coming home, Kay sees that her husband Reese has sold the furniture, having lost their money gambling. She packs up her remaining belongings and leaves with Arlis. They spend more time together and grow close.
Meanwhile, a young woman named Ginnie (Gwyneth Paltrow) now travels with a much older Roy. She is a grifter who will pretend to be a mourner in order to steal the jewelry from a dead body at a funeral home. Ginnie brings an injured Roy to his estranged son, Arlis, to tend to his injury.
Passing the house where he grew up, Arlis realizes that Kay was the infant who survived the long-ago murders. Roy figures this out as well. He begins talking about tying up loose ends. It leads to a confrontation, and Arlis shoots Roy dead. Ginnie goes off on her own, and Kay and Arlis go their separate ways.
Set in the period 1784–1789, the film portrays Jefferson when he was US minister to France at Versailles before the French Revolution. French liberals and intellectuals hope he will lead them away from the corruption of the court of King Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette and toward a more democratic form of government. Although deploring the poverty of the common people, he embraces the riches of French culture and civilization. It is his first time abroad, and he takes advantage of the opportunity to extend his knowledge of liberal arts and science while absorbing the refinements France has to offer.
A lonely widower, Jefferson develops a close friendship with Maria Cosway, a beautiful (and married) Anglo-Italian painter and musician. Although she becomes increasingly devoted to him, he is attached to his memory of his late wife, to whom he promised that he would not remarry, and to his two younger daughters. His elder daughter is especially possessive, and Patsy becomes jealous of Maria's influence on her father. Maria becomes his confidant and correspondent, with their personal relationship becoming more affectionate as well.
Later, Jefferson becomes attracted to Sally Hemings, his enslaved maid and companion of his younger daughter Polly. Three-quarters white in ancestry, she is his late wife's half-sister. Their father had taken Sally's slave mother as a concubine after he was widowed for the third time; Sally is the sixth of their children. Sally's enslaved brother James Hemings is also in Paris, learning to be a French chef for Jefferson at Monticello. When George Washington offers Jefferson the post of Secretary of State, he accepts and prepares to sail home with his family.
But James, having enjoyed his freedom in Paris, is unwilling to return to the United States and urges Sally to remain with him. It is only when Jefferson promises, making an oath upon the Bible, that he will give James and Sally their freedom that they consent to return with him. Sally is also pregnant with Jefferson's child, and Jefferson extends his oath to promise freedom to all of Sally's children as well.
The story takes place during Japan's great civil war Sengoku period, beginning in the summer of 1581 and ending two years later. In the anime, the historical warlord Oda Nobunaga is really an evil demon killing everyone who stands in his way. An ancient prophecy says three mystical Demon Blades from three different ninja clans can end Nobunaga's unholy campaign. The story follows Kasumi no Ayanosuke, a young kunoichi (female ninja) who has escaped her village's annihilation, in her heroic efforts to reunite these three sacred weapons use them to kill Nobunaga.
Tom Thompson (David Schwimmer) is a 25-year-old man who sleeps in a bunk bed and lives with his mother. Tom is contacted by his high school classmate's mother, Ruth Abernathy (Barbara Hershey), to tell him that his "best friend," Bill Abernathy, committed suicide, and is asked to give a eulogy at the funeral. Tom does not remember his friend, but out of sympathy attends the funeral as a pallbearer. Meanwhile, Tom's unrequited high school crush, Julie DeMarco (Gwyneth Paltrow), re-enters his life.
At Abernathy's funeral, Tom's vague and impersonal eulogy confuses the Abernathy family and amuses Tom's friends. Julie, upset at their lack of respect, tries to leave as the pallbearers carry Bill's coffin out of the church. Tom, one of the pallbearers, drags the coffin and the rest of the pallbearers after Julie. He asks her if she knew Bill; she replies that she did not know Bill, but was saddened by the image of Bill in the coffin. Tom asks Julie out for coffee still holding up Bill's coffin. Bill's relatives, upset about Tom's indifference towards Bill, forcefully relieve him of his duty as a pallbearer. Visibly upset, Ruth states that Tom is in Bill's will.
Afterwards, Tom calls Julie about the coffee date and Julie asks if Scott and Cynthia can come along for a double date. During dinner with Scott and Cynthia, it is apparent that Julie and Scott have more in common and listen to the same musicians. Conversation between Tom and Julie is stilted and awkward, while Scott slips up and reveals that Tom still lives with his mother.
Disgusted by Scott's behavior during dinner, Tom reluctantly follows through with the plan to drive Julie home. When they reach Julie's home, Julie reveals that she remembered Tom in high school. As Tom leans in for a kiss, Julie turns her head colliding against Tom's. Julie states she had given off the wrong signal to Tom, since she is planning on moving away.
Tom is rejected at the end of his second interview and goes to Ruth's to help pack Bill's belongings. While looking through pictures of Bill growing up, Ruth and Tom kiss and have sex on Bill's bed. Ruth tells Tom about Bill's father, a Vietnam War veteran, who is implied to have died in the war. Tom, in turn, tells Ruth about Bill's fictitious love interest based completely on Tom's infatuation with Julie. Tom and Ruth continue to see each other as Tom reveals more about his own affections for Julie in the guise of Bill's affections and Tom's attempts to forget about Julie in Ruth's arms.
Tom repeatedly watches Julie working at a record store while parked on the street. One day after the shop closes, Tom sees Julie let Scott into the store. Jumping into the driver's seat, Tom drives by and stops to see Scott lean in to kiss Julie. When Scott sees Tom, Tom drives off.
The next morning, Julie comes to talk to Tom about Scott's attempt of infidelity, not knowing Tom had witnessed the entire event. Reminiscing about high school band, Julie tells Tom that she wants to just drive away for a year just to be on her own. Julie invites Tom to a concert she had planned on going with her former fiancé, Jed.
When arriving at Ruth's, Tom is rushed to a family gathering of Abernathy's. At Aunt Lucille's, Tom sees that Ruth had overheard him talking to Julie about their date later that evening. When Tom's car breaks down, Julie finds Ruth's charm bracelet, so Tom tells her that he has been helping Bill Abernathy's mother since the funeral. Julie mistakenly assumes an innocent relationship between Tom and Ruth.
After a tow truck takes Tom and Julie back to Tom's house, Tom sneaks into his mother's room to get her car keys, while Julie enters Tom's room. Tom reveals he wanted to dance with her at a homecoming dance and she kisses him. As they fall into Tom's bed, Ruth calls Tom finding out that Julie is in the room with him.
When Tom goes to see Brad for advice, he tells Tom to drop the bracelet with a letter into a mailbox for a clean break with Ruth. Tom does as Brad tells him and proceeds to continue dating Julie. For Julie's birthday, Julie asks Tom to go with her to meet her parents. On that morning, Tom sees Ruth carrying the envelope with her bracelet and Tom's letter, so Tom sneaks away through the back door. At brunch with Julie's parents, it is immediately apparent that her father disapproves of Tom and Julie's relationship when he keeps asking why he is there with them. After Tom pleads with Julie to abandon her plans to leave for a year, Ruth barges into the restaurant and humiliates Tom by revealing their past relationship.
At Brad's bachelor party, Tom makes a scene at the strip club telling Brad not to marry Lauren. Tom says Lauren is an albatross around his neck and Scott thinks so as well. The next day, Scott apologizes to Tom and they reconcile. While talking about past crushes growing up, they both realize that there was another Tom who moved away after junior high school. Tom brings the other Tom to Ruth, who appreciates the gesture to reminisce about her son. They come to an understanding about needing someone at the time, Ruth mourning her son and Tom being rejected by his childhood crush, Julie.
At Brad's wedding, Tom patches his friendship with Brad approving of his marriage to Lauren, as Scott and Cynthia appear to talk civilly together hinting of reconciliation. During the reception, Tom sees Julie and gives her the keys to his car as a belated birthday present for her trip. She hints to him from a previous conversation that she wants to dance.
Tom gets a new job and moves into Julie's apartment while she is on her trip.
Newlyweds Helen and Jackson live together in New York City. At the beginning of the film, the two are driving towards the Kentucky farmhouse, Kilronan, where Jackson grew up, primarily to introduce Helen to Jackson's mother, Martha, during the Christmas holidays. They arrive late in the evening and go straight to bed. The next morning Helen awakens to Martha arranging the room, as she thought Helen was asleep in the other bedroom. During their stay Martha tries to convince Jackson to stay to help her run the farm. Helen notices that Martha cleans their room and arranges their things every day, including Helen's contraceptive.
After returning to New York in the new year, Helen discovers she is pregnant after getting violently ill at work. When she informs Jackson of this, he asks her to marry him and she accepts. The wedding is held at Kilronan, where Helen meets Jackson's paternal grandmother, Alice, who tells Helen she doesn't trust Martha. Alice points out Martha is extremely smart and capable of doing the farmwork of four men. Before Alice can say more Martha interrupts.
After the wedding they return to their New York apartment. One night after work, Helen is assaulted by a burglar who steals her locket and makes sexual advances. When Helen tells him she's pregnant, he cuts her abdomen and leaves. The fetus is not injured.
Martha arrives unannounced, saying she wants to sell Kilronan because she cannot run it alone. Helen tells Jackson she wants to move to Kentucky and in with Martha for a year and help renovate the land. Jackson tells Helen that his father, Jack, died in the house when he was seven; Jackson blames himself because he ran into his father, pushing him down the stairs to his death. Jackson also tells Helen that his father had been cheating on Martha with a woman named Robin Hayes. Helen says they should go back to the farm so Jackson can face his "old ghosts".
The couple move in with Martha, who attempts to divide them with subversive comments and manipulating the family friends and neighbors. When Helen goes to the doctor, she finds out Martha told him Helen wanted to have the baby at the house, even though Helen had never said that. Suspicious and increasingly annoyed, Helen talks to Alice, who tells her that Jackson is not responsible for his father's death. When Jack fell, his sternum was supposedly crushed by the nail puller that he fell onto at the bottom of the stairs; according to news reports, this was a freak accident. When Helen returns that evening she finds Jackson calling around asking for her whereabouts with Martha hovering close by. Helen's frigid attitude toward her mother-in-law prompts Martha to visit Alice and warn her to stay away from them.
Having had enough of Martha's manipulations, Helen tells Jackson that Martha is tearing their marriage apart. He agrees to go back to New York and tells his mother, who appears to accept it gracefully. Martha is completely convinced the baby will be a boy, and that Helen is a bad influence on her son and unborn grandchild.
Jackson leaves the farm on a work call, leaving Helen and Martha alone. That evening, Martha bakes a strawberry cheesecake for Helen laced with pitocin, a labor inducer. Helen wakes up the next morning, feeling strange. She discovers a baby room set up by Martha and finds her stolen locket amongst the baby clothes. When Martha unexpectedly enters the room, Helen tries unsuccessfully to escape, driving to a neighboring farm and coming face to face with her attacker from New York, a neighbor of Martha's, then attempting to escape on foot before Martha captures her at the side of the highway.
Reluctantly, Helen gives birth at the house, with Martha looking on, offering assistance, but refusing to give Helen painkillers. Martha leaves the room to answer a phone call from Jackson. She tells him that everything is okay, but when Helen screams in pain, Martha hangs up.
Helen eventually gives birth to a healthy boy. She begs Martha to hand her the baby, but Martha ignores her, telling the baby she is his mother. Martha tries to inject a needle full of morphine in Helen's arm, but Helen knocks the syringe away. By the time Martha retrieves it, she hears Jackson's footsteps in the house. In a scramble, she quickly cleans up, meeting Jackson at the door with the newborn baby. She tells him to leave Helen alone, as he has no idea what she's been through. The two leave Helen asleep, and Martha gives the baby to Jackson.
That night, Martha enters Helen's bedroom with the syringe, but she finds Jackson awake in a chair next to the bed. Despite his mother's insistence that he return to bed, he stays, thereby thwarting her plan. The next morning, Helen awakens to see Jackson with the baby. As Helen finally holds her child she tells Jackson to ask Martha to make breakfast for them.
At breakfast, Helen enters the house with an object in her bag, which turns out to be the nail puller that killed Jack. She then proceeds to tell Jackson the whole truth about his father's death, revealing that Martha, not Jack, was the one having an affair with Robin Hayes, who was a male horse wrangler and not a woman as Jackson had been told by Martha. When Jack discovered the affair, he decided to leave Martha, who staged the 'accident' to get rid of him and tricked Jackson into believing that he was responsible for it in order to keep him under her thumb for the rest of his life. Helen also shows Jackson a vicious bruise from Martha's attempt to murder her so she could have him and their son to herself. Martha denies everything and says that Helen cannot prove anything. However, Jackson by now has remembered that Martha was pulling nails off the shed on the day his father died, and thus has realized the truth of Helen's words. This causes Jackson to angrily disown Martha from their lives, sever all ties with her, and announce the sale of Kilronan and its contents. Enraged and unwilling to admit her own faults, Martha desperately attempts to persuade Jackson that Helen is coming between them out of jealousy, claiming that Helen wants to be her. Helen dismissively shuts Martha up by slapping her to the ground, and she and Jackson then leave the house with their baby in their arms, while a defeated Martha breaks down sobbing on the floor, her hopes permanently destroyed and forever dashed.
In the final scene, the couple visit Alice before they leave for good, presenting her with her great-grandson.
Dimwitted sewage workers Gordie Boggs and Sean Dawkins watch their favorite wrestler, WCW World Heavyweight Champion Jimmy King cheated out of the title by Diamond Dallas Page (DDP), an evil WCW promoter named Titus Sinclair, and DDP's partners. After the match, the duo expresses their rage while driving in their septic truck, resulting in a car crash with Gordie and Sean surviving.
After this event, Gordie believes that the car crash was supposed to happen and that they should make Jimmy King once again the WCW World Heavyweight Champion. Gordie asks a friend to find out where King lives, and they go to an unexpected-looking neighborhood where they find King's estranged wife and his parents. King's parents tell Gordie and Sean that King borrowed their mobile home and never returned it. The duo finds King and becomes over-excited. They have a conversation, and when King says that he has given up on wrestling, Gordie and Sean anger him to the point where he suddenly attacks them. This attack on the men prompts a change of heart for King where his passion for wrestling returns. They go visit his wife, who kicks him twice in the crotch for giving her crabs and abandoning her and their son.
They reconcile on her porch as he ices his crotch, and she says she hope she broke it he clarifies that his penis is bruised and it feels like Richard Petty drove a stock car into his scrotum.
His teenage son comes out and has very bad teeth. King vows to win the money and get him a good dentist.
The trio proceeds to go on a road trip to the next ''WCW Monday Nitro'' taping in New York City. Gordie sends letters to his father, a police officer who wanted Gordie to follow in his footsteps. Gordie writes that he will not join him in the police force, making him frustrated. Gordie, King, and Sean arrive at the Nitro taping where they hide King in a port-a-potty and they meet one of the Nitro Girls, Sasha. When DDP mocks King on camera, King comes out of the port-a-potty and attacks him. Sinclair then declares a Steel Cage match for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship plus a $1 million cash prize, with the added stipulation that if King loses, he will never wrestle again.
Sasha is impressed by Gordie, and they later go to her apartment to have dinner. When Sasha attempts to have sex with Gordie, he reacts like it's a wrestling match and pushes her off of him. King is in deep need of a trainer for the match, so he, Gordie, and Sean head to the residence of retired wrestler Sal Bandini, where he accepts becoming King's trainer. The trio then heads to a local gym, where King meets his former partner, Bill Goldberg. King asks Goldberg to help in the upcoming match, but he turns him down, saying that King has no chances of winning. Then that night, Sid Vicious and Perry Saturn attack Sal, hospitalizing him. At the hospital, Gordie overhears Sasha at a phone booth, where he learns that Sasha was working under the orders of Sinclair the entire time, therefore realizing his relationship with her was a total sham; Gordie breaks up with her as a result.
As the trio return to Gordie and Sean's home town in Wyoming to continue training, Gordie's father steps in and forces him to abandon his wrestling aspirations and join the police force. Sean and King try to convince Gordie to get out of becoming a police officer, but he refuses. He does, however, hold a huge party for King that wishes him luck in the Steel Cage match.
On the night of the match, King is once again outnumbered by DDP's goons but he suddenly receives help from Goldberg, Booker T, Billy Kidman, Disco Inferno, Sting, and Gordie, who ride in on a police motorcycle debuting his new gimmick as "The Law." King ultimately wins the match by dropping DDP from the top of the cage to the floor of the ring. As King comes up victorious and once again WCW World Heavyweight Champion, Sinclair gets beaten up by Sean and Gordie (as well as by the fans). Goldberg later asks King to re-team with him, but announces his new partner will be Gordie and their manager will be Sean.
An epilogue shows Sean telling some local kids "dreams can come true" at a convenience store, where Gordie and Goldberg teach the store clerk a lesson for being mean to kids by hurling him out on the street. All ends happily as the heroes ride off in a stretch limousine Hummer, together with Sal, now fully recovered in a hot tub with beautiful women.
Jocelyn Bennett (Swain), is an intern at the fictional New York City magazine, ''Skirt''. Horribly mistreated, overworked, and underpaid, Jocelyn lives for ''Skirt,'' especially the photo spreads. A spy begins to hand over ''Skirt'' s spreads and story ideas to its rival glossy, ''Vogue''. ''Skirt'' magazine finds itself in a bind and some people begin speculating who the infiltrator (everyone refers to the spy as a yuri) might be. After some fingers begin to point at Jocelyn, she seeks to apprehend the spy and clear her name. Along the way, she meets Paul Rochester (Ben Pullen), the British deputy art director at ''Skirt'', with whom she has much in common. When she finds herself falling in love, one thing stands in her way: Paul's supermodel girlfriend, Resin (Leilani Bishop). Jocelyn continues to search for the spy but several obstacles stand in her way including Art Director Sebastian Niedarfarb (Billy Porter) who believes she is the spy and consistently puts Jocelyn down. However, as she begins to climb the ranks, she begins to stand out to the editors who realize her potential, though they quickly forget it. To make Paul jealous, she starts dating a photo shoot tech named Alex, though the relationship doesn't last. Jocelyn later learns that Resin is only dating Paul because he is related to Prince Charles. Soon after, the spy is apprehended. For her work, Jocelyn is made an assistant, on staff, and finally gets better treatment from her colleagues. During a party thrown by ''Skirt,'' Resin dumps Paul for another model, and Paul and Jocelyn get engaged. Two years later, the happy couple are shown on a PBS tour done by the newest intern at ''Skirt.'' Jocelyn has been made the senior photo editor at the magazine and Paul accomplished his dream of becoming a famous artist. They are set to be married in a few months.
In Chicago's O'Hare airport, advertising executive Buddy Amaral is delayed by a snow storm for a return flight to Los Angeles, on the same airline he has just signed as a big client. He meets writer Greg Janello, and when his flight resumes boarding, Buddy gives his ticket to Greg so he can get home to his wife and sons, eight-year-old Scott and four-year-old Joey.
Buddy convinces his friend and airline employee Janice Guerrero to allow Greg to take his place on the flight. While spending the night with fellow stranded passenger Mimi, he sees on television that the flight crashed. He has Janice check into the computer system to change his for Greg's name on the passenger manifest.
Greg's wife Abby is woken up by news of the crash, and for many hours is torn between hope and despair, clinging to the belief that Greg would still arrive on the later flight on which he was originally booked, until his death is confirmed.
Once back in Los Angeles, the airline dictates that Buddy run a series of innocuous ads to ameliorate the tragic consequences of the crash, which win a Clio Award. Plagued with guilt, Buddy makes a drunken scene at the awards show, and begins a stint in Alcoholics Anonymous. One of the steps in recovery is to make up for past misdeeds, so Buddy seeks out Abby, a budding realtor, giving her a tip on a commercial office building that Jim, Buddy's partner and boss, has put a bid on. In return, Abby treats Buddy to a night at Dodger Stadium. Their relationship blossoms, even as Buddy does not tell her about being indirectly responsible for Greg's death.
When the airline settles with Greg's estate, Abby next wants to put her boys on an aircraft to Palm Springs to get over their fear of flying. Buddy asks to go along with them, and soon develops a strong bond with the two boys. On the return trip, Buddy says he has a secret he will reveal the next day.
It all comes apart when Mimi shows up, with a video of Greg and Buddy having a drink in the airport bar. Abby is devastated by Buddy lying to her and demands that he leave her home and her life - though also demands that he say goodbye to the boys. Buddy comes back the next day and talks to Scott, who is afraid that his father died trying to get home for a Boy Scouts Christmas tree outing. Abby harbors the same guilt for pressuring Greg to come home on the fateful flight.
The victims' families sue the airline for damages, and Janice's role is revealed when Buddy is called to testify. As Abby watches on television, Buddy explains that he gave his ticket to Greg and did not take Greg's in exchange. In coercing Janice to change the roster, the airline's security procedures were compromised, which gets her fired. Buddy is excused by the judge, but still feels guilty.
Buddy resigns from his firm, having compromised his client, the airline. Abby comes by to tell him that his talk with Scott had helped them both. Buddy, sensing that Abby is about to leave, asks her to help him rent his beachfront home or put it up for sale. As Buddy starts to talk about his plans, Abby realizes she can forgive him.
Sally Nash and Joe Therrian are a Hollywood couple celebrating their sixth wedding anniversary shortly after reconciling following a period of separation. He is a novelist who is about to direct the screen adaptation of his most recent bestseller; she is an actress he has opted not to cast in the lead role, despite the fact it's partly based on her, because he feels she's too old for the part. This decision, coupled with an ongoing dispute about their barking dog Otis with their strait-laced, non-industry neighbors, clean-and-sober writer Ryan and interior decorator Monica Rose, has resulted in an undercurrent of tension between the two as they prepare for the arrival of their guests.
Among them are aging actor Cal Gold, Sally's co-star in the romantic comedy film she presently is shooting, his wife Sophia, and their two young children; director Mac Forsyth, who is directing Sally and Cal's film, and his anorexic, neurotic wife Clair; photographer Gina Taylor, whose relationship with Joe prior to his marriage and ongoing close friendship since troubles Sally; business manager Jerry Adams and his wife Judy; eccentric violinist Levi Panes; Jeffrey, Joe's roommate - and lover - at Oxford; and up-and-coming actress Skye Davidson, whom Joe has cast in the role Sally believes deservedly is hers. In an effort to dispel the simmering animosity between them and their neighbors, Sally and Joe have invited the Roses as well.
The early part of the evening is devoted to charades and lighthearted entertainment. Following a series of toasts offered by the guests, Joe distributes the ecstasy Skye brought them as a gift. As it begins to take effect, the night deteriorates, accusations are made, secrets are revealed, and relationships slowly unravel. Complicating emotions triggered by the drug are the disappearance of Otis and a phone call from Joe's father bringing tragic news about his beloved sister Lucy.
In Regency England, an exotically dressed woman is found in the fields, speaking a language no-one can understand. She ends up at the home of the Worrall family, the local gentry.
Their Greek butler, Frixos, thinks the woman is a fraud from the start. Mr Worrall sends her to the magistrate to be tried for vagrancy, but Mrs Worrall agrees to care for her. Mr Gutch, a local printer and newspaper reporter, takes an interest in the case, especially after the woman claims via mime to be Princess Caraboo.
Gutch talks to the farm workers who found her and learns she had a book from the Magdalene Hospital in London on her. When the Worralls leave on a trip the servants inspect her for a tattoo, which they believe all natives of the South Seas have and are shocked to find Princess Caraboo has one on her thigh.
Frixos tells Gutch he now thinks Princess Caraboo's a genuine princess. Mr Worrall uses her presence to recruit investors for the spice trade which will be facilitated by her when she returns to her native land. Gutch brings in Professor Wilkinson, a linguist who is initially dismissive of Caraboo's story but has enough doubt to refuse to say she is a fraud.
The local society finds Princess Caraboo fascinating and they flock to attend parties and soirees with her. Mr Gutch begins investigating people connected with the Magdalene House. Lady Apthorpe takes Caraboo to a ball held for the Prince Regent, who is fascinated by her.
Gutch learns Caraboo is actually Mary Baker, who worked as a servant for Mrs Peake. He sneaks into the ball to warn her she's been found out, but she refuses to acknowledge what he tells her. Mrs Peake comes and confronts Caraboo and identifies her as Mary Baker. She is locked up.
The local magistrate and Mr Worrall want to hang her. Mrs Worrall gives Mr Gutch documents implicating her husband and the magistrate in a bank fraud. He uses these to work a trade, he will bury the story if Mary Baker can go to America. Gutch, who has fallen in love with Mary, leaves with her for the United States.
Irish Catholic Mickey Fitzpatrick is a NYC taxi driver, unhappy over his ex-fiancée Heather's infidelity. His brother, Francis, is a Wall Street stock investor married to Renee, though she is frustrated by his lack of desire for sexual relations – not knowing he is having an affair with Heather.
On weekends, Mickey and Francis visit their parents on Long Island. Their father, Frank, is old-school, low-key and sexist, always telling Mickey and Francis what to do, yet also advising them to always push to succeed.
Driving his cab, Mickey picks up Hope, an NYU art student headed to the airport. Clicking immediately, she asks him to drive her to New Orleans, they fall head over heels and impulsively marry the next day, returning to NYC two days later to tell Francis and Renee. Francis is upset, mostly because he was not asked to be best man.
Mickey moves in with Hope, but soon becomes disillusioned with her bohemian lifestyle, including frequent power cuts in their ramshackle apartment. Francis grows concerned that he is being unfair to Heather by continuing to stay with Renee. At the same time, Renee's Italian-American family, mostly her younger sister Molly, suggest the problem with Francis' lack of interest is that he may be gay, so she asks Mickey and Frank to confront him. He denies being gay, but admits to being unfaithful.
Francis belittles Mickey for the lack of forward progress in his life with Hope. Francis also argues with Heather about her ongoing sexual relations with wealthy old man, "Papa". When Mickey picks up Heather as a fare, he goes up to her apartment to retrieve his TV. She implies that he wants more than just the TV from her, but he does not reciprocate, chastising her for the infidelity that ended their engagement and for her time as a call girl to pay her way through college. Throughout it all, Frank offers more egotistical advice to them—only to be devastated when he learns, on a fishing trip with his priest, that his religious wife has not been to Mass in months.
On a visit to Heather's, Francis learns about her meeting with Mickey. He shows up at his brother's to ask him if he had sex with her. Later, Mickey discovers she is who Francis is having the affair with. The revelation escalates to an argument at their parents', leading Frank to strap boxing gloves on them, with Mickey winning on the first punch.
Francis finally tells Renee about his affair and files for divorce. When Mickey finds out he intends to marry Heather, he tells Francis Heather had been a prostitute, giving Francis cold feet.
Hope informs Mickey they will need to move to Paris in a month if she is accepted into art school there. Already unsure of leaving New York to join her when meeting Connie, Hope's co-worker at a neighborhood bar, who claims to have had a "special relationship" with Hope before the marriage (strongly implying a lesbian romance). Mickey reacts poorly, leading Hope to say she is unsure if he should come to Paris with her after all.
Due to Francis' sudden indecision over marriage, Heather marries Papa. When he threatens to tell Papa that she was a prostitute, Heather tells him that Papa was "her best customer". He then calls Renee in hopes of getting back together with her, but she is already in a relationship with Scott Sherman, a family acquaintance whom Francis previously called a fatso geek, while Renee had pointed out that he was shy and sweet and nicer than him.
Mickey and Francis meet with Frank at his house, and he tells them their mother just left him for a hardware store owner. She has been sleeping with him when supposedly at church. Frank apologizes to his sons for giving them bad advice about life and love, as his own wife was cheating. The three men go out fishing, aware that despite the failure of their love lives, they will always have each other. As they prepare the motorboat to cast off, Mickey realizes he must try to talk with Hope before she leaves for Paris. Surprised, he learns Frank has arranged a special guest – Hope. She asks to drive the boat, but Frank, who never allowed a woman on his boat before, says it is too soon for that.
Retired detective Harry Kilmer is called upon by an old friend, George Tanner. Tanner has been doing business with a ''yakuza'' gangster, Tono, who has kidnapped Tanner's daughter to apply pressure in a business deal involving the sale of guns. Tanner hopes that Kilmer can rescue the girl using his Japanese connections.
Kilmer and Tanner had been Marine MPs in Tokyo during the post-war occupation. Kilmer became aware of a woman, Eiko, who was involved in the black market so that she could procure penicillin for her sick daughter. Kilmer intervened on behalf of Eiko during a skirmish, saving her life. After they'd been living together, with Kilmer repeatedly asking Eiko to marry him, her brother Ken returned from an island where he'd been stranded as an Imperial Japanese soldier. Both outraged that she was living with his former enemy and deeply indebted to Kilmer for saving the lives of his (apparently) only remaining family, Ken disappeared into the yakuza criminal underground and refused to see or speak to his sister. Eiko, cautious to do nothing to offend Ken further, broke off contact with Kilmer. Before returning to the US, Kilmer bought Eiko a bar (with money borrowed from George Tanner) which she operates to this day, named ''Kilmer House'' in his honor. Kilmer has never stopped loving her.
Ken's debt to Kilmer, ''giri,'' is a lifelong obligation that traditionally can never be repaid. Tanner believes that Ken would therefore do anything for Kilmer, including rescuing Tanner's daughter. Traveling to Tokyo with Tanner's bodyguard Dusty, they stay at the home of another old military buddy named Oliver Wheat. Kilmer visits Eiko at the bar's closing time, seeking to find Ken. Eiko's feelings for Kilmer are clearly as strong as ever. He also becomes reacquainted with Eiko's daughter, Hanako, who is delighted to see Kilmer again. Eiko tells Kilmer that her brother can be found at his kendo school in Kyoto.
Kilmer travels by train to visit Ken at his kendo school. Ken is no longer a yakuza member, but will still help Kilmer. They find and free the girl. In so doing, Ken "takes up the sword" once again, attacking one of Tono's men to save Kilmer. This is an inexcusable intrusion by Ken in yakuza affairs. Contracts on both Ken's and Kilmer's lives are issued. Despite Tanner's protests, Kilmer insists on staying until the danger to Ken can be resolved. Eiko suggests he see Ken's brother, a high-level legal counselor to the yakuza chiefs. Goro is unable to intercede due to his impartial role in yakuza society, but suggests Ken can remove the death threat by killing Tono with a sword. The only alternative is for Kilmer to kill Tono himself, by any means (as an outsider, he is not bound to use a sword). Because Kilmer is known to Goro as an unusual ''gaijin'' who understands and accepts Japanese values, he proposes that Kilmer now has an obligation to Ken.
After an attempt on Kilmer's life at a bathhouse, he learns that his old friend Tanner has taken out the contract on him. Tanner secretly is broke and owes Tono a huge debt. Dusty discloses that Tanner and Tono are business partners. During a violent attack on Ken and Kilmer in Oliver Wheat's house, Dusty is stabbed to death with a sword and Hanako is shot and killed.
Seeking advice again from Ken's brother, Goro advises them that they have no choice but to assassinate Tanner and Tono. This will embarrass the partners in the eyes of the yakuza. Goro discloses that he has a "wayward son" who has joined Tono's clan and asks that Ken protect him should he be caught in the battle. In private, Goro then discloses the shocking family secret to Kilmer that Eiko is not Ken's sister but his wife, and Hanako their only child. Kilmer comprehends the true meaning of Eiko and Ken's rift, and Ken's anguish at the death of Hanako, all brought about by his repeated intercessions in their lives.
Kilmer storms into Tanner's apartment and kills him, then joins Ken for a near-suicidal attack on Tono's residence. During a prolonged battle, after Ken kills Tono in the traditional way with a ''katana,'' Goro's son attacks them and Ken kills him in self-defense. Bearing the news to his brother, Ken moves to commit ''Seppuku,'' but his brother pleads with him not to bring more anguish to their family. Instead, Ken performs ''yubitsume'' (the ceremonial yakuza apology by cutting off one's little finger).
Before leaving Japan, Kilmer visits with Ken at home and asks to speak to him formally. While Ken prepares tea, Kilmer quietly commits ''yubitsume,'' and when Ken enters the room, waits for him to be seated. Sliding the folded handkerchief that contains his finger to Ken, he says "please accept this token of my apology" for "bringing great pain into your life, both in the past and in the present." Ken accepts, and Kilmer asks that "if you can forgive me, then you can forgive Eiko," adding, "you are greatly loved and respected by ''all'' your family." Ken professes that "no man has a greater friend than Kilmer-san," and Kilmer, overcome by emotion, says the same of Ken. Their obligations now apparently resolved, Ken takes Kilmer to the airport, and both men bow formally to each other before parting.
The upper-class Toda family celebrates the 69th birthday of their father with a commemorative photoshoot at their outdoor garden. Unfortunately, shortly after the photo session, the father, Shintaro Toda (Hideo Fujino), suffers a fatal heart attack. After his death his eldest son, Shinichiro (Tatsuo Saitō) announces that as their father had acted as a guarantor for a company which has gone bankrupt, they must help pay off that company's debts. The family sells off all their late father's properties and antiques, leaving only an old house by the sea. Meanwhile, the mother (Ayako Katsuragi) and the youngest daughter Setsuko (Mieko Takamine) go and stay with Shinichiro and his wife. The unmarried second brother Shojiro (Shin Saburi) takes the opportunity to move away from Japan to Tianjin, China (which had been occupied by Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese war).
The mother and Setsuko soon clash with Shinichiro's wife, Kazuko, and go to stay with Chizuko (Mitsuko Yoshikawa), the married eldest sister. However, Setsuko's plans to go out to work are met with vehement objections from Chizuko, who finds the idea disgraceful since they are an upper-class family. Chizuko also clashes with the mother over her grandson, who has been playing truant from school. Eventually, Mrs Toda and Setsuko decide to move out to the unsold dilapidated apartment by the sea, instead of harassing Setsuko's second sister, Ayako (Yoshiko Tsubouchi), for a place to stay. Ayako and her husband are more than happy to let them stay elsewhere.
The first anniversary of the father's death arrives and the family comes together for a ceremonial gathering. Shojiro arrives in time for the family dinner, and is shocked to learn that his mother and Setsuko are staying alone by the sea. He reprimands his brother and his sisters in turn, rebuking them for not doing their part as children, and urges them to leave for home at once, which they do. After dinner, Shojiro asks his mother and sister to stay with him in Tianjin, and they agree to. Setsuko tries to arrange a marriage between Shojiro and her friend Tokiko (Michiko Kuwano), who has come for a visit, but Shojiro runs off to the beach before she can get them to meet.
Julián Torralba is a former film stuntman in Almeria, Spain. He and several of his colleagues, who once made a living in American Westerns shot in Spain, now are reduced to doing stunt shows for minuscule audiences on the decaying set built for those old Westerns. Julián wrestles with dark memories of the death of his son, also a stuntman, and with estrangement from his daughter-in-law Laura and her son Carlos.
Carlos, a young boy, becomes intrigued with his late father's life and runs away to join Julián and his band of has-beens. There Carlos is initiated into the rambunctious life of these hard-drinking faux cowboys. But when Laura, a powerful executive looking for a new site for a tourist resort, learns that Carlos has joined the hated Julián, she moves to destroy even this remnant of Julián's once-proud career. Julián and the cowboys decide to fight back the only way they know how.
After besting Number Two at a battle of wills in "Once Upon a Time" at the apparent cost of Number Two's life, Number Six requests he be taken to see Number One. He is taken by The Supervisor to a large cavernous chamber that includes a British assembly hall with a number of masked delegates, whom the Supervisor joins, and a large metallic cylinder with a mechanical eye, labelled "1". Number Six is shown to his seat, a large ornate throne, to watch the proceedings.
A master of ceremonies ("the President") announces Number Six has passed the "ultimate test" and won the "right to be individual", but there are matters of ceremony involved in the "transfer of ultimate power". The caged room where Number Two died is brought to the chamber with his body still in it; medical personnel recover the body, resuscitate him, and give Two a make-over. Number Two, along with Number Forty-eight—a young modishly-dressed man—are presented as two different examples of "revolt" to the assembly. Number Forty-eight refuses to cooperate and drives the assembly to sing a rendition of "Dem Bones" before he is restrained. Number Two reveals he too was abducted to the Village and spits at the mechanical eye in defiance. Both men are taken away.
The President then presents Number Six as a third form of revolt, but as "a revolutionary of a different calibre" to be treated with respect. Number Six is shown his home in London is being prepared for his return, and he is presented with a million in traveller's cheques, petty cash, a passport, and the keys to his home and car. The President says Number Six is free to go home or go wherever he wants, but requests that Number Six stay and lead them as his behaviour has been so exemplary. The President then asks Number Six to address the assembly, but as he begins each sentence with "I" the assembly drowns him out with shouts of "Aye! Aye! Aye!..."
Number Six is shown into the metallic cylinder. He passes transparent tubes holding Numbers Two and Forty-eight along with a third, empty tube, each labelled as "Orbit". Climbing a stairway, he finds a robed man in a mask watching surveillance videos of Number Six. Number Six pulls off the mask to find a gorilla mask underneath, and then under that, a man seemingly identical to Number Six. The robed figure escapes into a hatch above. Number Six locks the hatch and recognises the cylinder is a rocket like the one in "The Girl Who Was Death". He initiates its countdown, sending the President and Assembly into a panic, and an evacuation of the Village is ordered.
Number Six frees Numbers Two and Forty-eight, and along with the Butler, they gun down armed guards, making their way to the caged room which is revealed to be on the bed of a Scammell Highwayman low loader. They drive away from the Village as the rocket launches from the abandoned Village. Rover (the security of the Village) deflates and is destroyed (to the accompaniment of "I, Yi, Yi, Yi, Yi (I Like You Very Much)") upon exposure to the flames of the rocket's exhaust.
The four drive towards London. Nearing the city, Number Forty-eight alights and proceeds to hitch-hike. Just outside the Palace of Westminster, the truck is stopped by the police. The three abandon it and leave their separate ways. Number Two enters the Palace by the Peers' Entrance, while the Butler escorts Number Six back to his home, where his Lotus 7 car waits. Number Six sets off in his car, while the Butler enters Number Six's home, its door opening in the same manner as the automatic doors in the Village. The episode ends with the thunder claps from the series' opening sequence, as well as with the opening shot of Number Six driving on an open country road.
The novel begins as the imperious and ritual-driven servant Mr. Flay seeks to inform someone new of the birth of an heir to the House of Groan in a remote part of the sprawling castle of Gormenghast. He relays the information the curator of the Hall of the Bright Carvings, Mr Rottcodd, notable for being the focal character in the first and last scenes. A son is born to Lord Sepulchrave, Earl of Groan and monarchical ruler of Gormenghast, and his wife, Countess Gertrude. He is named Titus and entrusted to Nannie Slagg by his indifferent mother. Nannie Slagg is an elderly, somewhat senile woman who serves as the nurse and mother figure for the Groan children. She is often unsure of herself, but relishes the small bit of power that comes with raising the heir to the house of Groan. Her first duty is to go to the dwellings of the Bright Carvers just outside the walls of Gormenghast to choose a wet nurse for Titus. Keda, the widow of a well-respected Carver who has recently lost a child from her late husband, volunteers to take on the role. Keda comes to live in the castle for a time helping to raise Titus. Later, she leaves the castle walls and is impregnated by one of her previous two suitors. The suitors promptly kill each other in a duel for her hand in marriage.
On the same day as Titus' birth, an ambitious kitchen boy of seventeen by the name of Steerpike escapes from the kitchens and the obese, sadistic chef, Abiatha Swelter. Lord Sepulchrave's chief servant, Mr. Flay (Swelter's archenemy), comes upon Steerpike who has become lost in the confines of the castle, and takes him through the castle (large parts of which are uninhabited) to a room outside the quarters of the Earl and the Countess. Here, Steerpike takes the opportunity to spy on the Groan family.
Mark Robertson's cover illustration for the Mandarin paperback edition Despite having led him there, the fiercely loyal Flay is angered by Steerpike's eavesdropping and locks him in a small room. Steerpike, however, escapes out of a window, risking his life above a sheer drop. He manages to climb up onto the roofs and towers of Gormenghast, and from there begins his rise to power.
After spending twenty-four hours clambering over the enormous castle searching for a means to enter, Steerpike manages to climb in through a window into the secret attic of Lady Fuchsia Groan. Fuchsia, who has a great affinity to the large area of long-abandoned attic space she has had all to herself, is at first appalled and outraged by his entry. He senses the importance of her naivety and seizes her attention by putting on an elaborate performance. She is the first of the royal characters on whom Steerpike will use his cunning to exploit.
A while later, Steerpike accompanies Fuchsia to the house of Dr. Prunesquallor, and becomes his apprentice for a while. Dr. Alfred Prunesquallor is the castle's resident physician whom readers have theorised is perhaps based on the actor Ernest Thesiger, although this is unconfirmed. He is an eccentric individual with a high-pitched laugh and a grandiose wit which he uses on the castle's less intelligent inhabitants. Despite his acid tongue, he is an extremely kind and caring man who also is greatly fond of Fuchsia and Titus. He lives with his sister Irma Prunesquallor. Though she is anything but pretty, she is considerably vain. She desperately desires to be admired and loved by men. In this position, Steerpike is able to come into even closer contact with members of the Groan family, in particular Lord Sepulchrave's twin sisters, Cora and Clarice Groan. The sisters are not very bright and are power-hungry and resentful, believing that Countess Gertrude holds the position that they rightfully deserve.
Steerpike manages to use the twins' ambition for his own ends. He promises them power and influence, and convinces them that they could achieve their goal by burning down Sepulchrave's beloved library. Steerpike prepares meticulously for the act of arson. He arranges for the burning to happen when the entire Groan family and their most important servants are inside the library for a family gathering (Steerpike intentionally failed to tell the twins that they were invited as well, strengthening their feeling of bitterness towards Sepulchrave and Gertrude). He intends to lock the doors to prevent an escape, and then come through the window and save everyone inside from the fire, appearing as a hero and possibly strengthening his position and granting him more power in the castle.
Everything goes according to plan: the entire Groan family (including the Earl and his heir) and all but one of the retainers are saved. Sourdust, the old Master of Ceremonies, dies of smoke inhalation and all the books in the library are destroyed in the flames. This comes as a great blow to Sepulchrave, a rather melancholic man, to whom the library was the only joy in his otherwise monotonous life, dominated by the ritualistic duties he must perform every day, every week, every month and every year at appropriate times.
Steerpike hoped to become Master of Ritual (a very prestigious job in Gormenghast) after Sourdust died, but the title, like so many things in the castle, is hereditary, and so goes to Sourdust's seventy-four-year-old son Barquentine, who has lived almost completely forgotten in a remote part of the castle for sixty years. He is lame in his one leg, hideous, and unbelievably dirty. Barquentine is a consummate misanthrope who only cares for the laws and traditions of Gormenghast.
During the weeks following the burning, Lord Sepulchrave becomes increasingly insane, starting to believe that he is one of the Death Owls living in the Tower of Flints, the tallest tower in the castle.
Flay learns that Swelter intends to kill him. Flay had hit him across the face with a chain before Titus’ christening, escalating a mutual loathing into plans for vengeful murder. Flay observes Swelter practising the blow with a large cleaver, and so prepares himself for an attack, acquiring a sword for his protection, in case Swelter should ever attempt to murder him while he is sleeping in front of his master's door.
Things happen differently though: Steerpike, now a full-time retainer of the twins, having quit Doctor Prunesquallor's service, angers Flay by sarcastically imitating Sepulchrave's madness. Flay loses control and hurls one of the countess's white cats at Steerpike. At that moment, the Countess enters the room, and seeing that one of her beloved cats has been abused, immediately banishes Flay from Gormenghast.
Flay is forced to learn how to survive outside the castle, and he sets up various homes in the nearby forest and on Gormenghast Mountain. Having a strong attachment to the castle, and feeling a need to watch over Steerpike and to protect Titus, Flay returns secretly to Gormenghast during the night. Four nights after Titus’ first birthday, Flay finds Swelter wandering the castle with a meat cleaver. Swelter does not know of Flay's banishment, and expects him to be sleeping where he has always slept up until now. Flay follows him to just outside Sepulchrave's door, where Swelter discovers that Flay is not there, and soon realizes that he has been followed. Flay lures Swelter to the Hall of Spiders (making use of the fact that Sepulchrave—who is by now quite insane—is sleepwalking), and there they fight a long duel. Eventually, Flay kills Swelter. Lord Sepulchrave arrives on the scene, and decides that Swelter's body should be taken to the Tower of Flints. After helping Sepulchrave carry the body to the tower, Flay is ordered to stay where he is. The mad Earl babbles about possible reincarnation, bids Flay farewell, and then drags the body into the tower by himself and is attacked and eaten by the starved Death Owls, along with Swelter's remains.
After the disappearance of the Earl and the chief cook (the exiled Flay is not able to tell anyone what has happened), Steerpike leads a search for them. Naturally, their remains are not found, but Steerpike is able to gain a good knowledge of all the rooms in the castle. Flay lives in the mountains, making two caves and a shed for himself—living in seclusion but adept as a naturalist. He later witnesses Keda's suicide as she throws herself off a ledge. Initially just one of a number of minor background characters, Keda's story shows some of the world outside the castle, and her choices, journey and resolution are among the most emotive parts of the story.
Nine days after Sepulchrave's disappearance, Steerpike has a conversation with Barquentine. The Master of Ceremonies tells Steerpike that Titus is now to become Earl of Groan, despite the fact that he is only one year old. He also gives Steerpike the position of his assistant and heir to his post, since Barquentine does not have a child. As the apprentice to the Master of Ceremonies, Steerpike has a good, stable position in the castle, and can now study its inner workings.
Steerpike fears that Cora and Clarice are too careless and may tell others that he convinced them to burn down Sepulchrave's library. Steerpike dresses as Death and convinces the twins they will die if they ever speak of the fire. By this stage, Steerpike has considerable influence in the affairs of Gormenghast, even if he is not yet a recognised figure of authority. He still has to influence people to do his work for him. Despite this, both the Countess and Dr. Prunesquallor are disturbed and uneasy about all that has happened, and disturbed about Steerpike's sudden rise. Yet neither is able to connect Steerpike as the cause of the tragic events, as he was their apparent saviour from the fire in the library.
Soon afterwards, the “Earling” takes place, and young Titus is officially made Earl of Gormenghast. In a ridiculously elaborate ceremony on a nearby lake, little Titus holds aloft the sacred symbols of his status—the stone and ivy branch—and to the horror of observers, promptly drops them both into the lake. The scene is silent except for the shout of Titus and for the shout of Keda's unnamed baby, with a surrogate parent across the lake with the Bright Carvers.
Vic DeSalvo and his brother Goody are successful New Jersey trucking magnates, but Vic has a desire to make it big as a Hollywood producer. He hawks his scripts and ideas from one network executive to another, but he is turned down at each attempt.
Finally, he meets an executive at a second-rate company who has just been fired for promoting a show that attracted zero viewers. To avenge himself, he accepts Vic's script and arranges for a pilot episode of ''Sittin' Pretty'', to be filmed. The resultant episode is abysmally awful, both in acting and story, but Vic is only inspired to greater heights. The director and star actor walk out and Vic decides to act as well as write and direct.
He throws a huge party to make himself known to "le tout Hollywood", but no one comes, except Francine, a statistician at a ratings agency. They fall in love.
When Francine is passed over for a promotion by her philandering and incompetent boss, she reveals to Vic how the ratings system can be bypassed and results fixed by setting up confederates in Nielsen-ratings households to skew the results. They conspire to run a scam that will make Vic's program the most-watched on television.
The scam works and Vic is voted the best new actor at a grand awards ceremony, showing that many viewers (in addition to the confederates) watched his shows. But the agency has now discovered the scam, and as soon as Vic has accepted his award, he is arrested by the police.
Francine and Vic are married in jail.
When young Chinese woman Lotus Flower sees an unconscious man floating in the water at the seashore, she quickly gets help for him. The man is Allen Carver, an American. Soon the two have fallen in love, and they get married "Chinese fashion". Carver promises to take her with him when he returns home. Lotus Flower's friends warn her that he will leave without her, and one states she has been forgotten by four American husbands, but she does not believe them. However, Carver's friends discourage him from fulfilling his promise, and he returns to the United States alone.
Lotus Flower has a young son, whom she names Allen after his father. When the older Allen finally returns to China, Lotus Flower is at first overjoyed. She dresses in her elaborate Chinese bridal gown to greet him. However, he is accompanied by his American wife, Elsie. Allen has told Elsie about Lotus Flower, and it is Elsie who persuaded her husband to tell Lotus Flower the real situation. When the boy is brought to see his father, Lotus Flower pretends he is the child of her American neighbors. Later, though, she confides the truth to Elsie and asks her to take the boy to America. She tells the child that Elsie is his real mother. After Elsie takes the boy away with her, Lotus Flower says, "Oh, Sea, now that life has been emptied I come to pay my great debt to you." The sun is then shown setting over the water, and it is implied that Lotus Flower drowns herself.
When Joey is struggling to make ends meet by working at Central Perk, Ross suggests some alternative form of employment, and Joey looks into medical studies at the local hospital. He finds one that pays $2,000 for identical twins, and hires a fake twin, Carl, at an audition. Carl is even dumber than Joey, and the ruse fails miserably.
Chandler panics when he remembers that he and Monica have agreed to hand-craft Valentine's Day gifts for each other this year, two weeks later than planned because Monica was working on Valentine's Day. After Phoebe offers him a bunny rabbit composed of Rachel's socks, Chandler fails miserably at making his own gifts. He ends up grabbing a cassette tape to stand in for a homemade mix tape. Monica, who also forgot, gives him Phoebe's sock-bunny and then launches into a furious campaign of please-forgive-me sex and homemade meals. Chandler, happy with the attention, does not correct her misconception, but his deception becomes clear when Monica actually plays the cassette tape—a homemade mix tape from Chandler's ex-girlfriend Janice for his birthday. Although she is angry, he pleads for another chance. She tries to get past it with another slow dance, but a few more seconds of Janice's voice is enough for her to storm into their bedroom alone.
Rachel and Phoebe take a women's self-defense class together; Rachel feels confident about her mastery of the topic, which Ross scoffs at. Ross claims to have years of karate lessons to master the true essence of self-defense: "unagi", which Ross claims is "a state of total awareness." (Rachel, Chandler, and even the vegetarian Phoebe correctly point out that "unagi" is actually a form of sushi. In ''karate'', the concept of this state is ''zanshin''.) To prove that Rachel and Phoebe have not reached an "unagi"-infused state of mind, he sets up a number of "scary" ambushes on them, only to find out they are stronger than him, as in one failed ambush Rachel and Phoebe sit on him, not letting him go. Ross goes to their instructor to ask how to fight them off, but he explains it out of context, making him look like a psychopath who enjoys assaulting women, especially his ex-wife. Later, Ross sees the backs of two blonde-haired women near Central Perk, thinking they are Rachel and Phoebe and attacks them from behind, only to be attacked back. As he is running away from them, he pauses for a second to see Rachel and Phoebe staring at him from a window in Central Perk and he runs away in fear as he realizes the unknown women are chasing him.
The story is set in a United States Army base in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Major Michael Dillon (Gwynne), who is impotent, falls in love with a reporter sent to cover the camp, who turns out to be a nymphomaniac when she is gang-raped by the other soldiers in the camp. However, she realizes at the end that she will be even happier giving up her newfound lust for sex to settle down with the impotent commander.
The film is set up as a series of humorous tricks on the audience, with constant doubling, and in which things are rarely what they at first seem to be. It opens with Keaton attending a variety show. Keaton plays the conductor and every member of the orchestra, the actors, dancers, stagehands, minstrels, and every member of the audience, male and female. As an audience member, Keaton turns to the "woman" sitting beside him and remarks, "This fellow Keaton seems to be the whole show". This was a jibe at one of Keaton's contemporaries, Thomas Ince, who credited himself generously in his film productions. In interviews with Kevin Brownlow, Keaton claims he gave the director's credit to Cline mainly because he did not want to appear too Ince-like himself: "Having kidded things like that, I hesitated to put my own name on as a director and writer".
This elaborate trick-photography sequence turns out to be only a dream when Joe Roberts rouses Keaton from bed. The bedroom then turns out to be not a bedroom, but a set on a stage.
The second half of the film finds Keaton's character falling for a girl who happens to be a twin. He has difficulty telling the twin who likes him from the one who does not. An uncredited Virginia Fox plays one of the twins. Eddie Cline co-wrote the production and appears, uncredited, as a monkey trainer, whose monkey Keaton impersonates onstage after accidentally letting the animal escape.
A naive but caring prison chaplain, John Smallwood (Sellers), is accidentally assigned as vicar to the small and prosperous English country town of Orbiston Parva, in place of an upper-class cleric (Carmichael) with the same name, who is favoured by the Despard family, who practically run the town and operate a large factory there.
Smallwood's belief in charity and forgiveness sets him at odds with the locals, whose assertions that they are good, Christian people are belied in Smallwood's eyes by their behaviour and ideas. He creates social ructions by appointing a black dustman (Peters) as his churchwarden, taking in a gypsy family, and persuading local landowner Lady Despard (Jeans) to provide food for the church to distribute free to the people of the town.
His scheme spirals out of control and very soon the local traders are up in arms as they have lost all their customers. He tries to explain this to the residents but is besieged in the church hall and only just rescued by the police.
As a face-saving act, the Bishop appoints the 'original' Smallwood to the parish and assigns the 'troublemaker' to the Scottish island of 'Ultima Thule'. He is made 'Bishop of Outer Space' to the British space operations based there. But when the intended pilot of the first rocket gets cold feet, Smallwood takes his place. He is last heard broadcasting a sermon over the rocket's radio.
The series focuses on the search for explanations of, and evidence for, seemingly miraculous phenomena. This search is carried out by the protagonist Declan Dunn (Adrian Pasdar). Declan is a professor of anthropology at the Northern University of Oregon and is often compared with Indiana Jones due to his energetic enthusiasm for solving a mystery. His passion for miraculous events has its roots in a self-experienced mischance of being caught in an avalanche and getting out alive. He considers this to be miraculous and attributes it as the turning point in his life. In several episodes he makes references to this event and the impact it had on his life.
Always ready to help out with the research, though sometimes they appear slightly reluctant, are Declan's close friends Dr. Peggy Fowler (Rae Dawn Chong), a psychiatrist at a nearby hospital, and Miranda Feigelsteen (Alisen Down), a physics graduate student and Declan's research assistant. Peggy is the most levelheaded of the three and is generally the one presenting the mundane alternatives to Declan's theories. Her so-called "rational explanations" often provide no explanation whatsoever, e.g. "It was just a freak occurrence".
Often being assigned to carry out tests of various substances, or operating a range of instruments, is Miranda. She is the second skeptic besides Peggy, with a somber and introvert personality, sometimes with moments of joking banter or sarcastic comments. In the episodes "The Ties That Bind" (1.08) and "Free Spirit" (2.14) another, more open side of her is shown before her social peers, if only temporarily. Being the quiet personality, Miranda is sometimes somewhat of a mystery even to her best friends.
In many cases the episodes conclude with a rational explanation being seemingly validated, then disproven at the last minute; thus leaving the question of paranormal activity open once more.
Claude Gueux is a poor, hungry inhabitant of Troyes, who has received no education or help from society whatsoever. One day, missing of everything, he steals enough for three days of firewood and bread to feed his mistress and child. But he is caught, condemned to five years and sent to the Clairvaux Prison, an old abbey turned into a high-security detention center. There, the prisoners work as tailors in dirty workshops by day, and sleep in musty cells by night. Before going to sleep, they are given small portions of food to be able to survive through the following day. But Claude Gueux is a big eater, and the tiny quantities of food he is given are not large enough for him. So one of his cellmates, a young and shy criminal named Albin, spontaneously offers to share his food with him. That is the starting point of a long-lasting friendship.
However, the prison is ruled by an avid, presumptuous and simply evil man, referred to as the "Director". He is jealous of Claude's innate ability to inspire friendship and obedience from all other prisoners, although he has many times used him to keep the prison under control. Seeing the friendship between Albin and Claude, he figures out the best way to irritate and hurt Claude would be to separate them forever, and he does just that. When Claude asks the Director why he has done this, the Director replies 'because I felt like it'. Claude takes this very badly, and in the following months he repeatedly asks the Director to bring back Albin to him. As the Director never does it, Claude makes a radical decision: he will kill the Director. So one day, he obtains an axe and a pair of scissors at the prison workshop, and waits there for the Director's night time inspection. When the Director arrives, he asks Claude, who isn't supposed to be in the workshop, 'why are you over here?'. Claude then asks the director one last time to free Albin. Once again, the Director refuses. The Director says 'don't mention it again, stop boring me'. Claude again asks why he did this to him, and the Director once again replies 'because I felt like it'. Claude then slices the Directors skull open with the axe and kills him. Immediately afterwards, Claude tries to kill himself with the scissors by repeatedly stabbing them into his own chest.
But Claude does not die, and a judicial inquiry begins in which he admits murdering the Director and gives the reason as being that ''he felt like it''. He then becomes ill for a few months as a result of his wounds, and when he has fully recovered, he appears before the assize court of Troyes. In court, Claude makes an eloquent speech in which he calmly tells the judge the full details of the events which had provoked him to commit the crime of murder, and he admits his guilt. However, when the King's attorney then states that Claude Gueux had committed the murder unprovoked, Claude becomes angry and he reiterates a long series of acts of extreme provocation on the part of the Director. The president of the court then sums up the case, and in doing so he only mentions the facts about Claude Gueux which are adverse, albeit incontrovertibly true. Claude is then found guilty and sentenced to death.
Claude declines to appeal, but upon returning to the prison, a nun who had nursed him when he was recovering from his wounds, begs him to reconsider. He agrees out of gratitude, although he knows very well his request won't be listened to. In the following days, he is forbidden to come out from his cell or even to go to the workshops. His friends in the prison throw various objects into his room with which he could easily, according to the writer, escape from the jail. But Claude just returns those objects to the guardians.
Finally comes the day in which he is to be executed, his demand for reconsideration having been refused. He is brought to a Catholic priest, to which he asks pardon for all his past sins. He sees the man that will bring an end to his life, and declares he does not consider him guilty of anything and pardons him completely. Then, a coach escorts him to the marketplace of Troyes, where a guillotine has been prepared. Before getting executed, he gives a coin, his only possession, to the priest that has come with him, and asks him to give it to the poor. Then, the guillotine's blade falls upon his neck, and he dies.
A lengthy epilogue follows the story, in which Victor Hugo criticizes the lack of proportionality as between education and criminal punishment, and the cruel French society of the nineteenth century. The last part of his speech is directly meant for French legislators.
Wisconsin photographer and housewife Beth Cappadora leaves her youngest son, Ben, alone with his older brother for a brief moment in a crowded Chicago hotel lobby, while attending her high school reunion. The older son lets go of Ben's hand and Ben vanishes without a trace. Beth goes into an extended mental breakdown and it is left to her husband and owner of a restaurant, Pat, to force his wife to robotically care for their remaining two children, 7-year-old Vincent and infant daughter Kerry.
Nine years later a young boy named Sam asks Beth if she needs the lawn mowed. Beth suspects that this boy who lives with his "father" two blocks away is in fact her lost son, and while Sam mows the lawn, she takes photographs of him to show to her husband and teenage son, who then says that he suspected the boy's true identity all along. The parents contact Detective Candy Bliss who pops in to offer wise, albeit often cryptic and conflicting, advice to Beth. It is learned that at the reunion in Chicago, the celebrity alumna Cecilia Lockhart kidnapped Ben, renamed him Sam, and raised him as her own child until she was committed to a mental hospital, leaving Sam to be raised in a house only two blocks from the Cappadoras, by his adoptive father, the sensitive and intellectual George Karras.
Ben was raised by a Greek-American father for nine years, while his biological parents are Italian-American. Ben is a polite, intelligent American boy who takes great pride in participating in Greek cultural rituals, much to the frustration of Pat who wants to pretend that Ben was never really abducted. Ben is faced with the cultural identity that he grew up with, and the cultural identity he would have known had he not been kidnapped.
Ben's adoptive father agrees to surrender Ben to his birth family, while still living two blocks away. Torn between two worlds and having lost both of the parents that he knew, Ben expresses suicidal feelings to Beth.
Ben's only memory of his biological family is one of brother Vincent and thus over a one-on-one basketball game he absolves his brother of any responsibility for his abduction, and agrees to return to live with the Cappadoras.
At the end of the novel, many conflicts remain unresolved. Pat still has problems loving his sons: Ben because he can not relate to his personality and Vincent because he does not connect his teenage rebellion and cynicism to nine years of bad parenting. Beth has regained her position in the family as an equal parent, but Ben and Vincent's emotional scars may require years of intense therapy.
Ralph has befriended a young boy named Ryan, the son of the inn's new housekeeper. Ryan has given Ralph the full name of "Ralph S. Mouse", the middle initial standing for "Smart". Meanwhile, Ralph becomes agitated at his family, because he doesn't want them riding his motorcycle. Worried that their droppings on the floor will result in anti-mouse retaliation by the hotel staff, he asks Ryan to take him to school, where he plans to hide and live out the rest of his life.
Ralph is discovered by Ryan's classmates, who adopt him as a class pet, and decide to see how smart he is by building a maze for him to run through. All this time, Ryan is having difficulty with an aggressive boy named Brad from his class, who accidentally breaks Ralph's motorcycle, and Ralph blames Ryan and runs away to hide in the school. However, Ralph also confronts Brad for breaking his motorcycle, and Brad, realizing that Ralph can talk, offers to set things right for both him and Ryan. Ryan and Brad discover that they have much in common, and become friends.
Ryan reclaims Ralph, and brings him home on the school bus on the day that his new friend comes with him to visit at the inn. Brad also atones for his destruction of Ralph's treasured motorcycle by giving him a model "Laser XL7" sports car. Ralph discovers that he can't move the car by making the same noise as his motorcycle; he has to go "vroom-vroom" instead. Ralph further discovers that he can safely give his younger relatives rides in the car without worrying that they will be irresponsible with it (but only Ralph can drive the car). Brad's father meets Ryan's mother, and they marry six months later, thus Ryan and Brad are now step-brothers.
The family's leader, Teisel Bonne, seeks an ancient ruin (the Nakkai Ruins) to try and uncover a gigantic and highly valuable Refractor (Diana's Tear). He has a short rendezvous with Bon Bonne, but he and Bon are quickly subdued and captured by Glyde, a rival air pirate in the service of Mr. Loath. Tron finds out that the money used to build the Bonnes' flying fortress was funded by Mr. Loath, and can only watch helplessly, having chosen to act as Spotter for the mission. After discovering that Teisel defaulted on his 1,000,000-zenny loan, she realises that she has no choice but to pay off the loan, or Teisel and Bon will not be seen again. Seeing no other options, Tron suits up in a custom Gustaff mecha and, along with her army of 40 identical Servbots, begins her quest to pay the ransom through any means possible; especially by theft.
During repeated bank robberies, Tron meets (and to an extent, befriends) officer Denise Marmalade, who repeatedly fails to stop her, even when engaging Tron in her own police-issue mecha. In the caves, the Servbots find the three Aurora Stones, help the restless spirit of a man that died trying to find the Fountain of Youth (which was, in fact, a primitive form of root beer), and help two Diggers fall in love. And in the ruins, Tron explores for valuable artifacts, including Diana's Tear (which Teisel was meant to find).
After various adventures, Tron brings the one million zenny to Mr. Loath, who then claims that Teisel also owes interest on his loan, to the sum of ''two'' million zenny. She proceeds to acquire the requested money, and is then told that she owes interest ''on'' the interest. Realizing that Loath will never let Teisel and Bon go, she too is captured and placed in Teisel's cell.
At this point, the player takes control of their Favorite Servbot (who has the distinctive "red head parts"), who sets off on a rescue mission. Though the Favorite Servbot succeeds in freeing Teisel, Tron, and Bon Bonne, and then Tron succeeds in defeating Glyde, Loath is still able to activate his secret weapon: the Colossus. The Bonnes at first try to attack it with the Gesselschaft's weapons, but this has almost no effect, and the Colossus' return fire causes Tron to be very seriously injured and Teisel to get thrown overboard. Thus, the Favorite Servbot and his Servbot crew have to take on the Colossus in the Gustaff. They succeed, finally defeating Loath and Glyde once and for all. And to ensure they never cause trouble again, Tron hands them into the police, saving officer Denise's job in the process (as she gets given the credit for catching them).
The issue finally resolved, the Bonnes, reunited, set off for Kattelox Island. While in flight, the Favorite Servbot accidentally throws out a giant Refractor won from Loath with the trash, causing Tron and Teisel to freak out and force a pit stop to search for it. Some time after, the events of ''Mega Man Legends'' take place.
The plot continues with The Kid, living a future life as an upbeat performer and co-owner of a club, Glam Slam, which was willed to him from Billy, who owned the First Avenue Club in the first film. Solitary and lovelorn, he spends his personal time composing songs, and writing letters to his deceased father. The other co-owner who was included in the will is Morris (Morris Day), his rival who now also owns his own club, Pandemonium, while desiring to control the other two clubs in the Seven Corners area, which are Melody Cool and the Clinton Club. Needing to pay the mayor of Seven Corners $10,000, Morris attempts to extort The Kid – by threatening to take full ownership of Glam Slam. Making matters more interesting is the arrival of Aura, an angel sent from Heaven to sway both Morris and The Kid into leading more righteous lives – while dealing with their attraction to her. As The Kid continues to resist him, Morris begins to embarrass him via performances with his band, to steal The Kid's customers. Losing clientele and having his club defamed by Morris's henchmen, The Kid decides to challenge Morris to a music battle for ownership of Glam Slam. After Aura gets hit by a car, the two rivals settle their dispute and join forces.
The original setting was the frontier of the Old West, where the main characters were American cavalrymen. Those stories, rarely longer than a single page, were comedic adventures about popular Western stereotypes and the absurdity of military life. One recurring feature was the blunder that led to the Cavalry fort being besieged by outraged Native Americans, or in one case, the cavalry having to besiege their own fort after the Indians have tricked them into leaving it and taken over. As the series progressed, the stories became longer and more involved, retaining their humorous highlights. The drawing style also changed, after the death of the original artist Salverius, from overtly cartoonish to semi-realistic.
In the second album, ''Du Nord au Sud'', the main characters, Blutch and Chesterfield, travel east to join Ulysses S. Grant's army and fight in the American Civil War. The 18th album, ''Blue Retro'', describes how the characters were first drafted into the military when the war had already begun and makes no mention of the time they spent on the frontier, contradicting the events in album 2 and others. This retconned origin and continuity hiccups are not detrimental to the enjoyment and understanding of the series since each album is a stand-alone adventure or collection of short stories. Adventures at the frontier fort still occasionally take place.
The two main protagonists are colorful and clashing opposites. Corporal Blutch is a reluctant soldier, highly critical of authority, whose only wish is to get out of the army and return to civilian life, often threatening to desert and coming up with ways to avoid going into yet another senseless battle. Blutch does have a heroic side and will not hesitate to fight against the Confederate troops even to the risk of his own life. Sergeant Cornelius Chesterfield is by contrast a devoted and obedient career soldier, always determined that he and Blutch should be in the thick of the action. He is proud of his scars and dreams of military glory. Though strong and brave to the point of recklessness, he is clumsy and narrow-minded, unable to clearly perceive the madness of the war around him. Though their relationship is often antagonistic, they are comrades for life and have saved each other's lives many times in spite of repeated threats made by both of doing the other in.
Other recurring characters include the somewhat insane, charge-obsessed Captain Stark and the bumbling general staff, headed by the anger-prone General Alexander. Historic figures are also occasionally present in the narrative: alongside General Grant, they include President Abraham Lincoln, Confederate commander Robert E. Lee, and war photographer Mathew Brady. As happens in fiction, especially in ''bandes dessinées'', Blutch and Chesterfield often get sent on special missions which take them all over the map, from Mexico to Canada, and mix them up in projects from railroad construction to spying on the Confederacy's secret submarine project (based on the actual CSS ''David''). Many albums are built around historical events or characters such as Chinese immigrant labor, the treatment of African American soldiers, Charleston's submarines, and General Lee's horse Traveller. Chesterfield even goes undercover to confront guerrilla leader William Quantrill and his henchmen Jesse and Frank James. On another occasion they had to contend with a racist officer, Captain Nepel, based on the French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Historical details are generally quite exact, and accuracy has steadily improved over the years. Yet the series is first and foremost entertainment and historic details are altered to suit the story. The serious drama of the plots is balanced by frequent humorous incidents and Blutch's constant sarcastic wisecracks. Although this is not strictly speaking an adult-oriented ''bande dessinée'', the authors are not afraid of showing the reality of war in a harsh, but tactful manner, such as dead bodies in the aftermath of a battle. Military authority, especially the uncaring and/or incompetent leader is often the subject of parody and derision.
Songwriter Jack Morell—a reference to Village People creator Jacques Morali—gets a break DJing at local disco Saddle Tramps. His roommate, Samantha "Sam" Simpson, is a supermodel newly retired at the peak of her success. She sees the response to a song that he wrote for her ("Samantha") and agrees to use her connections to get him a record deal. Her connection is her ex-boyfriend Steve Waits, president of Marrakech Records—a reference to Village People record label Casablanca Records—who is more interested in rekindling their romantic relationship than in Jack's music (and more interested in taking business calls than in wooing Samantha), but agrees to listen to a demo.
Deeming Jack's vocals as inadequate, Sam recruits neighbor and Saddle Tramps waiter/go-go boy Felipe Rose (the Indian), fellow model David "Scar" Hodo (the construction worker, who daydreams of stardom in the solo number "I Love You to Death"), and finds Randy Jones (the cowboy) on the streets of Greenwich Village, offering dinner in return for their participation. Meanwhile, Sam's former agent, Sydney Channing, orders Girl Friday Lulu Brecht to attend, hoping to lure back the star. Ron White, a lawyer from St. Louis, is mugged by an elderly woman on his way to deliver a cake that Sam's sister sent and arrives disconcerted. Brecht gives Jack drugs, which unnerves him when her friend Alicia Edwards brings singing cop Ray Simpson (the policeman), but Jack records the quartet on "Magic Night". Ron, pawed all night by the man-hungry Brecht, is overwhelmed by the culture shock of it all and leaves.
The next day, Sam runs into Ron, who apologizes, proffers the excuse that he is a Gemini and follows her home. Spilling leftover lasagna on himself, Sam and Jack help him remove his trousers before Jack leaves and Sam and Ron spend the night. Newly interested in helping, Ron offers his Wall Street office to hold auditions. There, Glenn M. Hughes (the leatherman), climbs atop a piano for a rendition of "Danny Boy", and he and Alex Briley (the G.I.) join the group, now a sextet. They get their name from an offhand remark by Ron's socialite mother Norma. Ron's boss, Richard Montgomery, overwhelmed by the carnival atmosphere, insists that the firm not represent the group, and Ron quits.
Ron's new idea for rehearsal space is the YMCA (the ensuing production number "YMCA" features its athletic denizens in various states of undress; the film is one of the few non-R-rated offerings to feature full-frontal male nudity). The group cuts a demo ("''Liberation''") for Marrakech, but Steve sees limited appeal and Sam refuses his paltry contract. Reluctant to use her savings, they decide to self-finance by throwing a pay-party.
To bankroll the party, Sam acquiesces to Channing's plea to return for a TV advertising campaign for milk, provided the Village People are featured. The lavish number "Milkshake" begins as Sam pours milk for six little boys in the archetypal costumes with the promise that they will grow up to be the Village People. The advertisers want nothing to do with such a concept, and refuse to broadcast the spot. Norma then steps in to invite the group to debut at her charity fundraiser in San Francisco. Sam lures Steve by promising a romantic weekend, but the inference that she would proceed with the seduction takes Ron aback, and Sam ends their romantic relationship. On his private jet, Steve prepares for a tryst, but rather Jack and his former chorine mother Helen arrive to negotiate a contract. Initially reluctant, Helen wins over Steve with her kreplach, and eventually they are negotiating the T-shirt merchandising for the Japanese market.
In the dressing room before the show, Ron, relieved to learn that Sam did not travel with Steve, proposes to her. At one point, Montgomery appears, seeking to rehire Ron as a junior partner representing the group. Following a set by The Ritchie Family ("Give Me a Break"), the Village People triumphantly debut ("Can't Stop the Music").
Philippe, the young son of a diplomat living in London, idolizes his father's butler, Baines. Baines has invented a heroic persona to keep Phillipe entertained during his father's absences, telling him stories of his daring adventures in Africa and elsewhere, where he claims to have single-handedly killed men in self-defense and conquered lions.
In reality, Mr. Baines has never been to Africa, is in a loveless marriage with his wife (who is also employed as the family's housekeeper) and is carrying on an affair with a young secretary, Julie. One day, when Philippe's father departs for several days, Philippe follows Baines to a small cafe, where he meets Julie to discuss their relationship. Julie is planning to go away, Baines tries to change her mind. Philippe is oblivious to the details of their conversation. Afterward, Baines tells Philippe that Julie is his niece and asks that he not mention the incident to Mrs. Baines. That afternoon, Philippe is chastised by Mrs. Baines for playing on a window ledge on the staircase landing. Later, she attempts to glean information about her husband from Philippe, suspicious he is cheating on her.
The next morning, Baines takes Philippe on a trip to the London Zoo. Julie joins them and accompanies them back home for dinner, believing all is safe in Mrs. Baines's absence. As they return home, Philippe finds a telegram from Mrs. Baines, notifying Mr. Baines that she will return in two days. The three have dinner and afterward play a game of hide-and-seek. Later that evening, Mrs. Baines returns to the house unexpectedly. She awakens Philippe, who yells out to alarm Mr. Baines and she slaps Phillipe in an angry rage. Mr. and Mrs. Baines argue and struggle on a staircase landing. Mrs. Baine accuses her husband of cheating with Julie, which Philippe partially witnesses. Mr. Baines tells her to go downstairs before he loses his temper. Mrs. Baines, suspecting that Philippe has been watching them argue, walks onto a ledge with an unguarded landing to see if she can spot Philippe through the window, a window which swings outward. Mrs. Baines bangs on window which suddenly swings outward, striking Mrs. Baines, causing her to fall to her death, with her body landing at the foot of the staircase. Philippe does not witness the actual fall and presumes that Baines pushed her to her death down the stairs.
Philippe becomes frightened, flees the house and is captured by a police officer walking his beat. Young Philippe is returned home, where Baines recounts the evening to police, though he eliminates Julia from his version of events in order to protect her, instead claiming that he and Philippe alone had dinner, although the table was set for three. During the interrogation, Philippe attempts to grab the telegram Mrs. Baines sent, which he made into a paper airplane, but it is confiscated by police, who uses it as evidence against Baines.
Julie visits the house the following morning. Soon after, Inspector Crowe and Detective Ames arrive to further question Baines. Julie attempts to leave, but upon being introduced as Baines's secretary, the police ask that she stay to transcribe his interview. Crowe and Ames first interview Philippe alone. He denies that Mrs. Baines slapped him, or that Julie ever visited the house. Julie overhears Philippe concealing the truth and conversing in French, implores him to be honest. Baines interjects and proceeds to recount to police what actually happened the night before. They continue to disbelieve his story and suggest he make a formal statement.
Fearing he cannot prove his innocence, Baines heads to his basement bedroom to retrieve his pistol and commit suicide, but before proceeding downstairs he is followed by Philippe, who tearfully questions whether his many stories are true. Baines admits they were merely games and adamantly denies killing his wife. Simultaneously, two other investigating officers notice a footprint in the spilt soil from a potted plant on a window ledge, located above the stairway and discern it came from a women's shoe. Crow and Ames swiftly renege their accusation against Baines. Julie goes to the basement and informs Baines that the police no longer suspect him, so committing suicide is not something he should even consider. Philippe, now compelled to be truthful, insists he left the footprint two days before, but Inspector Crowe disbelieves him. As the police depart, Philippe runs upstairs to the ledge, where he sweeps the soil away containing Mrs. Baines's shoeprint. As he does this, his mother, from whom he has long been separated, arrives at the front door.
The career of a person living in Gernia is heavily influenced by their parentage. Those sons born to common parentage follow their father's career. However, for the sons of a noble, things are different. The eldest son inherits his father's title, the second son serves as an officer in the army, the third son enters priesthood, while the fourth becomes an artist. This allocation continues for further sons. Daughters are relegated to submissive roles, being primarily used to forge social links with arranged marriages.
The first book, ''Shaman's Crossing'', concerns Nevare's education. As a young boy on the vast plains, his position as the second son, the Soldier Son, is cemented from birth. From an early age, Nevare is drilled in mounted cavalla (Cavalry) techniques, riding, survival, tactics, and all aspects of life as an officer in the King's Cavalla. As a teenager, he has a first encounter with the Specks' magic (see below), which will influence the rest of his life. Later, as a young man, Nevare's education at the King's Cavalla Academy begins. Nevare suffers the consequences of being the son of a New Noble, when the struggle between Old Nobles and New Nobles in the court of Gernia affects the supposedly independent Academy.
Book two, ''Forest Mage'', concerns Nevare's trip in disgrace to a town near Gettys, and his time at this farthest outpost in the King's Road construction. His connection with the Specks, a race of tree people who live on after their corporeal lives, develops further. The changes imposed to his body by the Specks' magic he wields, causes rejection and discrimination by most Gernians, including his family. In spite of it, he still pursues his dream of a military career. At the same time, he also tries to save the Specks' ancestors forest from the devastations produced by the Gernian's road advance.
The third and final book, ''Renegade's Magic'', details Nevare's sojourn with the Specks in their extensive forest near the Barrier Mountains. His cousin and her husband Spink continue to deal with events in Gettys. Nevare's disjoint personalities are united to realize the initial goal of the magic, in spite of the serious consequences it has on Nevare's life. But balance is finally achieved.
When Bart complains he never gets any mail, Marge gives him the family's junk mail. He completes a credit card application under the name of the family dog, Santa's Little Helper. Bart receives a credit card issued to "Santos L. Halper" after the company misreads his application. He goes on a spending spree, buying the family expensive gifts from a mail-order catalog: smoked salmon and a radio-frying pan for Marge, a golf shirt for Homer, pep pills for Lisa and several things for himself. Undeterred by its US$1,200 price, Bart orders a purebred collie. When the dog arrives, Bart learns his name is Laddie and he is trained to perform several tasks. The Simpsons fall in love with the new dog and neglect Santa's Little Helper.
When he fails to pay his credit card bill, Bart gets a call from a debt collection agency demanding payment. When the calls and collection letters persist, he enlists Laddie's help to bury the ill-gotten card. Soon repo men arrive to confiscate his purchases. When a repossessor asks for the $1,200 dog to be returned, Bart identifies Santa's Little Helper as the dog. The greyhound is herded into the truck and he watches sadly as it drives away.
Realizing Santa's Little Helper is gone, the family bonds with Laddie, except for Bart, who fears for Santa's Little Helper's fate. When an exhausted Bart takes Laddie on one of his frequent walks, the collie saves the life of Baby Gerald. At the ceremony honoring Laddie's heroism, Chief Wiggum decides that he would make the perfect police dog. Bart gives him to the Springfield police force and breaks down crying while explaining to his family why they no longer have any dog at all. Homer instructs him to find Santa's Little Helper. Bart eventually learns from Reverend Lovejoy that the dog was given to a parishioner, Mr. Mitchell.
Bart visits Mitchell to beg for his dog back, but he sees that the man is blind because he fails to notice his parrot has died. When Bart hears how the man and Santa's Little Helper have bonded, he grows heartsick and leaves. Later Bart makes a late-night visit to the man's home and retrieves Santa's Little Helper. While trying to escape, he traps himself in a closet after mistaking it for an outside door. Thinking Bart is a burglar, Mitchell gloats that he has called the police. Bart explains that he is just a child and the dog was originally his. Bart and Mitchell call to Santa's Little Helper so he can decide which owner he prefers. After briefly getting distracted by chasing his own tail, Santa's Little Helper chooses Bart. Chief Wiggum arrives with Laddie, who immediately sniffs out a bag of marijuana in Mitchell's pocket. As Bart and Santa's Little Helper head home, more police officers arrive to enjoy the confiscated cannabis.
In a backyard is a doghouse labeled "Killer" with the dog (Spike) inside. Tom pokes his head over the wall and spots Toodles in the window. Tom has brought a string instrument (which appears to be a hybrid of a double bass and a cello). He leaps over the fence and neutralizes Spike by whistling at him and hitting him on the head with a mallet and tying him up. Tom then uses the cello like a pogo stick to jump his way over to the window, stopping to flick Spike's nose along the way.
Tom performs "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby" to Toodles, which wakes Jerry, who was sleeping inside his mousehole (located in a mail box). Annoyed by the sounds, he pokes out of the mail slot and spots Tom playing the instrument. He goes back to his bed and covers himself with the pillow, however the sound waves from the instrument shake Jerry's mousehole, causing Jerry to fall out of bed (while still trying to cover his ears) and vibrate his way under a table, meanwhile a flower pot is vibrated across the table directly above Jerry's head and falls on him when both reach the edge of the table. Outside, Tom uses the instrument as a bow to shoot himself to Spike, who is still tied up, tortures the dog by plucking its mouth, and runs back to the string instrument. The camera goes back inside Jerry's mousehole, whose stuff is messed up and broken by the vibration. Jerry continues being moved to under the mail hole's lid right before a match holding it falls, making the lid slam Jerry. Having had enough, Jerry throws off his nightcap, goes out of the mousehole to the kitchen and decides to get revenge by stuffing an iron into a pie which he then hurls at Tom through an open window; the cat is angered, but continues with a few more bars. Seconds later, he is hit in the face again – this time with a pie covered in whipped cream. Spotting Jerry, Tom chases him through the house.
Both animals dive off an ironing board; with Jerry ahead of Tom, Jerry drains the kitchen sink he landed in, leaving Tom to crash into the crockery. Tom follows Jerry through the open window, but Jerry pulls the window stop out of the window, which falls on Tom's neck, and Tom shrieks in pain. Jerry then runs out and unties Spike, who lets out a loud bull roar. Spike swaps his regular teeth for larger ones, blows off some pent-up steam, and goes after Tom.
Tom ducks as Spike's teeth come at him, which instead get lodged in a tree trunk. Tom then barely avoids getting his tail bitten and hides behind a wall, holding a brick up ready to attack. Spike sees the brick and investigates, but gets knocked on the head with it. Jerry revives Spike by hitting him with a wooden plank on his rear end. After slamming Spike, Spike leaps high in the air screaming in pain just as Jerry hands off the board to Tom, framing the cat.
Knowing he is in trouble, Tom tricks Spike into believing the board is a stick by playing "fetch". Spike obliges and fetches but then realizes he's been tricked. Tom and Spike then begin a back and forth chase with Toodles Galore watching on. Tom stops periodically to kiss the cat. Catching on to this habit, Spike blocks Tom from kissing Toodles on the third pass. Tom does not realize he is being tricked and woos Spike in a Charles Boyer voice, thinking it's Toodles (through archive lines from ''The Zoot Cat''), but stops his speech abruptly when he sees the female cat dumbstruck. Realizing his mistake, he slams Spike's head onto the ground. Tom hides from Spike's rampage until Jerry walks around the corner; he chases Jerry into Spike's house, closing the door with a murderous laugh and Dracula leer. A second later, the door opens and Jerry emerges with Spike helping him out of the doghouse, Spike laughing even more evilly as he withdraws inside. The entire dog house thrashes about as Spike beats up Tom, who attempts to flee only to be snatched by Spike. Tom manages to write his last will before he's wrenched back in and beaten to within an inch of his life. In the end, Tom becomes part of his instrument in place of the strings with Spike strumming the cat's tail while Jerry bows a dramatic ostinato on Tom's whiskers and Toodles watches.
Born in 1913,Smith, Gene. [http://www.resursebibliografice.ro/engleza/article242239.html "America is in the Heart" by Carlos Bulosan] , 2013-10-17 Bulosan recounts his boyhood in the Philippines.[http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-america-is-in-the-heart/plotsummary.html "America is in the Heart" Study Guide], bookrags.com The early chapters describe his life as a Filipino farmer "plowing with a carabao". Bulosan was the fourth oldest son of the family. As a young Filipino, he once lived on the farm tended by his father, while his mother was separately living in a barrio in Binalonan, Pangasinan, together with Bulosan's brother and sister. Their hardships included pawning their land and having to sell items in order to finish the schooling of his brother Macario. He had another brother named Leon, a soldier who came back after fighting in Europe.
Bulosan's narration about his life in the Philippines was followed by his journey to the United States. He recounted how he immigrated to America in 1930. He retells the struggles, prejudice, and injustice he and other Filipinos had endured in the United States, first while in the Northwestern fisheries then later in California. These included his experiences as a migrant and laborer in the rural West.
Grace Beasley has been content with life as a housewife. One morning, Grace wins tickets to a concert by her favorite singer. Grace is ecstatic, but soon learns her husband is leaving her, and also that her son is leaving his wife. Grace arrives at the concert, only to learn it has been cancelled due to the murder of the singer. Grace decides to travel to England for the singer's funeral. She soon meets the closeted singer's former lover and they plot to secretly change his burial clothing to his beloved pink bathrobe. Grace and Dirk then leave for Chicago and track down and kill the Cross Bow Killer, who has been murdering singers. The adventure transforms Grace, and she faces the problems of her marriage with a new outlook on the meaning of love.
The new medium of "the wireless" (TL-191's name for a radio) offers novel ways for politicians to reach the people. Jake Featherston is the first politician to realize its potential, and soon people sitting in their homes can hear his raspy, thundery voice shouting from their radio sets, telling them the "truth" about the Yankees, Whigs, and Black Southerners. Even with this broadened appeal to the masses, the Freedom Party's hopes ebb further with Featherston's defeat at the polls in 1927 against incumbent Whig Burton Mitchel III. The Confederate people are just starting to enjoy the fruits of peace and prosperity, and the War and black uprisings are coming to be seen as part of the past, despite Featherston and his stalwarts doing their utmost to keep them alive in the collective memory. Things change when, in early 1929, the world's stock markets crash and financial and economic depression results.
In the 1928 US Presidential Election, Socialist Vice President Hosea Blackford and his running mate Hiram Johnson defeat Democratic candidate Calvin Coolidge by a narrow margin after finally taking the electoral votes from Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Blackford also carries the electoral votes from New York, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Colorado, and California. Coolidge is able to capture all six of the New England states (including his home and birth states of Massachusetts and Vermont), Kentucky, Houston, Kansas, Montana, Idaho, and Nevada. It was a closer race than the 1924 election had been, but Coolidge ultimately conceded to Blackford over the telephone. The two would meet for a rematch in the following election four years later.
When the Great Depression occurs, Burton Mitchel III is blamed in the Confederacy. In the U.S. which came out of the 1920s with a booming economy and with the Canadian revolt having been crushed in 1925, newly elected President Hosea Blackford takes the heat, with shantytowns and slums being named "Blackfordburghs". Millions lose their jobs, and in Utah, (under military occupation since 1916), a fanatical Mormon sniper guns down Governor-General John J. Pershing. When Japan and the U.S. go to war in 1932 after Japan is caught smuggling weapons to Pacific Canada (the occupied Canadian province of British Columbia) by the U.S.S. ''Remembrance'', and Japanese bombers attack Los Angeles. In the 1932 presidential election, President Blackford is defeated by Calvin Coolidge and his running mate Herbert Hoover in a landslide. However Coolidge is never able to take office. On January 5, 1933, he dies of a heart attack about a month before he could take office. (In real life, Former President Coolidge died of a heart attack on the same date.) Vice President-Elect Hoover assumes the presidency, practicing Coolidge's campaign policy of government non-intervention in the economy.
At the same time in the C.S.A., whole cities are echoing to the boot-steps of marching Freedom Party Stalwarts, their ranks flowing once more with angry citizens, preparing for Election Day 1933. Jake Featherston attacks the Mitchel Administration with the venom and hate, blaming Mitchel for the Crash, and condemning his ineffectual response to the floods that devastated the Mississippi River valley in 1927. Confederates respond well to Featherston's rants. During the 1933 Confederate States Presidential Election, Featherston and his running mate Willy Knight defeat Whig candidate Samuel Longstreet and Radical Liberal candidate Cordell Hull. On taking the oath of office on March 4, 1934, the world holds its breath: "Freedom" is on the march.
In Europe, the storm clouds are also beginning to gather. The final vestiges of the Bolshevik Communist revolution were crushed by 1927; among the last holdouts was the Volga town of Tsaritsyn under the "Man of Steel" and his second in command the "Hammer". Under Tsar Mikhail II, Russia remains a primarily agricultural, backward country. Frequent anti-Semitic pogroms and foreign loans manage to deflect further restlessness but the latter were a contributing factor in the 1929 crash when Austria-Hungary demanded the repayment of a loan that Russia was unable to fulfill.
Austria-Hungary itself remains a united empire but only the Austrians and Hungarians feel any loyalty to the Habsburg Dynasty monarchs. In fact, the multi-ethnic federation seems to be held together only by German financial and military aid. The Ottoman Empire also appears to be in the same boat, undertaking the genocide of its Armenian population. Despite strong censure from the United States, and more lukewarm protests from Berlin, the Turks continue the genocide until the Ottoman Empire is nearly devoid of Armenians.
Kaiser Wilhelm II rules a strong Germany and his troops continue to occupy Belgium, the Ukraine, and the puppet Kingdom of Poland, but post-war relations with the U.S. soured to the point that many people on both sides of the Atlantic believed that Germany and the United States would someday be engaged in a full-fledged war. The Business Collapse puts an end to that, however, and the old allies reassert themselves once more.
After the Third Republic is overthrown around 1930, France finds itself under ''Action Française'' and a new monarchy under King Charles XI, who begins talking about the return of Alsace-Lorraine to French rule. In the United Kingdom, the fascist-inspired "Silver Shirts" under Oswald Mosley hold similar views, and support ''Action Française'', though they never become more than a minority in the British Parliament. Italy never comes under Benito Mussolini's Fascist rule but, other than this, little information is provided about its history in this alternative timeline.
In the Pacific, Japan is far from quiet. Prior to the Pacific War with the United States, Japan pressured both France and the Netherlands to cede Indochina and the East Indies, respectively, with proper compensation. Britain fears that its Pacific colonies of Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore, and possibly India will also be invaded and annexed by Japan; however, Japan shows no interest in doing so. Japan also gains much influence in the Nationalists' Republic of China during this period and seems to have established a puppet state of Manchukuo in the northeast of Manchuria as well. This empire is in addition to Japan's possessions in the Philippines and Guam, which were "liberated" from Spain in the early years of the 20th century (eliminating our history of American temporary colonization).
Desiring to make a record of the events leading up to the apocalypse, in case humans survive, so that they will know what Buffy and her allies did, Andrew, taking refuge in the bathroom, describes his own version of "Buffy, Slayer of the Vampyres" to a video camera (imagining that he is situated in an old library with a roaring fire, dressed in a smoking jacket and holding a pipe). Later, Andrew talks to the video camera and uses his big white board to illustrate and explain the array of evil forces in Sunnydale. He interviews various members of the household, blithely re-imagining current and past incidents in an idealized and incorrect way.
Buffy arrives at the school to find two boys fighting, a shy girl turning invisible because of her unpopularity, and various other disturbances. Buffy finds Principal Wood, who has just been injured by a thrown rock. As she bandages his head, they discuss the bizarre yet familiar chaos dominating the school. She explains her suspicions that the activation of the Seal of Danzalthar is behind the morning's chaos. They investigate the newly uncovered seal in the school basement. As Wood gets close to the seal, he is infused with evil. In a demonic voice, he berates Buffy for her involvement with Spike. Buffy pulls Wood away, freeing him; he recalls nothing.
At the Summers' home, Andrew continues his interviews. He causes Xander and Anya to re-examine their feelings for each other. Wood and Buffy arrive and inform Andrew he is going to help close the Seal; it is now surrounded by five possessed students and glowing with light. A magically forced memory allows Andrew to locate the magically charged knife the First wanted him to use to sacrifice Jonathan. Buffy tells Andrew that she believes that he can help her quiet the seal. They leave for the school, accompanied by Spike and Wood. They arrive to find that the school is being destroyed by ongoing student riots.
Andrew tries to film their walk through the halls, but they are attacked by several students who possess enhanced strength. Buffy and Andrew make their way to the basement while Spike and Wood guard the stairway entrance. As they walk, Andrew revisits his memories of killing Jonathan, relating several different versions of the story as if each are true. They enter the basement room carefully and find five students standing around the seal, their eyes freshly cut and sealed (like the Bringers). In the Summers' basement, Xander and Anya revel in the aftermath of having sex again before quietly pondering on moving on with their lives. At the school, Spike and Wood are attacked by more students. Spike inadvertently confirms that he killed Wood's mother, and Robin makes a failed attempt to stake Spike from behind; in the chaos of the fight, his actions go unnoticed.
Buffy battles the new Bringers while Andrew records the scene with his camera. Once she has killed the Bringers, Buffy pulls out the knife and advances on Andrew, revealing that they must spill his blood to quiet the Seal, since he was the one who initially activated it. Buffy describes the bitter prospects for their future, and chastises his constant attempts to avoid taking responsibility for his actions. Andrew, frightened to tears, admits how willingly he had murdered Jonathan, and how he regrets his actions and deserves whatever happens to him. Buffy leans Andrew over the Seal so that his tears fall on its surface. The Seal closes and becomes quiet, stopping the violence in the school. Buffy reveals to Andrew that tears, not blood, were necessary to close the seal; she has no plans to kill him and apologizes for making him think she would do so. When Andrew asks her if she would have followed through with killing him if blood was the answer, she does not answer and quietly walks away from him.
Later, a sad Andrew talks to the camera in the bathroom again, confessing that he probably will die, and that he deserves to. Without another word, he shuts the camera off.
Three years after the events of ''Rush Hour 2'', in 2000, Chinese Ambassador Solon Han, with Hong Kong Police Force Chief Inspector Lee as his bodyguard, addresses the importance of fighting the Triads at the World Criminal Court in Los Angeles. There, when Han starting to announce the whereabouts of Shy Shen, a semi-mythical individual of great importance to the Chinese mob, an assassin snipes him, causing a panic. Lee corners the shooter, but when he learns it is his childhood foster brother, Kenji, he hesitates, allowing Kenji to escape just as LAPD Detective James Carter arrives after hearing what happened over the police radio.
Han survives the assassination attempt, and Lee and Carter promise his daughter Soo Yung to find the person responsible. She insists they head to the local Kung Fu studio to retrieve an envelope Han left her, but learn from the studio master the Triads took Soo Yung's belongings.
Lee and Carter return to the hospital and intercept a gang of French-speaking Chinese assassins before they can kill Han. After defeating them, they interrogate one of them with the help of Sister Agnes, a French-speaking nun. For her protection, they take Soo Yung to the French Embassy, leaving her with French ambassador and chairman of the World Criminal Court, Varden Reynard. When Reynard and Soo Yung are nearly killed by a car bomb, Lee and Carter head to Paris to investigate further.
After a painful encounter with Parisian Commissaire Revi, Lee and Carter meet anti-American taxi driver, George, and force him to drive them to a Triad hideout. While there, Carter meets stage performer Geneviève while Lee is tricked by mob assassin Jasmine, who claims to have information about Shy Shen, and Carter saves him from being killed.
The pair try to escape, but are ultimately captured by Kenji's men. Kenji says he'll let them live if they leave Paris, but Lee refuses. Following a short struggle, he and Carter successfully escape. They recover at a hotel, where Lee reveals his relationship with Kenji and decides to continue alone. A disillusioned Carter leaves, but recomposes himself when he spots and follows Geneviève. Meanwhile, Reynard meets Lee and explains Shy Shen is not a person, but a list of Triad leaders and that Geneviève is Han's informant with access to the list.
After locating Geneviève and saving her from being killed, the two flee to their hotel. They are attacked by Jasmine, but George rescues them out of a newfound admiration for Americans. Geneviève reveals to Lee and Carter that the Triad leaders' names were tattooed on the back of her head and that she will be beheaded when the Triads capture her. Lee and Carter bring her to Reynard and discover he was working with the Triads the entire time. Kenji calls to inform Lee that he has captured Soo Yung and demands he turn over Geneviève.
Lee arrives at the Eiffel Tower to make the exchange, with Carter disguised as Geneviève with a wig. Kenji challenges Lee to a sword fight, during which the two fall into a safety net. After Kenji's sword cuts the net, Lee tries to save him, but Kenji is touched by Lee's kindness and lets go, falling to his death and leaving Lee devastated. Meanwhile, Carter saves Soo Yung and defeats Jasmine by kicking her into an elevator wheel that crushes her to death. After escaping the remaining Triad members, Carter and Lee are confronted by Reynard, who threatens to kill Geneviève and frame them. However, George shoots Reynard from behind, killing him. As the police arrive, Revi tries to take credit for Lee and Carter's work, but they knock him out and leave with a victory dance to Edwin Starr's "War".
The story opens in flashback, ten years before the (at the time) current continuity of the ''Green Lantern'' comic books, showing an extraterrestrial Barin Char, the Green Lantern of Sector 1522, dying when a chestburster bursts from his chest. Hal Jordan (who, at the time of the series' publication, had long been dead) is then summoned by the Guardians of the Universe to rendezvous with fellow Green Lanterns Kilowog, Katma Tui, Tomar-Re, The Green Man and Salaak on the planet Tirama in Sector 1522. The six Green Lanterns are informed of the disappearance of Barin Char and proceed to the border world where he is believed to have disappeared. Tracing the signal from Char's displaced power ring, they enter a cavern inside a mountainous butte where they discover Char's corpse before being attacked by a swarm of Xenomorphs. Jordan decides that rather than exterminate an alien species—particularly since the Xenomorphs appear to be only the interstellar equivalent of sharks, the perfect killing machine without actually being ''evil''—they would transport the Xenomorphs to the sentient Green Lantern planet Mogo, where they can not harm anyone.
A decade later, the ''Signet Dawn'', a Coluan long-range ore transport vessel, crashes onto the planet. Five extraterrestrials—the Xudarian Tomar-Dar, Brik, Ash, M'Hdahna and the aforementioned Salaak—appear on Earth in the apartment of Kyle Rayner, who at the time, is the Green Lantern of Earth and the only Green Lantern in existence. These five are either former Green Lanterns or were intended to become Green Lanterns at the time of Parallax's destruction of the Green Lantern Corps, and they inform Rayner of the ''Signet Dawn'''s crash on Mogo. The six then journey to Mogo to rescue the ship's crew. Inside the hull of the ship, they encounter Crowe, the ship's first officer, who tells Rayner that after the crash, the aliens carried off the other 37 crew members but left her for some reason. Crowe leads Rayner and the others deeper into the ship, where the Xenomorphs attack them, taking Rayner's companions captive, leaving only him, Crowe, and Salaak. When Rayner tries to grab Tomar as he is pulled down a shaft, his power ring slips off his finger and falls down the shaft.
The trio then climbs down the shaft—Kyle and Salaak subsequently settling any remaining tension between them when Salaak apologizes for judging Kyle by what he was not rather than what he was—and discover five of Crowe's crewmates cocooned by the Xenomorphs, four of whom have been killed by chestbursters. The Xenomorphs then attack the trio, and Crowe and Rayner flee through a passageway, separated from Salaak. They then come across a chamber where they discover a Xenomorph queen with the remainder of Crowe's crew and Rayner's companions cocooned around the walls and Rayner's power ring on the floor. After exchanging a brief kiss for luck, Crowe jumps into the chamber firing at the aliens to distract them while Rayner goes for his ring. During this attempt, the skin on the right half of Crowe's face is ripped away, revealing that she is a gynoid. Rayner reacquires his ring. Crowe, fatally damaged during the melee, tells Rayner that he shouldn't leave the Xenomorphs alive to endanger someone else in the future as Jordan did, so Rayner destroys the Xenomorphs, rescuing the surviving ''Signet Dawn'' crew and his companions. Ash, Brik and Salaak do not survive. Rayner is left with the thought that sometimes the past comes back to haunt no matter what one does, another reminder of the legacy of Hal Jordan that looms over him.
The novel is set in Ireland in the era of political upheaval between the 1916 Easter Rising and the eventual truce signed with the United Kingdom in 1921, seen through the eyes of young Henry Smart, from his childhood to early twenties. Henry, as a member of the Irish Citizen Army, becomes personally acquainted with several historical characters, including Patrick Pearse, James Connolly and Michael Collins. Energized by Sinn Féin's victory in the General Election of 1918 and the party's establishment of the independent Irish Republic, Henry trained the men in the Soloheadbeg Ambush, the first engagement of the Irish War of Independence.
Later, he becomes a gunman in the ensuing guerilla war against the British, setting barracks on fire, shooting G-men and training others to do the same. At the end of the novel, Henry comes to think that the endless violence and killing of innocent people has little to do with the concept of a free Ireland, or the prospect of a better life in Ireland and more about personal gain.
Kyle discovers that his dad and his mom are having marital difficulties caused by his dad's erectile dysfunction, and he and the others (Kenny, Stan, and Cartman) try to give him "a ne-rection" (which the boys confuse with "a resurrection"), unaware of what it actually is. Meanwhile, various members of the town, beginning with Kenny, start to spontaneously combust, which causes the townspeople to attend church more, and compels Mayor McDaniels to order Randy Marsh to discern the cause for the combustions.
The boys get drawn into presenting the Stations of the Cross in church, with Cartman tied to the cross in the role of Jesus, after repeated pleading that he could not play any other role. Afterwards, the boys take the cross and put it up outside the church, with Cartman still attached, so that he will die and get a "res-erection" to give to Kyle's dad. Meanwhile, Randy manages to find out that the combustions are caused by people refusing to flatulate in front of their partners (Kenny was spending some time with Kelly, his girlfriend from the previous episode) and so he encourages everyone in town to flatulate every few seconds. For this, he wins the Nobel Prize and a statue is made for him, much to the ire of South Park's only other scientist, Dr. Mephesto, who wanted to win the prize for creating a Galapagos turtle with seven asses; he then plots revenge.
Meanwhile, Cartman (still on the cross), is getting upset and tired that Stan and Kyle will not take him down, even going as far as claiming his mom is worried and "calling" for him. He is later taken down by Chef until he tells him it was all "just a dream" and he is still on the cross, angering him even more.
Another crisis then comes up, when a heat wave hits the town, and again Randy is hired to figure out the cause. However, Mephesto beats him to it. He discovers that it is the methane gas from all the flatulence that led to the global warming. Randy, blamed for the crisis, is stripped of his Nobel Prize, and stoned and forced to walk through the town with his own statue on his back, being denied by his friends (as Jesus was in the Stations of the Cross). Meanwhile, Kyle's dad manages to get an erection, after seeing some attractive, young female clients undress in his office (to show him the skin cancer for which they claim Randy is responsible); after telling Kyle everything is going to be alright, Kyle is so glad for his father that he forgets about Cartman on the cross.
Randy does not want to try to find a solution for his problem, since all the people in town would still hate him, even if he managed to solve the combustion/global warming conundrum. However, Stan tells him that he learned something from the Stations of the Cross: Even though Jesus was hated by all the people he knew and denied by his friends, he still did what he had to do and as he was dying, raised his right hand and stated, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" (which Kyle later points out is a quote from ''Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan''). After going through extensive researching, Randy finds out that people need to flatulate only in moderation in order to fight against the global warming. This works well, and he ends up winning the town's accolades again, and gets his Nobel Prize back three weeks later, at which point the boys suddenly remember they had left Cartman out on the cross that long. They run to get him, and find him still alive but emaciated, having survived for three weeks on his accumulated body fat. Angered, Cartman then says (in a high pitched voice) that once he is taken down, he'll threaten to kick their groins. The song in Randy's daydream montage plays during the end credits.
Cleopatra "Cleo" Jones is an undercover special agent for the United States government. Overseas modeling is only a cover for her real job. Cleo is a James Bond-like heroine with power and influence, her silver and black '73 Corvette Stingray (equipped with automatic weapons), and her martial arts ability. While she evokes the glory of a funk goddess, she remains loyal to her drug-ravaged community and her lover, Reuben Master, who runs B&S House (a community home for recovering drug addicts).
Cleo is overseeing the destruction of a poppy field in Turkey belonging to the evil drug lord Mommy. Mommy employs an all-male crew and a bevy of beautiful young women catering to her many wants. When she hears about her poppies' demise, she plots revenge, ordering a corrupt policeman to raid the B&S House.
When Cleo returns to LA to arrest the police responsible for the raid, she continues to take apart Mommy's underworld drug business, thwarting her minions along the way. Cleo and Mommy face off in a showdown, in which she is trapped by Mommy in a car crusher but is saved by her friends from the B&S House. In the final showdown, Cleo chases Mommy to the top of a magnetic crane where the two women fight. Mommy proves to be no match for Cleo, who hurls Mommy over the side of the crane to her death, while Cleo's friends defeat her henchmen. At the end of the film, as Reuben and the members of the community celebrate victory, Cleo departs the scene. She sets off to complete her mission of stemming the tide of drugs that flow into her community.
Every year, 12 year old Samuel, 11 year old Jeffrey and 8 year old Michael Douglas visit their grandfather, Mori Tanaka, at his cabin. Mori trains his grandsons in the art of ''ninjutsu''. As the summer comes to an end, Mori gives each of them a new "ninja" name based on their personalities: 'Rocky', 'Colt', and 'Tum-Tum'. Meanwhile, the brothers' father, Sam Douglas, is an FBI agent who stages a sting operation to entrap master criminal Hugo Snyder in the sale of warheads. Snyder escapes the trap with the use of his own ninja henchmen and decides to then visit Mori, who is his former business partner. Mori is tested by Snyder's henchmen and easily defeats them while the brothers aid their grandfather by defeating two ninjas, ignoring his orders to stay in the house. Face to face, Snyder threatens Mori's family if he does not get son-in-law Sam off his back. With Snyder and company gone, Mori chides the brothers briefly for interfering in his personal affairs. When they return home, they find their father unenthusiastic to see what they had learned during their visit and more annoyed at their new names. Emily, a friend of Rocky's, compliments his new name and agrees to ride with them to school the next day. Snyder develops a plan to kidnap the brothers to use them as leverage to get Sam to back off. Since the FBI watches them, his assistant Nigel Brown contacts his irresponsible nephew Fester, a petty criminal surf punk, as well as his buddies Hammer and Marcus, to kidnap the brothers. Due to Sam and his FBI crew's presence, they are unable to capture the brothers that night. The next day, Fester and his friends follow the brothers to school but are side-tracked by a fender bender with a police car. Emily becomes separated from the brothers and encounters a group of bullies who steal her bike. At recess, the brothers challenge the bullies to a two-on-two basketball game to ten and they spot the bullies nine points. Despite the bullies' dirty tactics, the brothers effortlessly score ten consecutive points and win back Emily's bike. That night, Colt learns that Snyder, who they assumed was a friend of Mori's, is actually the criminal their father is after. They are left with a babysitter when Jessica leaves to pick up Sam and Fester and his friends break into the house with a fake pizza order, subduing the babysitter. Believing it to be a home invasion, the brothers suit up in their ninja robes and fight back using their surroundings and numerous household items. Afterwards, the guys gather themselves and go to the brothers' bedroom in search of a way to turn the tables on them. Fester uses a device to call Emily over and they take her as a hostage. Due to an earlier trap, Hammer and Marcus run to the bathrooms sick to their stomachs since the boys put laxatives in their sodas while Fester is defeated by Tum-Tum and Emily. Hammer is subsequently defeated by Rocky and Colt and Marcus by Tum-Tum. After freeing the babysitter, the brothers are overpowered by Brown and Snyder's bodyguard Rushmore and are taken captive to Snyder's ship in the harbor. The brothers escape their captivity and manage to subdue Rushmore while Mori infiltrates the ship attempting to rescue the brothers. Snyder confronts Mori and challenges him to a fight for the brothers' freedom. Due to his youth and speed (and a hidden pepper bomb), Snyder almost proves too much for Mori, until he remembers a handful of jelly beans which Tum-Tum had given him and uses them to gag Snyder. Refusing defeat, Snyder grabs a gun from one of his subordinates but is suddenly shot and subdued by Sam. Snyder and his men are arrested. Sam tells his sons that he will let the brothers continue to go to their grandpa's every summer and takes the rest of the night off from work to go get pizza with the family, including Mori, who personally doesn't like pizza.
The international cut of the film features a number of small parts of scenes that were cut from the movie for its American release, most likely to ensure a PG rating. Among the cut scenes are (not all-inclusive): extra footage of Snyder's escape in which he confronts two FBI agents whom he promptly defeats, a scene in which the robbers fire a gun in the convenience store and tie up the clerk behind the counter, a scene in which the robbers get the Douglas family address from Brown, additional footage of Grandpa trailing Snyder to his ship hideout, numerous small portions of the scene where the robbers invade the Douglas household, including Colt beating the robbers after getting them under a tarp in the room being renovated, and a scene of Fester, the leader of the robbers, asking his uncle (Brown) if he can be paid, extra sarcastic dialogue while the boys are locked up in Snyder's ship, and an extended scene in which the boys are reunited with Grandpa. Additionally, in the international version the boys lose the basketball challenge and their bikes, so a scene ends the international version of the film in which they fight the bullies to get them back.
DeeDee Rodgers (Shirley MacLaine) leaves the ballet company after becoming pregnant by Wayne (Tom Skerritt), another dancer in the company. They marry and later move to Oklahoma City to run a dance studio. Emma Jacklin (Anne Bancroft) stays with the company and eventually becomes a prima ballerina and well-known figure in the ballet community.
While the company is on tour and performs a show in Oklahoma City, DeeDee and the family go to see the show and then have an after-party for the company at their home. The reunion stirs up old memories and things begin to unravel.
At the party, DeeDee's aspiring dancer/daughter, Emilia (Leslie Browne), who is also Emma's goddaughter, is invited to take class with the company the following day. After taking class with the company, Emilia is asked to join the company but she does not immediately accept the offer as she wants to think it over before making her final decision. DeeDee and Wayne decide that DeeDee should go to New York with Emilia, who is rather shy and does not make friends as easily as her younger sister. Meanwhile, their son, Ethan, gets a scholarship to the company's summer program while Wayne and their other daughter stay in Oklahoma City.
Once in New York, they rent several rooms in Carnegie Hall with Madame Dakharova, a ballet coach. Emilia soon starts a relationship with a Russian playboy in the company, Yuri (Mikhail Baryshnikov). DeeDee runs into the former conductor of the company and has an affair with him, which causes conflict between Emilia and DeeDee. Meanwhile, Emma argues with Arnold, the choreographer, about giving her a better role in his new ballet, which he refuses and leads Emma to suggest Emilia for the role instead. It is also revealed Emma has been seeing a married man, Carter. During rehearsal, Emilia has an argument with Arnold and storms out, going to a bar and getting drunk. She then shows up for the performance that night still drunk and Emma takes care of her, which angers DeeDee. Emilia suffers when she sees Yuri getting involved with another dancer, Carolyn.
Emma and DeeDee eventually enter into major conflict. DeeDee resents that Emma dotes on Emilia, when she has criticized DeeDee for choosing family life over her career while Emma chose not to have children. DeeDee accuses Emma of telling her to get pregnant and have Wayne's baby so Emma could play the lead in ''Anna Karenina'', which Emma later admits is true.
Eventually, misunderstandings are settled, with Emma and DeeDee working things out after a physical altercation. Emilia is announced as the star of the next season, and she and Yuri make up and agree to a professional partnership and nothing more. Deedee decides she is content with her life and the decision she made to leave professional ballet to have a family. Emma accepts that her performing days are numbered and she must embrace a different role within the company. DeeDee and Emma step onto the stage and reminisce together.
The series starts fifteen months into the war between the Born and the Coalition.
On the real world John Constantine finds himself in charge of the besieged city of Kraków. The forces inside are surrounded by the soldiers of the Born under the command of a monstrous Faerie known as The Cherish, and the food stores ran out seven months previously. In Jerusalem Zatanna searches for a way to obtain the three keys that will give her access to the Books of Magick. Her hope is that the books will allow Tim Hunter to regain all of his memories when he comes back from his exile.
Things get worse for the Coalition when an apparition of the Hunter appears worldwide. Seeing this the Coalition launches its naval fleet from Reykjavík to attack England (known as Albion on this world) despite the misgiving of Lord Midian. This turns out to be a disastrous move when the fleet is destroyed by giant wood golems guarding the landing beaches. In Kraków things get much worse when the forces surrounding the city begin launching deadly cluster spells. On top of all of this Zatanna is captured in Jerusalem and tortured. The pain of this last event is lessened when Zatanna escapes taking the three keys to the Books of Magick with her. The apparition also allows the Faerie Queen to discover Tim's location. She sends her agents, the Micturides to get him.
On Hunter's World, Tim meets his girlfriend Molly at the train station. Later they meet with their friends Cat and Dog who give Tim a book named ''The Books of Magick''. After looking through it he collapses and sees a vision of the real world. While in the middle of this vision he inadvertently causes the apparition that appeared there.
This event causes Brewster to make his presence known. He introduces himself a few days later and enters Tim's circle of friends. Brewster begins to take actions that are designed to force Tim to use his powers and to remember magic again.
Strange things begin to happen around Tim at this point. These culminate when Cat collapses one day. Her eyes turn solid red and insects begin to exit her mouth. Tim drives to the oceanside and submerges her and himself in the water. The magic he uses in this location allows him to save her. While this is going on The Micturides arrive and are confronted by Brewster.
On the true Earth things are dark for the Coalition. The Born begin their invasion of Iceland (known as Thule on this world and the last nation still under Coalition control).
On Hunter's World Tim has regained enough of his memories to know who he is and where he comes from. He creates a church and has a funeral for Brewster who he believes was killed by the Micturides. In attendance are the very confused Molly, Cat and Dog. A very much still living Brewster arrives and begins to argue with Tim over Tim's actions. The argument grows heated and Tim's church is cracked in half. In the chaos Molly, Cat and Dog disappear only to appear in the real world. Molly appears to John Constantine in Kraków. Dog appears in Zatanna's shower in Jerusalem while she is taking a shower. Finally, Cat appears in front of a captured Lord Midian in Thule and is taken prisoner alongside the other Coalition survivors.
Tim arrives back in the real world along with Brewster. While deciding what to do they encounter a group of Alfar, a Faerie race known for eating other sentients, Tim begins a relationship with one of their women named Birgit. After coming to a decision on what his actions should be Tim transports his allies to the prison in Thule where Cat and Midian are being held. They rescue Cat but Midian dies from wounds he received while being tortured.
While Tim is in Thule, The Cherish gives the order to begin the final assault on Kraków. Tim and his allies teleport in not long after that order is given. In the battle Birgit is killed and Tim challenges the Cherish to one on one combat. The head of the Cherish's conjoined twin is cut off by one of her own soldiers just as she is about to kill Tim. This soldier is a worshiper of the Hunter and did not wish to see his god killed. This small victory is not enough to save the day as the forces of the Born overwhelm the city's defenders and the war comes to a conclusion.
Tim, Molly, Constantine and Cat are taken as prisoners to Jerusalem where they are placed in chains at the head of a victory parade led by The Cherish. The spectacle winds its way through the streets on its way to the Queen's palace.
Seeing this Zatanna and Dog hatch a plan to steal the last of the Books of Magick. Slipping into the palace they quickly make their way to the room containing the last book. Just as they are about to take the book the soldiers assigned to guard the book discover their presence.
In the Queen's throne room, Tim and his allies are presented to the Queen. Tim casts an illusionary spell that distracts the Queen long enough to allow an escape. Constantine leads this small group through the palace halls to where Zatanna and Dog are fighting. Now joined together, Tim and his allies take the last of the books and fight their way to a place of temporary safety. There Tim assembles all four books and casts the spell that will give him all of his memories back.
The spell fails and the Faerie Queen appears in the doorway. John Constantine goes to her and they embrace. He reveals that he is her lover, that he has been working for the Born the entire time and that the two of them destroyed the true Books of Magick months previously. As The Queen prepares to kill Tim and end any threat to her reign, Tim joins hands with Molly, Cat and Dog and casts a spell. Tim's three friends from Hunter's World crumble before his eyes and disappear. The effect on the Faerie Queen is similar as she dies and takes on the appearance of a desiccated corpse.
Seeking to see the Queen's true appearance Zatanna turns the corpse over only to see a feminine version of Tim's face. Constantine reveals that she was an alternate version of Tim and both he and Zatanna reveal to Tim that Constantine's actions were a double cross. Constantine's plan was to trick the Queen into allowing a small group close enough that she could be killed.
Since Tim's return to the true world, the social situation on Hunter's World has deteriorated. Tim returns with Brewster and is shocked to find that the strange events that preceded his departure have caused a religion to form. In a reflection of the true world this religion worships Tim as a deity under the name The Hunter.
This world has its own version of John Constantine named Jackie Constantine, who works as a delivery girl. Her assignment is to take a small package to the church that Tim created. Since Tim's leavetaking it has become the center of the new religion and the home for its leaders, the Holy Six. Jackie's delivery goes wrong and she barely gets away with her life.
Jackie is fired and now jobless she rescues a young woman from Hunter worshippers who were about to burn her at the stake. The young woman's name is Charlotte and the two of them become lovers. Later Jackie encounters a woman running from some more Hunter worshippers and saves her as well. This woman turns out to be the woman that Tim created on Hunter's World to be his "mother". This rescue leads to an encounter with Molly, Dog and Cat who have recently reappeared back on Hunter's World. The three of them and Brewster have a mission for her.
Tim has decided to destroy Hunter's World and Jackie is sent to talk to him in hopes that she can talk him out of it. She fails at this and Hunter's World ceases to exist. The only survivors are Jackie, Charlotte, Tim's "Mother", Dog, Cat and Molly. Along with Brewster, Tim transports this group to another realm using two cabins from the Hunter's World version of the London Eye.
This new world is a place of lush green beauty free from predators. Tim tells Cat and Dog that they are not really brother and sister and that they will be this dimension's Adam and Eve.
Tim takes the rest of his group to the Realm of Faerie to drop off Brewster and to have a talk with Titania, the Queen of Faerie (not to be confused with the foe he defeated). Molly and Tim's "mother" wander, see what Faerie is like and decide to stay.
Jackie and Charlotte travel with Tim to the true Earth. There Tim uses his powers to set them up in a new life.
An apprentice Shaper is sent on a training mission with a Shaper Agent named Shanti by the Shaper Council. The pair are tasked with assessing the failed Shaper colony Drypeak and making contact with the pair of Shapers, Barzahl and Zakary, who were dispatched years ago to revitalize the colony. The gates of Drypeak are found unmanned, much to Shanti's disgust, the Agent and her charge are also attacked by rogue Shaper creations. When the pair gain access to the colony, they find a dishevelled Zakary who informs them that both he and Barzahl were unsuccessful in revitalizing the colony, which remains a barren desert. He also states that Barzahl has died. Zakary and the population of Drypeak behave suspiciously. Shanti is shadowed by an armed guard against her will. She instructs the apprentice, who is not guarded, to explore Drypeak and beyond in order to discover the truth behind the colony and Barzahl's disappearance.
After exploring a number of the game's locations, the apprentice gains access to a guarded tunnel and is astonished to discover what lies on the other side. Whereas the valley where Drypeak is located is a dustbowl devoid of vegetation, the lands on the other side of the tunnel are lush and green, meaning highly illegal shaping is taking place in secret. Serviles, the Shapers' slaves created from life essence, show abnormal intelligence and self-awareness. While still reeling from the revelation of what lies beyond Drypeak, the Shaper apprentice discovers that Shanti has disappeared during one of her escapes from her armed escorts, her necklace lay broken on the grass outside the tunnel. At this point, approximately a quarter of the way through the game, the player's choices expand considerably.
When confronted with the apprentice's findings, Zakary confesses to being part of a plot to conceal illegal experiments from the Shaper Council. Both he and Barzahl were sent to Sucia Island, the location where the original ''Geneforge'' game is set, where Barred Shaper technology had allowed Shapers to manipulate life in countless ways. Instead of destroying the Geneforge, the pair agreed to spirit away the technology and experiment in private. Several of the intelligent serviles who lived on Sucia were brought along; a number of Shapers also followed Barzahl. Zakary remained in Drypeak to provide a front for the experimentation and rogue serviles which lay beyond the tunnel. Barzahl moved further into the valleys to build settlements and run experiments. Repeated use of the canisters can render the user cold, detached and possibly mad. When Zakary saw this happening to Barzahl the pair argued, Zakary regretted his part in the deceit. This occurred a year before the arrival of Shanti and the apprentice, Zakary had lost contact with Barzahl since the argument. Zakary pledges his loyalty to the Shaper Council once more and asks for help from the apprentice in dealing with what lies beyond the guarded cave.
Using the Geneforge to empower himself and his followers, the Barzites, Barzahl intends to bestow god-like abilities on himself and his followers within the city of Rising. Barzahl cut off contact with Drypeak, preparing to repel the inevitable assault of the Shaper Council, who they wish to remain independent from. The Takers, a faction of intelligent serviles who had originated on Sucia Island, were given powers by Barzahl because they worked for him. In turn the Takers created powerful dragon-like beasts called drakons, taught the drakons how to create life themselves, and betrayed Barzahl. The Takers stand for the total destruction of the Shaper Council. The Awakened, the other servile faction in ''Geneforge 2'', believe that Shapers should treat them as equals. They had been working with the Barzites, but the Awakened's leader Learned Pinner rejected the Barzites' view that serviles need to be controlled. Trade and communications between Zakary's now Shaper Council loyalist Drypeak and the other three factions have ceased, replaced with spies and subterfuge. The player is free to decide which faction they wish to join, if any, and to explore the game world, reacting to the characters and situations they encounter.
The player begins as an apprentice learning the arts of Shaping. While attending school on Greenwood Isle the player character is awoken when the school is attacked. Luckily, two Shapers are ready to join the shaper and assist to survive in the world outside.
Alwan is a loyal Shaper Guardian who has only one skill, that of using his iron sword. He is trained as a Guardian, to obey without questioning. Due to there not being anyone he is able to obey, at first he is disoriented by the attack and does not know what to do. The player can get him to join only after obtaining permission from the servant mind in the school.
Greta is a castout from the school because she started to sympathise with the Shapers' creations. She was an Agent, skilled in magic (starts with Firebolt but the player can get teachers to teach her other spells later in the game) and battle arts (also a sword). She is living in the village, outside the school, that is aptly named South End. She consents to joining the player's group without any conditions.
It is discovered that a traitor Shaper named Litalia had orchestrated the attack on the school and other strikes against Shaper communities. She and others, including a former teacher at your school, believe that the Shapers are tyrannical rulers who make the lives of their creations miserable and should be stopped by extreme measures. The rebellion has been creating rogue spawners throughout the Ashen Isles, summoning creations that are causing chaos and attacking the Shapers and those who serve them. The player can choose between fighting for Litalia and her comrades, or allying with Lord Rahul and the Shapers and stifling the insurgency.
It is found that either Alwan or Greta will leave the player's group depending on which faction the player joins. Greta will leave if the player joins the Shapers due to her thinking that the player is inhumane and Alwan will leave if the player join the rebellion because he will think the player is disloyal.
As German forces take over Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Axel Bomasch (James Harcourt), a Czechoslovak scientist working on a new type of armour-plating, is flown to Britain. Bomasch's daughter, Anna (Margaret Lockwood), is arrested before she can reach the airport and sent to a concentration camp, where she is interrogated by Nazis who are pursuing her father. Anna refuses to cooperate. Soon she is befriended by a fellow prisoner named Karl Marsen (Paul Henreid), who says he is a teacher imprisoned for his political views. Together they are able to escape and make their way to London. Marsen is in fact a Gestapo agent assigned to gain her trust and locate her father.
Following Marsen's suggestion, Anna places a cryptic newspaper advertisement to let her father know she is in the country. Soon after, she gets an anonymous phone call with instructions to go to the town of Brightbourne. There, Anna contacts Dickie Randall (Rex Harrison), a British intelligence officer working undercover as an entertainer named Gus Bennett. Randall takes Anna to her father, who is now working for the Royal Navy at the fictional Dartland naval base. Anna argues with Randall over her attempt to post a letter to Marsen (with an informative postmark). It does not matter, as Dr. John Fredericks (Felix Aylmer), Marsen's undercover superior in London, had tailed her to Brightbourne.
Soon after, Marsen arranges the kidnapping of Anna and her father, and brings them back to Germany by U-boat. Their captors threaten to put her in a concentration camp if Bomasch refuses to work for the Nazis. Meanwhile, Randall's proposal to rescue the Bomasches is (unofficially) accepted. He travels to Berlin and infiltrates the building where the Bomasches are being held, posing as Major Ulrich Herzog of the Corps of Engineers. He dupes Captain Prada and Admiral Hassinger into believing he was Anna's lover years ago and can persuade her to get her father to co-operate. Randall spends the night with Anna in her hotel room to maintain the pretense. When the Bomasches are ordered sent to Munich, he plans to accompany them and arrange their escape. However, Marsen shows up just as they are about to leave the hotel; he has been assigned to escort them to Munich.
Randall's situation is further complicated at the railway station, where he is recognised by a former classmate named Caldicott (Naunton Wayne), who is leaving Germany with his friend Charters (Basil Radford). Randall denies knowing Caldicott, but Marsen's suspicions are aroused. When the train makes an unscheduled stop (brought to a halt by a railway station guard played by Irene Handl in an early uncredited bit part) to take on troops, as war has just been declared between Britain and Germany, Marsen takes the opportunity to telephone his headquarters to have Herzog investigated. When Marsen's superiors call back to confirm there is no Major Herzog, Charters, attempting to use another telephone, overhears that Randall will be arrested when they reach Munich.
The two Englishmen barely manage to reboard the train before it leaves. Caldicott slips a warning to Randall, who is thus prepared when Marsen pulls out a gun as they near Munich. Charters and Caldicott overpower first the two guards, then Marsen. After swapping uniforms with Marsen, Randall commandeers a car. They speed up a mountain road, with Marsen and his men in hot pursuit. They reach an aerial tramway; at the other end is neutral Switzerland. Randall manages to shoot all of their pursuers except Marsen, while Anna and the others escape on the tram. Randall then boards the other tram and exchanges shots with Marsen. Marsen reverses the direction of Randall's tram, but he manages to jump to the other tram as it passes. When he hits Marsen in the leg, the latter is either unable, or unwilling, to reach the controls and stop Randall from reaching safety. Randall and Anna embrace.
Set in 1964 in the fictitious town of Sylvan, South Carolina, ''The Secret Life of Bees'' tells the story of a 14-year-old white girl, Lily Melissa Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. Lily lives in a house with her abusive father, whom she refers to as T. Ray. They have a no-nonsense maid, Rosaleen, who is a mother figure for Lily.
The book opens with Lily's discovery of bees in her bedroom. Then, after Rosaleen is arrested for pouring her bottle of "snuff juice" on three white men, Lily breaks her out of the hospital and they decide to leave town. The two begin hitch-hiking toward Tiburon, South Carolina, a place written on the back of an image of the Virgin Mary as a black woman, which Deborah, Lily's mother, had owned. They spend a night in the woods with little food and little hope before reaching Tiburon. There, they buy lunch at a general store, and Lily recognizes a picture of the same "Black Mary" but on the side of a jar of honey. Rosaleen and Lily receive directions to the origin of the honey, the Boatwright residence. They are introduced to the Boatwright sisters, the makers of the honey: August, May, and June, who are all black. When Lily meets the sisters she makes up a story about being an orphan. Believing Lily's Story, August, June, and May invite Lily and Rosaleen to stay with them.
They learn the ways of the Boatwrights, as well as the ways of bee keeping. With a new home and a new family for the time being, Lily learns more about the Black Madonna honey that the sisters make. She begins working as August's bee keeping apprentice to repay her for her kindness, while Rosaleen works around the house. Lily finds out that May had a twin sister, April, who died by suicide with their father's shotgun when they were younger. She watches June's ongoing flirtations with, and refusals of marriage to, her boyfriend Neil. Lily and Rosaleen also get to see the sisters' religious ceremonies. The sisters hold service at their house which they call "The Daughters of Mary." They keep a statue of the "Black Mary", or "our lady of chains", which was actually a figurehead from the bow of an ancient ship, and August tells the story of how a man by the name of Obadiah, who was enslaved, found this figure. The enslaved men and women thought that God had answered their prayers asking for rescue, and "to send them consolation" and "to send them freedom". It gave them hope, and the figure had been passed down for generations.
Lily eventually meets Zach, August's godson. They soon develop intimate feelings for each other. They share goals with each other while working the hives. Both Lily and Zach find their goals nearly impossible to meet but still encourage each other to attempt them. Zach wants to be the "ass-busting lawyer", which means he would be the first black attorney in the area. Lily wants to be a short story writer.
Lily attempts to tell August the truth but is interrupted by Zach, who takes her for a honey run. They stop at a store to pick up a few things. Zach gets arrested after one of his friends, who they had met at the store, throws a coke bottle at a white man and none of them will tell who did it. Zach and his friends are arrested and put in jail. The Boatwright house decides not to tell May in fear of an unbearable emotional episode. The secret does not stay hidden for long and May becomes catatonic with depression. May leaves the house and goes missing. August, June, Lily and Rosaleen go looking to find her and end up find her lying dead in the river with a rock on her chest. It looks to be a suicide, due to May's depression from Zach being arrested.
A vigil is held that lasts four days. In that time, Zach is freed from jail with no charges, and black cloth is draped over the beehives to symbolize the mourning. May's suicide letter is found and in it she says, "It's my time to die, and it's your time to live. Don't mess it up." August interprets this as urging June to marry Neil. May is later buried. Life begins to turn back to normal after a time of grieving, bringing the Boatwright house back together. June, after several rejections, agrees to give her hand in marriage to Neil. Zach vows to Lily that they will be together someday and that they will both achieve their goals.
Lily finally finds out the truth about her mother. August was her mother's nanny, and helped raise her. After her marriage to T. Ray began to sour, Deborah left and went to stay with the Boatwrights. She eventually decided to leave him permanently and returned to their house to collect Lily. While Deborah was packing to leave, T. Ray returned home. Their ensuing argument turned into a physical fight during which Deborah got a gun. After a brief struggle, the gun fell to the floor, which Lily picked up and the gun accidentally discharged, killing Deborah.
While Lily is coming to terms with this information, T. Ray shows up at the Boatwright residence, also known as the pink house, to take her back home. Lily refuses, and T. Ray flies into an enraged rampage. He has a violent flashback which brings him around. August steps in and offers to let Lily stay with her. T. Ray gives in and agrees. However, right before T. Ray leaves the Boatwright house, Lily asks him what really happened the day her mother died. T. Ray confirms that Lily was the one to, accidentally, kill her mother Deborah.
Narrated by Patrick Stewart (reprising his role as Professor Charles Xavier from the ''X-Men'' movies), the game's plot is built around the Prime Sentinels retrieving the head of Bastion, and Bastion's subsequent attempt to wipe out mutant-kind. The game opens with the Prime Sentinels freeing Bastion from S.H.I.E.L.D. imprisonment, then disguising themselves and selling the defense plans of Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters -the X-Men's home and training grounds- to the Brotherhood of Mutants. The game then moves forward to Forge fighting off Mystique and Nightcrawler in a city ravaged by a Prime Sentinel invasion. The graves of Anthony Stark, Warren Worthington III, Peter Parker, and Benjamin Grimm can be seen in the background. This is revealed to be a Danger Room simulation, and the X-Men begin training their adaptivity by fighting opponents who have a tactical advantage.
During this training session, Juggernaut and the Brotherhood (consisting of Mystique, Toad, and Sabretooth) make their assault on the mansion. Xavier is curious as to the nature of their attack, worrying that it seems "too focused, almost like a distraction" and sends Forge to investigate the grounds. He discovers that the attack was a distraction, and that the grounds are now being patrolled by Prime Sentinels.
After attempting to fight off the Sentinels, Forge is abducted and the Brotherhood retreats. Restrained in the company of Bastion, the seemingly human Sentinel tells Forge he intends to use the man's mutant gift to bring about the extinction of mutants. He steals various weapon designs from Forge's mind, including a powerful weapon capable of stripping a mutant of their powers. In an attempt to throw the X-Men off his scent, He sends the Brotherhood to different locations across the world. The X-Men split up and engage each member in a bid to find Forge and stop the Prime Sentinel. After their defeat, the Brotherhood retreats to find Magneto in the Savage Land, only to find that Magneto has been hunted down by the Sentinels as well and is no longer in control of his fortress. The X-Men, having followed the Brotherhood, also arrive and Magneto charges the Brotherhood to fight them off long enough to convince them to join forces.
With the X-Men and the Brotherhood forming a temporary alliance, the team fights their way through a legion of Sentinels, though not without losses of their own. In the end, Magneto, Wolverine, Juggernaut and Phoenix invade the tower for the final battle with Bastion. Bastion uses Magneto's trans-mat system to transport Juggernaut away from the tower, then escapes to Asteroid M, but he is followed by a piggybacking Wolverine. Wolverine, whose healing factor was disabled by the Sentinels earlier, manages to defeat Bastion. Magneto and Phoenix arrive to help Wolverine, and Magneto prevents a weakened Bastion from escaping again. The two battle, and Magneto is defeated.
When Bastion returns to the central room, he finds Phoenix, who challenges and finally defeats him. The Prime Sentinels are disbanded, and the X-Men and the Brotherhood agree to a temporary cease-fire while the wounded are restored to health. Forge is freed and reverses the effects of his weapon, restoring everything to normal. With Bastion returned to S.H.I.E.L.D., the X-Men are free to continue training to fight for a better future.
Upon reaching the ending level of Asteroid M, the player has the chance to fight Bastion as three characters: Wolverine, then Magneto, and finally Phoenix. Whether Wolverine defeats Bastion or is defeated himself, the game proceeds to Magneto's fight with Bastion. If Magneto defeats Bastion, the finale video is simply accelerated and Phoenix does not fight Bastion. If Magneto is defeated, Bastion and Phoenix comprise the final fight of the game.
Alternate endings: * As Phoenix prepares to finish Bastion, Cyclops appears to help Phoenix. However, while they are both distracted, Bastion kills Cyclops by blasting him and leaves his lifeless body floating in space. Distraught over her husband's death, Phoenix transforms into Dark Phoenix and unleashes her fury on Bastion. Professor X detects Dark Phoenix's presence and is knocked over when Dark Phoenix destroys Asteroid M, also killing Wolverine and Magneto in the process. As Dark Phoenix flies through space, she destroys the Moon, and then turns to (presumably) destroy the Earth as well. * Juggernaut is revealed to be alive and well, but is trapped on Mars. As he is tossing a rock, it lands on his head, to which he replies "This sucks!".
''X-Men: Next Dimension'' features twenty-four playable characters. Many can be unlocked through gameplay in other modes, and alternate costumes for each character are also available. The main costumes for each character are based on the two main X-Men comics at the time, ''New X-Men'' and ''X-Treme X-Men''. Of these, two are essentially mirrors of other characters, although still retaining their individuality: Phoenix is essentially similar to the unlockable Dark Phoenix, although the two differ in certain Supers (Phoenix's are more psi-based, while Dark Phoenix takes her powers from the fiery appearance of the Phoenix). Similarly, Betsy and Psylocke are essentially the same character, save that "Psylocke" is based on the Betsy Braddock's telepathic incarnation and employs a "psi-blade" emerging from her fist, and "Betsy" is based on the more recent telekinetically powered version and manifests a fully formed psionic katana in combat.
Xbox only.
Whilst the gang research the First Evil, Buffy experiences a vision where Joyce gives her a book and warns her that she needs to rest if she intends to defeat this evil; but Buffy knows the vision is not real before Xander wakes her. The Ubervamp drags Spike into a cave where the First has taken on Drusilla's form to watch Spike get tortured. Throughout the episode, the Ubervamp tortures Spike by dunking his head under water and beating him up while "Drusilla" attempts to threaten into joining its cause. Spike, despite suffering from the massive torture, continuously refuses to cooperate, angering the First, and explains that he is doing so because Buffy believes in him.
At the Summers house, Dawn and Anya force Andrew to wake as Buffy walks in the room and the three begin to interrogate him again about the First. Andrew leads the gang to the school basement where the seal is still exposed on the ground, but no Spike or First to be seen. Although they do not know what the seal does, the gang grab shovels and cover it with dirt again. On the way out, Buffy and Dawn run into Principal Wood, also carrying a shovel. Buffy and Dawn try to explain Buffy's surprising recovery from being sick and their own possession of a shovel while the principal explains himself and asks Buffy to return to work soon.
At the house, Willow begins a spell to find the First, but it backfires as explosive bolts send Anya and Buffy flying while Willow is briefly possessed by the First. Xander smashes a bowl used in the spell which breaks the effects and sends Willow crashing. Fearful of the magic and hurting people, Willow begs Buffy not to let her hurt anyone with magic. Buffy starts to leave to find the First herself, but is surprised to find Giles standing outside her front door. With him are three young girls – Kennedy, Molly and Annabelle – who are Potential Slayers that he is trying to protect.
Giles informs the whole gang about the First's plans to destroy all slayers-in-training, their watchers and eventually the two active Slayers, Buffy and Faith. He breaks the news that the Council has been completely destroyed along with most of their records, except for the few books and references on the First he stole while there was still time. Giles goes over basic knowledge about the First, explaining that it can only take on the appearance of the dead, but it is incapable of solid form. He informs Buffy that unfortunately, she is the only one strong enough to actually stand a chance of winning against the First and is solely responsible for the Potentials' lives. Kennedy helps Willow make the sleeping arrangements around the house and ultimately, Kennedy ends up staying in Willow's room.
Buffy and Giles walk and talk together as they search for an entrance to the cave Buffy remembers from the first time she encountered the First and its minions, the Bringers. Buffy unintentionally finds it as she falls through some old planks covering the ground. As she searches the caves, she is viciously attacked by the Ubervamp. She stakes the demon, but it does not kill him and he proceeds to beat her up badly. Buffy narrowly manages to escape the cave by climbing out and the vampire is kept at bay by the rising sun. Giles and Buffy return to the house and tell the three Potentials all about the vampire Buffy fought, a Turok-Han. Giles explains that it is one of a prehistoric race of vampires that is far superior to and feared by the everyday vampires Buffy is used to.
At work, Buffy researches "evil" on the internet as Wood stops to check on her. She experiences another vision where her mother pays her another visit. Joyce talks to Buffy about evil and its constant presence in everyone and about the pressure Buffy is feeling to deal with this evil. Later that evening, the gang prepares for sundown and the potential danger it brings to them. While Buffy watches for the sun to set, Annabelle runs off into the streets of Sunnydale until she is captured by the Ubervamp and quickly killed. Buffy finds them both and is badly injured in a fight with the monster.
A terribly wounded Buffy sits alone at home as she listens to Giles and Willow talk in another room, worrying about Buffy's condition and their ability to fight this thing that seems so much bigger than them all. Buffy finally comes downstairs and gives an inspirational speech about this huge challenge before them that is bigger than any evil they have ever faced. She tells the group that she is more scared than ever, but she is not about to back down now. She has a new plan: they are declaring war on this evil instead of waiting for it to make a move.
Andy Millman (Ricky Gervais) is an aspiring actor who can only find work as an extra, which he calls being a "background artist" as a means of making the work seem more dignified. Andy is accompanied on his various projects by his platonic best friend and fellow extra, Maggie Jacobs (Ashley Jensen). Maggie is well-meaning but ditzy, often missing obvious social cues and failing to exhibit appropriate tact and subtlety in conversations. Unlike Andy, Maggie has no aspirations toward being anything more than an extra. Andy's agent, Darren Lamb (Stephen Merchant), has no real experience in the field of entertainment. He is incompetent, often taking no steps at all to find work for Andy, and even discouraging potential employers from hiring his client due to his flabby physique, age, and lack of acting experience. Darren is assisted by former soap opera star Shaun Williamson, who plays himself. Lamb frequently tries to undermine Andy by suggesting Williamson (who Lamb refers to by his former ''EastEnders'' character name, "Barry") is better suited for various acting roles that are offered to Andy.
Fed up with life as an extra who is always being cut out of scenes just as he manages to get his face on camera, Andy shamelessly kisses up to celebrities and producers in an effort to try to get screen time or a line of dialogue. Although often successful in these endeavours, circumstances always arise that prevent Andy from advancing his career. Reasons include celebrities confessing that they have no real power to help, or (more often) Andy inadvertently offending the star which results in his immediate dismissal from the set. In the conclusion of season one, Andy delivers a sitcom script he has written to Patrick Stewart, who, in turn, passes it along to the BBC through his production company. Andy gets a meeting with BBC comedy producers who greenlight his project and agree to allow him to play the starring role in the show.
Series Two largely chronicles Andy's frustrations with his sitcom—''When the Whistle Blows''—which is heavily rewritten by BBC producers, resulting in it being a lowest-common-denominator comedy that relies on a multitude of catchphrases, offensive stereotypes and silly costumes for cheap laughs. Although the sitcom is commercially successful, pulling six million weekly viewers, it is a flop with critics who mercilessly bash both it and Andy. Andy periodically gets a chance to expand his repertoire in film and on stage but manages to ruin every opportunity that comes his way by either refusing to take direction, or by once again offending bigger stars than himself.
In the series' 90-minute finale, the sitcom has made Andy financially successful and recognisable to many but he is increasingly frustrated with the show's quality and with his career not moving forward. Andy is convinced to fire Darren as his agent and become a client of a larger, more professional firm which he believes will accelerate his path upward. After taping a Christmas Special for ''When the Whistle Blows'', he announces to the live studio audience that he is quitting the series effective immediately. His career falls into total stagnation and Andy is forced to take bit parts on various long-running British television series such as ''Doctor Who'' and ''Hotel Babylon''. Eventually, his agent ceases to take his calls. Andy's relationship with Maggie sours as he frequently ignores her and spends all of the time they spend together complaining about not getting the opportunities he feels he deserves.
When he crashes his agent's lunch meeting at a posh restaurant, he is bluntly told that he will never realise his dreams of having fame, fortune, prestige and respect. Crushed, Andy reluctantly agrees to lower his expectations for the sake of remaining modestly famous and successful and is cast in ''Celebrity Big Brother''. While staying in the ''Celebrity Big Brother'' house, Andy openly reflects upon the price of fame and grows increasingly disenchanted with the culture of celebrity worship that has manifested itself throughout Western society.
His despondency culminates in an emotional breakdown during a conversation with the other housemates. He tearfully turns to the camera and apologises to Maggie, who is watching the broadcast from her flat, for ignoring her and not heeding her advice to be grateful for the things he has managed to achieve. He voluntarily departs the house, ending his tenure on the show. Moved by the unexpected outpouring of emotion, a group of journalists eagerly awaits Andy's appearance at a press conference. Andy's agent returns and tells him that his emotional turn has instantly skyrocketed Andy's profile and that a number of A-list stars are requesting to meet him. As his agent prepares to introduce him to the throng of waiting press, Andy quietly slips out the back door of the studio where Maggie is waiting for him in her car. They drive off together with Andy seemingly turning his back on show business and accepting a life of anonymity.
''Dan Doh!!'' focuses on a fifth grader named Tadamichi Aoba also nicknamed Dandoh. Dandoh and his two friends are their baseball team's best players, but after an incident with their school principal, they are introduced to the world of golf. Dandoh and his friends are taught by a former professional golfer named Shinjō Mikiyasu, who believes that they can surpass even him. As Dandoh begins to play in tournaments, his friendly spirit, determination, and hard working and competitive attitude brings the best in the players around him and earns him many friends.
Con-artist Harry Bundage (McKern) believes that the lost treasure of pirate captain Joshua St. Edmund is hidden at Candleshoe, the large country estate of Lady St. Edmund (Hayes). Thanks to Harry's cousin Clara (Pickles), a corrupt former cleaning woman at Candleshoe, Harry has the captain's first clue. Harry recruits street-smart American foster child Casey Brown (Foster), employing her to pose as Lady St. Edmund's granddaughter, the Honourable Margaret, 4th Marchioness of Candleshoe, who disappeared ten years ago at age four. Casey is the right age to pass for the long-lost Margaret and possesses several identifying scars that young Margaret was known to have. Casey agrees to go along with the con and discover further clues in exchange for a cut of the profits.
Arriving at Candleshoe, Casey finds that Lady St. Edmund is living in genteel poverty, and that Candleshoe itself is constantly on the verge of being unable to pay its taxes. Priory (Niven), the estate's butler (who is forced to pose as various members of the household to conceal that all the other servants have been let go) manages to keep one step ahead of foreclosure by pawning the house's antiques, conducting tours of the estate, and selling produce at market. Four local orphans adopted by Lady St. Edmund assist Priory.
Casey eventually becomes part of the family and decides to find the treasure for the benefit of Candleshoe, rather than for Harry. This nearly costs the girl her life when she is seriously injured trying to prevent Harry from stealing money from Lady St. Edmund. Casey, now unconscious with a severe concussion, is taken to a hospital, and remains there for several days. Meanwhile, without the money Harry has stolen, Candleshoe is unable to pay its taxes and is within days of foreclosure. When Casey learns that Lady St. Edmund is preparing to go to a retirement home and send the children back to the orphanage, she breaks down and tells them about the treasure. After unraveling the final clue together, the household returns to Candleshoe to find Harry and his crew tearing the place apart to find the hidden treasure. Casey, Priory, and the children manage to fight off the thieves until the police arrive, inadvertently discovering the treasure in the process.
With Candleshoe safe and her scheme discovered, Casey, feeling she has no right to stay, prepares to return to Los Angeles, but is stopped by Lady St. Edmund, who offers her a real home at Candleshoe. Casey expresses doubt, wondering what will happen if Lady St. Edmund's real granddaughter ever returns, but she is eventually persuaded to return to Candleshoe with Lady St. Edmund. The ending is ambiguous as to whether Casey truly is the real Margaret.
The four clues revealed in the hunt for the treasure: "For the sunrise student there is treasure among books." (This refers to a message in a stained-glass window that can only be seen in the Candleshoe library at sunrise.) "The paths of glory lead but to the grave." (This refers to the poem "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray.) "He followed the eclipse for riches and fame; and, if ye would prosper, do ye the same." (The clue refers to a painting of Captain St. Edmund's ship, the ''Eclipse''.) "Underfoot, in the great hall. Look high, look low, discover all." (This clue refers to a statue of Captain St. Edmund in Candleshoe's great hall. The statue's foot is propped on a chest in which the treasure is hidden.)
The story is divided into four chapters. "Part I: Escape from Echo Base" begins shortly before the battle of Hoth, as Dash Rendar and his droid co-pilot, Leebo, arrive at Echo Base to deliver supplies. He briefly talks with Han Solo, who gets him temporary clearance to fly with Rogue Squadron. Dash pilots a snowspeeder into battle, and returns to Echo Base when the shield generator is destroyed, just as the ''Millennium Falcon'' leaves. He makes his way through the base, attempting to return to his ship, the ''Outrider''. Dash encounters several wampas on the way, and has to fight an AT-ST, but eventually makes it back to Leebo and ''The Outrider'', and they escape a Star Destroyer through an asteroid field.
"Part II: In Search of Boba Fett" begins after the end of ''The Empire Strikes Back'', as Dash searches for Boba Fett, who holds Han Solo, frozen in carbonite. He hunts and battles IG-88, who is attempting to repair his ship on Ord Mantell after an altercation with Fett. The droid tells him that Fett is hiding on a moon of the planet Gall. Dash finds Fett, and damages his ship, the , but Fett escapes. Believing that the Emperor will let him take Darth Vader's place if Skywalker is killed, Prince Xizor orders Jabba the Hutt to kill Luke Skywalker.
In "Part III: Hunting the Assassins", Jabba sends a group of swoop bikers to Obi-Wan Kenobi's home, where Luke is practicing his Jedi skills. Dash races them to Kenobi's, and eliminates all members of the gang. Luke informs Dash of a secret imperial supercomputer aboard the Imperial Freighter ''Suprosa'', containing unknown important Imperial construction plans for the Death Star II. Dash steals the computer, and battles with a cargo droid in a hangar.
"Part IV: Lair of the Dark Prince" begins with Luke, Lando Calrissian, Chewbacca, and Dash infiltrating Xizor's palace on Coruscant to save Princess Leia, whom Xizor has taken captive. Dash enters the palace through the underground sewer system, and battles an enormous dianoga, before entering the palace itself. While in the palace Dash plants thermal detonators in an effort to destroy the it before Xizor summons his droid, which Dash quickly disposes of. After defeating the droid, Xizor flees to his ''Skyhook'' space station. Xizor's forces engage in battle with the Rebellion, but during the conflict an Imperial Star Destroyer arrives firing on both parties. The conflict turns as the Star Destroyer engages Xizor and his forces. Utilizing this distraction, Dash destroys the ''Skyhook'' s outer defenses and proceeds to fly inside the station, destroying its core. Dash is presumably killed in the blast, along with Xizor.
A short pre-credits scene shows Luke and Leia on Tatooine, mourning Dash's death. If the game is completed on medium or higher difficulty levels, this is followed by an additional scene of Dash and Leebo, who had jumped to hyperspace to escape the blast. Leebo questions Dash's decision to keep the illusion they had died in the ''Skyhook'' s destruction, to which Dash says, "It's good to be remembered as a martyr without actually being dead, wouldn't you say?"
1981, Bangkok, Thailand. Sean Donahue is in the kickboxing ring against the current Thai champion. In his corner is his little brother Jake, who is cheering Sean on. Sean is able to overpower his opponent and wins after a spin kick knocks the Thai fighter out. Sean is rewarded with the championship. En route to their hotel after the fight, Jake and Sean are ambushed by some armed men. Sean is able to fight them off until he is shot at by Khan, who warned Sean he was not to have won the fight. Sean admits that it wasn't his intention but the opponent wasn't much of a contender. Khan, angry with the decision, fights Sean and obliterates him in front of young Jake. Khan performs a triple kick combination starting with a double jump kick to the head, followed by a double jump kick to the chest and a jump spinning back kick, which kills Sean. Jake, saddened and angry, races towards Khan who beats Jake up and knocks him out.
It has been ten years and Jake is now a New York City detective who has gone undercover to bust a drug deal in an abandoned warehouse. Jake mocks the dealer and tells the dealer that he is a cop. The dealer laughs it off at first, until Jake reveals his badge and wire, which infuriates his fellow officers. The dealer and his two men attempt to begin fighting Jake, who resorts to a street fighting style to ultimate stop the dealer and his men. SWAT arrives and the team leader is unhappy with Jake for his actions. Back at the office, Jake is getting reamed out by Captain O'Day, who tells Jake the dealer may have a chance to call police brutality due to his actions. However, O'Day makes Jake a deal that could get him out of his potential bind. Interpol has contacted NYPD about an operation involving snuff films and wants Jake to take on the operation. When Jake learns the operation is in Thailand, Jake refuses to take the assignment. However, that night, while viewing one of the films, he learns the man who stars in the film is Khan, which triggers the flashback of his brother's death. When Jake gets a call from O'Day to let him off the hook, Jake tells him he's taking the assignment.
Upon his arrival in Thailand, Jake meets his contact Anderson, who tells him that the men behind the snuff films look around for fighters to star in their films. Therefore, Jake must find a way to get attention. While this is going on, an American fighter, Dan Handel, is the latest star of Khan's new film, in which he learns the hard way about what filming is like. When Dan is cut for real and then shot at, he is shocked to discover the body of a dead woman. Khan arrives and beats up Dan before impaling him on a hook, causing his death. Jake's first attempt at a Muay Thai school proves to be unsuccessful. However, his actions grab the attention of Thasi, a Thai-American Muay Thai fighter. That night, as a reward for his latest actions, Khan is given a chance to choose a woman to spend the night with and chooses Molly, an American who came to Thailand to start a modeling career only to find herself duped with nowhere else to go. When she tricks Khan into doing a tradition of washing up for him, she escapes. When Khan sends men after her, Jake comes to her rescue and the two form a bond.
The next day, Thasi follows Jake, Jake confronts him only to be beaten up. Jake is convinced that he will need more than street smarts if he plans to defeat Khan. Thasi, knowing Jake will not be able to stand a chance against Khan with his current skill, recommends a fighter named Prang, who is the only man to come close to defeating Khan. Since the devastating loss, Prang has resorted to becoming a hermit living off the Mekong River. When Jake arrives to Prang's place, Prang is completely drunk and blows Jake off. As Jake sets off to leave, Prang's chimpanzee steals Jake's passport. The next day, Jake heads to Prang to retrieve his passport and sees Prang getting mugged. Jake's attempt proves unsuccessful with Prang showcasing his martial arts skills, knocking out all of the muggers and sending them away. He admits the mugging was a ruse to see how well Jake can fight and invites him to dinner.
That night, Prang tells his story of how he fought and ultimately lost to Khan. The loss caused Prang to become a drunken hermit, and yet he had wanted revenge on Khan for a long time. When Jake reveals how Khan had killed his brother ten years ago, Prang is at first reluctant to teach Jake for revenge. However, Prang sees the opportunity as redemption and decides to put Jake through a painful regiment of training. When Jake grows tired of the pain he must endure at the hands of Prang, a confrontation leads to Jake almost leaving Prang, only to apologize and decides to take the training seriously. Molly looks for Jake and must escape Khan's men. Eventually, Molly does reach Jake and the two start a romance. Jake becomes more proficient in martial arts and proves his mettle in an underground fight. When Jake begins winning his fights, it grabs the attention of Mr. McKinney, the scout for the snuff films. Jake accepts McKinney's offer. However, that night, while having dinner with Molly, Jake is stunned by the arrival of both Anderson and Capt. O'Day, who learns Jake's real reason why he accepted the mission. O'Day wants Jake off the mission, but Jake has told them he made contact and he makes his "movie" the next day. Anderson fully decides to side with Jake and at first reluctant, O'Day agrees as well.
The next day, Jake is ready and heads to the location, which consists of a booby-trapped dome made of bamboo. However, when he leaves, Khan has Molly kidnapped and Prang killed. As Jake, wearing the mask of Hanuman makes his way through the first round of goons in the dome, he plays it off pretending like he doesn't know what's going on and even throws his mask to the ground. However, Khan, wearing a black mask, arrives and has Molly tied up and throws Prang's body to the bottom, watery lake where Jake is shocked. Khan and Jake start out with a sword fight until Jake is hit in the side and Khan's mask is sliced off, revealing his face. A visibly upset Jake reveals the photo of Sean from ten years ago and throws it to Khan. Khan knows who Jake is now and promises to send him to Hell. Jake says he has been there for ten years and the two go one-on-one with both nearly equally matching their skills. Khan gets the upper hand and almost sends Jake to death via impalement on a ground spike only for Jake to barely hang on to the cage. When Khan breaks a piece of bamboo as a staff to knock Jake down, Jake grabs the staff and jumps up and begins his assault on Khan. Khan attempts the triple death kick combination only to learn that thanks to Prang's training, Jake has learned to counter the three kicks. Jake finally defeats Khan, to the shock of everyone on set. When Jake attempts to get Molly, Khan gets up and runs towards Jake, who kicks Khan to the dome entryway, which falls on Khan. In his last breath, Khan grabs the rope in an attempt to send Molly to a grounded spike in the water only for Jake to rescue her.
The Thai authorities arrive with O'Day and Anderson. Jake is relieved to see the film finally get shut down. The Thai authorities blow up the bamboo dome as Molly and Jake celebrate as they can start their lives over together.
In the tale, Macunaíma travels from his home tribe in the jungle to São Paulo and back again, with chase scenes that go all over the country of in between, in order to retrieve an amulet which he lost. The amulet had been given to him by his lover, Ci before she ascended into the sky to become a star. He encounters all sorts of folk legends and orixas along the way. The interactions which Macunaíma had with most of these characters was imagined by Andrade, though the essence of the folk lore remains true.
Based on the 1928 book by Mário de Andrade, the modern-day parable follows the misadventures of a black man (Grande Otelo) who is miraculously born to an old woman (Paulo José), who is supposed to be of the indigenous peoples of Brasil, in the jungles of the Amazon. Though born fully-grown, he has the heart of a playful child. After the death of his mother, he comes face to face with a spring that turns him white (Paulo José). With that change, he and his two brothers move to Rio de Janeiro, but are interrogated by street terrorists upon their arrival.
Then, thanks to an affair with a white lady, guerrilla killer Ci (Dina Sfat), the film's hero fathers a black boy (Grande Otelo) with her. When both mother and child die, he embarks on a quest to recover a magical stone from a rich city dweller. In this film, the essentialist myth of the 3 Brazilian races, white, black, and the original natives of Brazil, is supposed to be represented through the protagonist, his brothers, and his mother.
Throughout his adventures, Macunaíma learns some tough lessons about Brazilian life and society. Macunaima functions as an allegorical representation of the turmoil of the Brazilian military coup that had ensued.
In 1995, World War III begins by accident when a hitman uses an miniature nuclear weapon in a hit which destroys Sicily; Italy mistakes the blast for nuclear terrorism and annihilates Libya, which destroys Israel. Africa bombs Germany, which in turn attacks France. Luxembourg bombs England. Sweden destroys itself. The Russians decide to liquidate the Americans, who in turn unleash their nuclear fleet, leaving only two continents on the verge of World War IV. In the north, America and Russia merge, containing a mutated strain of males, forming the ''USSSR''. In the south, all that is left of womankind retreat to their territory of ''Vaginia''. The armies of these two nations are soon at odds with each other as they perfect their most destructive weapons capable of destroying the universe.
The Council of the Universe, fearing for everyone's safety, appoints Fred Hero, a retired superhero now working as a garbageman to diplomatically calm the situation down. He is given a powerful light bulb that makes him invincible. Fred firsts starts off with the USSSR and tries to persuade the nation's leader, the Comrade-In-Chief, to get rid of all of the bombs. The Comrade-In-Chief sees Fred as a lunatic and whispers to his three minions to fetch the guards. While he's waiting, The Comrade-In-Chief explains to Fred that all of the men lost their asses during World War III. The women were safe underground. When the war was over, and the women came back up and saw the men without their asses, they just laughed. The Comrade-In-Chief plans to destroy Vaginia with their weapon "The Big One" - a missile shaped like a penis. After the history lesson, Fred accidentally meets and promptly falls in love with the nation's female mascot, Liberty. Fred escapes the Comrade's lair with Liberty. When they're finally alone, Fred wishes to marry Liberty, but Liberty finds out that Fred's married. Liberty is shocked and decides to return to the Comrade.
Fred then flies over to Vagina and meets the multi-breasted leader Una. Una reveals the Vaginia has a super-weapon called "Big Mama" - a spherical missile that has a vagina and nipple on it that is designed to combine with "The Big One" and thus destroy the universe. Fred once again tries to get Una to make peace with the USSSR, but this time, Una agrees, but only if he and her have sex. Fred is unable to withstand her advances, and unable to please her complex body. With no hope for peace and mad with rage at the idea of being separated from Liberty, Fred inadvertently starts the Fourth World War. While the two nations fight, Fred eventually decides to try to win Liberty's heart back and save the universe. Liberty is taken on board "The Big One", which starts to rise as Fred hurries to her rescue. He manages to get on board and escape with her to the safety of a tropical island only for them to be caught up in the final battle between both nations armies. As the two missiles circle above the sky, this gets the two nations extremely horny for each other. While the two nations have an orgy on the island, Fred tries to get back with Liberty, who still declines Fred's offer, due to Fred still being married. Just then, Fred gets a message from his wife, who says that she's seeing another man, Conan, Fred's Conan the Barbarian-like coworker. Fred and Liberty run toward each other with open arms. As they hug, "The Big One" penetrates "Big Mama" and both explode in a cosmic orgasm which causes the entire universe to be destroyed. God, who is having sex with his wife notices this but doesn't care. Fred and Liberty arrive in Heaven, and they both have sex in a lone cloud, beginning their new life together.
The protagonist, Mizoguchi, is the son of a consumptive Buddhist priest who lives and works on Cape Nariu on the north coast of Honshū. As a child, the narrator lives with his uncle near Maizuru. Throughout his childhood he is assured by his father that the Golden Pavilion is the most beautiful building in the world, and the idea of the temple becomes a fixture in his imagination. His stammering and poverty cause him to be friendless. A neighbour's girl, Uiko, becomes the target of his hatred. After she is killed by her deserter boyfriend, Mizoguchi becomes convinced that his curse on her has worked.
His ill father takes him to the Kinkaku-ji in the spring of 1944, and introduces him to the Superior, Tayama Dosen. After his father's death, Mizoguchi becomes an acolyte at the temple. He meets his first real friend, Tsurukawa there. During the 1944–5 school year, he works at a factory, where he comes to hope that the Golden Pavilion will be destroyed by the firebombing. However, Kyoto is never firebombed. In May 1945, he and Tsurukawa visit Nanzen-ji and witness a woman giving her lover a cup of tea with her own breast milk.
The Temple is visited by a drunk American soldier who orders Mizoguchi to trample his pregnant Japanese girlfriend's stomach, giving him two cartons of cigarettes. Mizoguchi gives them to the Superior. Father Dosen thanks him, and tells him he will attend Ōtani University. A week later the girl visits the temple and demands compensation. The Superior gives her money, but rumours of her claims spread.
He starts to drift away from Tsurukawa, befriending Kashiwagi, a cynical clubfooted boy from Sannomiya. Kashiwagi seduces women by making them feel sorry for him. In May, Kashiwagi invites him to a picnic at Kameyama Park, taking two girls. When left alone with the other girl, she tells him a story about a woman who lost her lover during the war. He realises that the woman is one he saw two years before. That evening, Mizoguchi becomes aware of Tsurukawa's death in an accident. In the spring of 1948, Kashiwagi mentions that he is being taught ikebana by the woman Mizoguchi saw. Mizoguchi tells her about his experiences. She tries to seduce him, but he experiences visions of the temple.
As Mizoguchi's mental illness worsens, he neglects his studies, and is reprimanded. Mizoguchi responds by borrowing ¥3000 from Kashiwagi. He goes to Takeisao-jinja and draws a lot which warns him not to travel northwest. He sets off northwest the next morning, and spends three days at Yura, where the sight of the Sea of Japan inspires him to destroy the Kinkaku. By May, his debt has grown to ¥5100. Kashiwagi is angry, and comes to suspect that Mizoguchi is considering suicide. To prevent this, he reveals that Tsurukawa committed suicide over a love affair.
Mizoguchi spends his tuition on prostitutes in the hope that Dosen will expel him. After this fails, he buys arsenic and a knife at a shop near Senbon-Imadegawa. On 30 June, a repairman tries to fix the temple's fire alarm, but he is unsuccessful, and promises to return the next day. He does not come. Early next morning, Mizoguchi sneaks into the Kinkaku and places three straw bales in corners of the ground floor. He goes outside to sink some non-inflammable items in the pond, but on turning back to the temple he finds himself filled with his childhood visions of its beauty, and he is overcome by uncertainty.
Finally, he resolves to go ahead with his plan. He enters the Kinkaku and sets the bales on fire. He runs upstairs and tries to enter the Kukkyōchō, but the door is locked. Suddenly feeling that a glorious death has been "refused" to him, he runs back downstairs and out of the temple. He continues running to Hidari Daimonji. He throws away the arsenic and knife and decides to live.
The series focuses on Renton Thurston, the fourteen-year-old son of Adrock Thurston, a military researcher who died saving the world. He lives what he considers a boring life with his grandfather in a boring town. He loves lifting, a sport similar to surfing but with trapar, a substance abundant throughout the air, as the medium. He dreams of joining the renegade group Gekkostate, led by his idol Holland Novak, a legendary lifter.
An opportunity to do so literally falls into his lap when a large mechanical robot, called the Nirvash type ZERO, and Eureka, its pilot and a member of Gekkostate, crash into Renton's room. Renton's grandfather orders him to deliver a special part to the Nirvash called the "Amita Drive", which releases the immense power dormant within the type ZERO called the "Seven Swell Phenomenon". Afterwards, Renton is invited to join Gekkostate, where he quickly discovers that the behind-the-scenes life of Gekkostate is hardly as glamorous or as interesting as printed in the glossy pages of their magazine, ''ray=out''. Only one thing makes it all worthwhile for him: the presence of Eureka, the mysterious pilot of the Nirvash. Renton, Eureka, and the Gekkostate embark on an adventure that will shape their future as well as the world's.
A young woman gets off a bus at a bus station at night and heads to a payphone to find the number for Buffy Summers. Before she can find the number, she is cornered by some of the Bringers, but before they can attack, Buffy arrives and rescues the young Potential Slayer. Once Buffy disposes of the Bringers, Buffy welcomes the frightened woman, Rona, to Sunnydale. At the Summers house, Willow struggles to sleep on the floor of her room while Kennedy talks about her luxurious childhood, prompts Willow to do some magic and repeatedly attempts to get Willow to join her on the bed, making Willow uncomfortable.
Downstairs, Molly tells several new Slayers-in-Training about the recently killed Anabelle. Buffy arrives with Rona and the gang is updated on the recent activities and findings. The worried gang lacks answers to most of their current problems like destroying the Turok-Han and rescuing Spike from the First Evil. Giles suggests they seek answers from an oracle-like creature known as Beljoxa's Eye. Down in the cave where he is kept prisoner, Spike fantasizes about escaping his torture and being rescued by Buffy, only to return to reality where the First in Buffy's form is waiting for him.
Giles and Anya go together to meet with a demon, named Torg, about Beljoxa's Eye. After some careful persuasion, Torg opens up a dimensional portal for the both of them to pass through. On the other side, they find themselves in a dark, windy dimension and soon come face-to-face with a caged mass of eyes, the Beljoxa's Eye, which tells them that the First Evil cannot be destroyed and that its mission exists now because of a disruption in the Slayer's line, which was in fact, caused by the Slayer. Anya and Giles return to their home dimension and Giles explains that the disturbance in the Slayer line was Buffy's revival from death. Anya realizes that the First would not be targeting them had they never resurrected Buffy.
As Andrew is freed from his bonds in return for his co-operation, Willow gets a call from a member of the Coven in England, and informs Buffy about another Potential Slayer in town and Buffy rushes off with Xander to pick the girl up before the Bringers do. The Slayers-in-Training work out in the basement of Buffy's house and thanks to some depressing comments from Eve, they talk about the seemingly insurmountable challenge they are facing and being called as a Slayer. Buffy and Xander knock at the room where the latest Potential Slayer is staying. When no one answers, Buffy kicks the door in and they find a dead blond girl lying on the ground. Upon closer inspection, they find that the girl is Eve and she has been dead for days. Realizing that the Eve who is with them is actually the First, Buffy and Xander return to the house and go down to the basement, where they tell "Eve" to get away from the others. The First finally reveals itself and with some thanks for all the information over the past few days and threatening comments about the future, then disappears. The gang, all worried after the frightening invasion by the First, talk about what they are going to do. Buffy tries to keep the Potentials calm, but they continue to worry about whether they are prepared to handle anything that lies before them. Buffy and Willow exchange glances and then both leave the dining room, followed by a confused Xander while the others continue to panic.
Back in the cave, the First approaches the Turok-Han as Eve and sends him out to kill everyone except "her". A crowd of Bringers forms outside Buffy's house that night, but do nothing but keep the Potentials from leaving. Buffy disperses weapons to the gang as they all wait for the expected attack of the Turok-Han. Willow practices some simple magic to see if the First would go after her again. Kennedy interrupts and is intrigued by Willow's skills and her past struggles with it. Willow warns her that the evil magic she has been exposed to in the past is not something Kennedy wants to see.
The Turok-Han charges at the house and breaks the front door down. Willow puts up a barrier that keeps the vampire at bay, but it is almost too much for Willow and Buffy instructs everyone to run out the back. The gang encounters Bringers in the backyard, but they are destroyed and the gang runs off as the Turok-Han finally breaks through Willow's magical barrier. The gang runs down the street together and then Buffy tells them to break up. Willow and Xander lead the Potentials as well as Dawn and Andrew to a safe location while Buffy turns and attacks the Turok-Han. After a brief struggle, Buffy runs and tries to get the vampire to follow her.
Xander leads the way through a construction site, which the Potentials find to be an extremely exposed and unsafe location for them hiding at. The Turok-Han appears, proving that it decided to go after the easier Potentials instead of Buffy. Kennedy prepares to attack the vampire, but then bright lights flood the site and Buffy appears as the Potential Slayers move back to watch from a distance. Buffy tells the ubervamp that he will help her set an example for the other girls and begins a fight. A vicious battle ensues, but the ubervamp again proves to be stronger. As Dawn watches, she realizes aloud that Willow and Buffy planned everything as a teaching tool. A quick flashback to the panic-filled discussion at the house earlier shows that at the moment that Buffy, Willow and Xander left the others, the three were communicating telepathically about a plan to destroy the ubervamp and boost morale of the others at the same time.
The Potentials begin to worry as Buffy ends up on the losing end of the fight, but Willow tells them to wait. Just in time, Buffy turns things around and strikes the ubervamp with a few harmful blows. Buffy finally grabs a wire to wrap around the vampire's neck and pulls until she beheads the creature, turning it to dust. The Turok-Han dusted, the bruised and blood-splattered Buffy ends her teachings for the day and leads the newly confident Slayers-in-Training back home. In the cave, Spike tries to tell off Buffy as she stands before him with a knife in hand, thinking that she is the First. Buffy cuts away his bonds as Spike wraps his arm around her, realizing it is actually the real Buffy. She helps the sobbing vampire out of the cave.
Sōzō Haran was a brilliant scientist who was conducting research on Mars. He created a form of cyborg life with the ability to think for itself. These cyborgs, dubbed the , soon ran out of control and killed Dr. Haran along with his whole family, save his youngest son, the 16-year-old Banjō Haran. Banjō escapes from Mars on a rocket with a solar-powered super robot called Daitarn 3, which was built with the special metals of Mars. Now 18 years old and living on Earth in a luxurious mansion, Banjō fights against the meganoids and their leader, Don Zauser and his second in command Koros, with the aid of his faithful butler Garrison, his two gorgeous companions, Reika and Beauty, and an orphan boy named Topo. Together they must stop the evil meganoids which aspire to turn all humans into cyborgs and thus "improve" the human race.
The one-hour program revolved around two private detectives who had their own detective agency in Los Angeles. E. L. ("Early Leroy") "Tenspeed" Turner (Ben Vereen) is a hustler who worked as a private detective to satisfy his parole requirements. His partner Lionel "Brownshoe" Whitney (Jeff Goldblum) is an archetypal accountant, complete with button-down collars and a nagging fiancee (in the pilot episode), who had always wanted to be a 1940s-style Bogart private investigator. A running joke was his penchant for reading a series of hard-boiled crime novels, subtitled "A Mark Savage Mystery", written by Stephen J. Cannell (in-universe; Cannell wrote the quoted bits but not a real-life series of actual novels), with Goldblum reading some passages in voice-over. But Brownshoe was sharper than he seemed (albeit a little naïve) and more reasonable than his career path demanded; he had even received a black belt in karate.
Clark's work as a lead officer in CIB was the focus of the first two series. In the first series his boss was Deakin, a tough ex-RUC Northern Irish policeman. At the end of the first series, Deakin was revealed to be a corrupt officer himself. He left the force but remained a recurring character, working freelance for the security services and others, sometimes in conflict with Clark and sometimes assisting him. At the start of the third series (after a dramatic shoot-out at the end of the second) Clark, Naylor and Connell leave the police force and work in the murky world of private security, far-right political groups and espionage.
The third series ends with the betrayal of Clark and Naylor who had been masquerading as mercenaries. The betrayal is made by Connell in league with Deakin, their former boss and nemesis. It is unclear whether Clark and Naylor have died as the show ended on a cliffhanger. Rumours of a remake did circulate for some years, but Pearson confirmed in 'Watching the Detectives' that he had wanted a 'final' ending at the time and would never return to the role.
''Between The Lines'' was one of the first British TV dramas to include a bisexual character (whose sexual orientation is incidental rather than central to the plot). Maureen (Mo) Connell (Siobhan Redmond) has two significant romantic partners during the series, a serious boyfriend in season 2, and later on a long-term girlfriend. While some other police officers are briefly shown making disapproving comments (e.g. when she brings her girlfriend as plus-one to a police social), her bisexuality is shown as completely accepted by close colleagues, if a subject of occasional friendly banter (e.g. Mo mentions having a date that night, Tony asks "girl or boy?" and she replies sarcastically "one of each").
During the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, the Germans open fire on their American prisoners of war, in what is known as the Malmedy massacre, killing many troops as they try to run away. Medic Steven Gould (Alexander Niver) manages to escape with Corporal Nathan 'Deacon' Greer (Corbin Allred). Gould and Deacon are joined by two other survivors, Shirl Kendrick (Larry Bagby), a member in Gould's division, and Deacon's close friend Sergeant Gordon Gunderson (Peter Asle Holden). The four stumble on RAF pilot Flight Sergeant Oberon Winley (Kirby Heyborne). Winley explains he has important intelligence he has to get back to the Allies and the group decide to try and reach the Allied lines, located some away. The group fights against German troops, a winter storm, and personal conflict to return Winley to Allied territory.
A coalition of witches, led by self-appointed organiser Lettice Earwig, asks Granny Weatherwax not to participate in the annual Lancre Witch Trials, on account of her always winning. She agrees, becoming disconcertingly nice.
It is revealed in later stories, most specifically the Tiffany Aching series, that this is because Granny has made it clear that she does not approve of Lettice Earwig's methods, and admitting that a rival is correct "''at the time of her own choosing''" is the greatest and most calculated insult Granny can possibly deliver to another witch, essentially having agreed with Lettice Earwig's own unwitting 'admission' that she cannot beat Granny.
The title has confused people; Pratchett has since explained that Granny is the sea, and the other witches are the fishes (at one point Nanny says that calling Granny 'full of pride' is like calling the sea 'full of water'; water is what the sea ''is'').
It is based on the "ancient phrase" ''The big sea does not care which way the little fishes swim'', which Pratchett made up at some point before the story, and finally used in ''Night Watch''.
Penniless but full of ideas, Steve Martin (James Stewart) and Johnny Gambi (Dan Duryea), engineers who served in the Navy during World War II, walk down a quiet road on the gulf coast of Louisiana. Teche Bossier (Gilbert Roland), owner of the Port Felicity Fish Co., agrees to drive them into the shrimping town Port Felicity for five dollars. On reaching their destination, Gambi rents a shrimp boat from Dominique Rigaud (Antonio Moreno), although the fisherman's daughter Stella (Joanne Dru ) distrusts them immediately.
Gambi and Steve use the boat to show potential investor Kermit MacDonough (Jay C. Flippen) the location in which they plan to drill for offshore oil. Claiming that he has designed a drilling platform that can withstand any storm, Steve estimates that by investing one million dollars now they will soon tap an oil reserve worth two billion. His enthusiasm is so infectious that MacDonough agrees to fund the project, against the advice of his secretary, Rawlins. However, MacDonough warns Steve that he must discover oil within three months, or his company, due to huge investments made in an offshore oil lease, will put them both out of work.
Several weeks later, Gambi meets and falls for Stella's younger sister Francesca,, but, according to custom, she has been betrothed since childhood to Philippe Bayard. After singing a love song in the local gathering place Bon Chance, Philippe is upset to see Francesca enter with Gambi. Teche, who good-naturedly calls the oilmen "foreigners," agrees to help Steve and Gambi, but Stella refuses to accept Steve's statement that oil will be good for the town, claiming that she learned about "their kind" during her stay in Chicago. Nevertheless, the outsiders hire a crew and begin their search for oil.
When Teche sees dynamite charges being dropped into the gulf, he begs them to stop, believing that the explosions will kill the shrimp and worsen an already dismal shrimping season. Steve maintains that the charges are safe, but Teche returns to town and incites the fishermen to form an angry mob. Steve manages to scare the mob away by exploding sticks of dynamite behind them, and he placates Stella by warning Gambi to stay away from Francesca. Steve gently advises Francesca to "go back to [her] people."
With one month gone, Steve drives the building crew relentlessly, and the platform and rig are completed on schedule. He immediately orders the drilling crew to get started, and the exhausted Gambi is relieved when a hurricane warning gives the men an excuse to take the night off. Gambi and his men enter the Bon Chance with Francesca, and Philippe furiously punches his rival and starts a brawl. The sheriff arrests the oilmen and Francesca angrily denounces all the men.
During the storm Stella visits Steve at the rig, determined to have Gambi fired so that he stops seeing her sister. Steve explains to Stella that, if he could pull up a resource that has been in the earth for millions of years, then he will truly have accomplished something. Stella finally abandons her suspicion and kisses Steve, but back in town Philippe persuades Teche to help him destroy the oil rig. With the hurricane winds rising, Philippe climbs onto the platform and lights a bundle of dynamite, but Steve sees him and the two men fight. Philippe trips and disappears under the waves, and Steve, horrified, assumes that Stella was involved in Philippe's plot.
The rig survives the storm, and in the morning drilling begins. However, eight days before the deadline, MacDonough visits Steve and sadly delivers the news that the board of his company has voted to stop the drilling operation the following day, fearing a penalty for non-payment on their lease. MacDonough has already spent all of his own money, and the crew is unable to work for no pay. Gambi soon returns from town, announcing that he has just married Francesca. Steve punches Gambi, who in reply loudly chastises Steve for having driven him and the men too hard. Steve orders them all to leave, intending to do the drilling himself, whereupon Gambi hesitates and then persuades the crew to remain. While the men are drilling, they discover that the troublesome shrimp that have been clogging the valves are actually the huge golden shrimp that have so long eluded the local fishermen.
Steve later takes Francesca to the rig, infuriating Dominique, who inflames the fishermen by declaring that the oilmen will steal their daughters and destroy the town. At Stella's request, Teche go to warn Steve about the impending mob on its way to the rig. There, Steve feigns ignorance about the golden shrimp and asks Teche if he can help him get rid of the creatures. He then addresses the furious mob to assure the men on their concerns: Francesca's marriage is a happy one and, moreover, oil will bring progress and prosperity to Port Felicity. Despite these words the mob decides to destroy the structure, but at that moment oil explodes through the rig and onto the platform. Later, the fishermen discover that the golden shrimp bed is huge, and consequently the conflict between the oilmen and the fishermen is resolved. Teche then convinces Steve that Stella was not involved in Philippe's plot and the lovers finally come together.
Dennis Scott, a newly-arrived executive at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, is introduced to Theodore Honey, an eccentric American scientist who has theorized that the new Rutland Reindeer is susceptible to structural failure of the tailplane, caused by metal fatigue, which he calculates will happen after 1440 flight hours. To test the theory in his laboratory, Honey has been running a fatigue test on the fin and tailplane (empennage) of a Reindeer, by using a very high vibration rate dynamic shaker in daily eight-hour test cycles, hoping to cause it to fail. Although Honey is a knowledgeable and experienced scientist, there is a great deal of suspicion by management about his theory concerning stressed structures, and especially about his elaborate testing method (now routinely referred to as destructive testing).
Scott goes home with Honey and learns that he is a widower with a 12-year-old daughter, Elspeth. Scott then meets a pilot who is an old friend from WWII, who tells Scott of a recent crash of a Rutland Reindeer in Labrador. The tail of the downed plane in Labrador was never found among the wreckage, but Scott suspects Honey's theory is correct, that metal fatigue caused the crash, and informs the head of the RAE.
Honey is sent to Labrador to examine the wreckage, but finds himself flying across the Atlantic on a Reindeer airliner. He has been told that all Reindeer in service have only 500 hours, but is shocked to learn, while already over the Atlantic, that he is flying on an early production aircraft that is very close to the number of hours his theory projects for the tail's metal fatigue failure. Despite the fact that his theory is not yet proven, he decides to warn the aircrew and Hollywood actress Monica Teasdale, a fellow passenger aboard the flight. Teasdale believes Honey and grows close to him, as does stewardess Marjorie Corder.
After the Reindeer safely lands at Gander Airport in Newfoundland, an inspection clears the aircraft to continue on its route. Honey takes drastic action to stop the flight by activating the Reindeer's undercarriage lever, dropping the airliner on its belly and seriously damaging it. Shocked by the act, some of his colleagues demand that he be declared insane to discredit his unproved theory, and to save the reputation of British passenger aviation, now awash in a sea of bad press.
Teasdale and Corder have both taken a liking to Honey and Elspeth, who they discover is lonely and isolated from her schoolmates. Teasdale speaks to Honey's superiors on his behalf, claiming she believes in him. Corder, meanwhile, stays on with Honey and his daughter as a nurse. Honey returns to his laboratory, to prove that his metal fatigue theory is sound, but the time he predicted for the structural failure soon passes without anything happening.
During a hearing in which Honey's sanity is questioned, he angrily objects, refusing to be railroaded. He resigns and walks out, threatening to protest at the departure of every Rutland Reindeer and collapse them too, until all the aircraft are grounded. When Honey returns home, Corder tells him that, having now observed his many admirable qualities beyond his minor eccentricities, and after becoming very close to Elspeth, she wants to marry him.
Meanwhile the Reindeer airliner Honey disabled at Gander is repaired, but soon after it completes a test flight, the tail falls off while taxiing, proving Honey's theory. The tail of the crashed Reindeer plane is also found, with telltale signs that the tail fell off due to metal fatigue. Shortly thereafter, the same thing finally happens to the tail assembly in the laboratory. Honey realizes that he failed to include operating temperature as a variable factor in his fatigue calculations for the test being done at the lab, thus explaining why the test tail took longer to fracture.
Bill Lawrence (Stewart), employed at a midwest department store, supports a wife (Hale) and two teenage kids (Wood, Tommy Rettig) on an annual salary of $7,500. Answering a phone call, he wins $24,000 worth of merchandise from a radio quiz program and is overwhelmed by prizes which range from the useful to the absurd, including a side of beef, 7,500 cans of soup, 1,000 fruit trees, a Palomino pony, a portable swimming pool, a diamond ring, a French maid, an interior decorator (Alan Mowbray) and portrait painter Hilda Jones (Patricia Medina).
All is well until Lawrence is told he must sell the prizes in order to pay an income tax of $7000. When he tries to raise the money by selling the merchandise at the department store, his boss (Fred Clark) fires him. When he tries to fence the diamond ring in Chicago, he's arrested. Complicating matters, his wife suspects him of having an affair with Greenwich Village artist Hilda. Dealing with these problems, he gets help from reporter Harry Summers (James Gleason), who had been writing newspaper articles about Lawrence and his winnings. Bandleader Harry James made an uncredited appearance as a radio vocalist.
The film follows the life of David Marshall Williams (James Stewart), who was a member of the Winchester team that invented the semi-automatic M1 Carbine used in World War II. Williams was found distilling illegal moonshine, and was held responsible for the death of a sheriff's deputy during a raid on his still. He was sentenced to thirty years' hard labor. He cycled through the prison system until a firm but compassionate warden, H.T. Peoples (Wendell Corey), allowed him to work in a prison tool shop. There, he invented the gas system for his famous rifle. Williams was released from prison in 1929 and worked with Winchester Firearms on development of the M1 Carbine.
Roger Hobbs is an overworked banker who reflects on his recent vacation. Originally, his wife Peggy and he were to travel overseas alone together, but Peggy instead arranges a seaside holiday, which includes their two grown daughters, teenaged daughter, teenaged son, family cook, sons-in-law, and young grandchildren.
When Roger and Peggy reach their vacation destination, they find a dilapidated beach house with rotting steps. The shared telephone line and unreliable plumbing are running gags throughout the film.
Complications mount. Their youngest child and only son, Danny, only wants to watch television. Teenage daughter Katey, embarrassed by a new set of dental braces, refuses to engage in any activities inside or outside the beach house. Meanwhile, their grandson wants nothing to do with Roger.
Furthermore, one of his sons-in-law, Stan, is unemployed, which is causing tension in his marriage to Susan. Their children are undisciplined, as Susan does not believe in saying no to them. Roger and Peggy's daughter Janie is married to Byron, a windbag college professor who has a lot of ideas on psychology.
Peggy is quite worried about these issues, but Roger argues that the children must all learn to deal with problems themselves, and that Peggy and he need to stay at arm's length.
One by one, however, Roger quietly goes about trying to solve each problem. After the television breaks, he takes Danny on a boating trip, where they get lost in fog, but bond as father and son. He also manages to convince Katey to go to a local teen dance, where she insists on sitting on the sidelines with her mouth clenched shut. Roger bribes a handsome young man named Joe to pay attention to her; Joe genuinely falls for Katey and returns the money. Byron shows interest in an attractive neighbor, but Roger tells him that she is a paranoid schizophrenic; effectively keeping him from a full-fledged affair with her.
Son-in-law Stan has a shot at a good job, and Susan asks Roger and Peggy to entertain the potential employer and his wife for a few days. The couple present as prim, proper, and sober; the only interest the man has is bird-watching, and Roger endures a boring jaunt with him, but they are not what they seem to be. Chaos ensues in a madcap scene involving a hot shower and a broken door lock.
In the end, everybody's personal crises are resolved and the family is actually sad to leave; the grandson is upset that he is leaving his grandfather.
They book the beach house for the next summer.
In early 1980s New York, seamstress Kitty Kane learns that her construction worker husband, Nick Murder, has been having an affair after finding a sexually explicit poem he wrote to his mistress. The revelation generates a rift between Kitty and Nick and sends shockwaves both through their family and closely knit suburban neighborhood; as characters contemplate what love, sex, and physical pleasure mean to them, their thoughts are conveyed via elaborate musical numbers representing their deepest fears, anxieties, and fantasies.
Against the backdrop of her parents' deteriorating relationship, their daughter Baby- who plays lead guitar and provides vocals for a local rock band- finds herself embarking on her own romance with Chetty Jr., an attractive but dimwitted neighborhood boy who insists on referring to himself in the third person as "Fryburg." When Baby announces her plans to marry to Kitty, she forbids it, fearful that Baby's life will turn out like her own. Meanwhile, Nick continues to see his mistress, Tula, a much younger Mancunian woman who works in a sex shop and who first came onto him after seeing working shirtless at a job site; hoping for a lifelong commitment from Nick, Tula encourages him to get a circumcision, which he eventually does after convincing from his best friend and coworker Angelo, a sexual compulsive who waxes philosophical on the nature of romance and intercourse.
Struggling to recover from Nick's affair, Kitty resumes going to church, where she reconnects with her old parish priest and joins the choir. Wanting to confront Tulsa but unsure of her identity, she enlists the help of her cousin Bo, a rockabilly fixated, paranoid man who insists that he got away with the murder of his adulterous wife, Delilah, who is in fact still alive and living with her boyfriend. The pair eventually track Tula to the sex shop where she works, where she and Kitty get into a violent physical altercation. Shortly thereafter, Nick suffers licorice poisoning following an eating binge. He's rushed to the hospital, where his mother and Angelo confront him about his behavior. Nick's mother tells him that he's following in the footsteps of his similarly unfaithful and repulsive father and grandfather, both of whom engaged in sexually questionable behavior and who are now remembered as nothing more than "whoremongers." Genuinely ashamed and fearing he'll be remembered the same way, Nick breaks off his affair with Tula. He attempts to reconcile with Kitty, who consents to him remaining in the house but who refuses to forgive him for the affair.
Baby breaks up with Fryburg after she realizes he has no ambition in life and would make a poor life partner. Later, Nick gets into a physical altercation with a neighbor who piles snow on their lawn; the younger, fitter neighbor gets the upper hand and brutally beats Nick, almost killing him before Kitty intervenes on his behalf, beginning a tenuous reconciliation. Not long after, Nick is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, the result of years of heavy smoking. Distraught, he goes to Kitty's priest and confesses to the affair and his generally bad behavior. Kitty agrees to care for him while he dies, though she tells him she can never bring herself to have sex with him again. As his condition deteriorates, Nick is hospitalized; one night, Kitty comes to visit him, and Nick composes her a poem expressing his love for her and gratitude for their life together. Not long after, Nick dies, leaving a conflicted Kitty to reconcile her feelings for him while contemplating her own future.
Twelve thousand years in the past, mankind was at mercy of the mythical creatures known as , immortal winged beings with overwhelming powers and technology. That is, until one of their kind, Apollonius, fell in love with a female human warrior, Seliane. Apollonius joins forces with the humans to free mankind from oppression, by using the legendary giant fighting robot .
Eleven years prior to the story, in a disaster referred to as the "Great Catastrophe" Earth's magnetic field shifted devastating significant parts of the world and killing off many of its inhabitants. Along with the disaster came the return of the Shadow Angels who had been in slumber in their city of since their battle with Apolonius. The Shadow Angels began invading human cites to harvest human beings, dubbing them "the wingless ones", like cattle, to extract from the captured humans. Their prana serves as energy and nutrition not only to the Shadow Angels, but also to the legendary . The Shadow Angels facilitate their harvesting via giant, floating harvesting machines called which are guarded by giant mecha called . They are sentient machines, yet there are times when they are piloted by Shadow Angels.
Ordinary weapons prove ineffective against the Cherubim, and rings of projectors around the remaining cities, tapping into Earth's strata to project a quantum shield to keep Shadow Angels from entering or materializing in them, provide only limited protection. However a human expedition under the leadership of Gen Fudo excavates three very technologically advanced fighter planes, and an organization called takes over the research of these planes, called , trying to identify how to use them. The three Vectors, colored mostly in white, are identified as the green , the blue , and the red . DEAVA discovers only people with special powers, called , can use the Vectors and the three Vectors are in fact the pieces of Aquarion, the same robot used to fight the Shadow Angels twelve millennia before. They also discover the Elements can ultimately unite the Vectors into one of three formations of the giant robot in battle, and can use it to fight and defeat the Cherubim.
During the Elements' first sortie against the Cherubim by uniting the Vectors into a formation of Aquarion, they stumble on 13-year-old Apollo, who seems to be the reincarnation of Apollonius. They become convinced of this when he single-handedly takes control of the Vector Sol, unites the Vectors into the Solar Aquarion formation and defeats the enemy, thus causing him to be recruited by DEAVA to join their ranks.
The Lemon Drop Kid (Bob Hope), a New York City swindler, is illegally touting horses at a Florida racetrack. The Kid touts across a beautiful woman intending to bet $2,000 on a horse named Iron Bar. Rigging a con, the Kid convinces her to switch her bet, but learns that she was betting for boyfriend and notorious gangster Moose Moran (Fred Clark). When the horse finishes dead last, a furious Moran demands the Kid pay him $10,000 (the amount he would have won) by Christmas Eve, or the Kid "won't make it to New Year's."
The Kid decides to return to New York to try to come up with the money. He first tries his on-again, off-again girlfriend Brainey Baxter (Marilyn Maxwell). However, when talk of long-term commitment arises, the Kid quickly makes an escape. He next visits local crime boss Oxford Charlie (Lloyd Nolan), with whom he has had past dealings. However, Charlie is in serious tax trouble and does not particularly care for the Kid anyway. As he leaves Charlie's establishment, the Kid notices a street corner Santa Claus and his kettle.
Thinking quickly, the Kid fashions himself a Santa suit and begins collecting donations. He is recognized by a passing policeman, and the Kid is convicted of panhandling and sentenced to ten days in jail when he cannot pay the fine. The Kid learns where his scheme went wrong. After Brainey bails him out, he sets about making his scam legitimate by finding a charity to represent and a city license. The Kid remembers that Nellie Thursday (Jane Darwell), a kindly neighborhood resident, has been denied entry to a retirement home because of her jailed husband's criminal past.
Organizing other small-time New York swindlers and Brainey, who is both surprised and charmed at the Kid's apparent goodwill, the Kid converts an abandoned casino (ironically belonging to Moose Moran) into the "Nellie Thursday Home For Old Dolls". A small group of elderly women and makeshift amenities complete the project. The Kid receives the all-important city license. Now free to collect, the Kid and his compatriots dress up as Santa Claus and position themselves throughout Manhattan. The others are unaware that the Kid plans to keep the money for himself to pay off Moran. The scheme is a huge success, netting $2,000 in only a few days. An overjoyed Brainey decides to leave her job as a dancer and look after the "home" full-time until after Christmas. She informs her employer, Oxford Charlie.
Seeing a potential gold mine, Charlie decides to muscle in on the operation. Reasoning that the Nellie Thursday home is "wherever Nellie Thursday is", Oxford Charlie and his crew kidnap the home's inhabitants (including Nellie and Brainey) and move them to Charlie's mansion in Nyack. The Kid returns to the home to find it deserted and the money he had hidden in a hollowed-out statue gone. Clued in by oversized Oxford footprints in the snow, the Kid and his friends pay Charlie a visit. When Charlie reveals the Kid's scheme through a phone conversation with Moose Moran, the Kid's accomplices become angry, but he manages to slip away. However, Brainey tracks him down and voices her disgust.
After a few days of stewing in self-pity (and realizing it is Christmas Eve), the Kid is surprised to meet Nellie, who has escaped. He decides to recover the money, sneaking into Charlie's home in the guise of an elderly woman. He finds that Charlie and his crew are moving the women to a more secure location. The Kid confronts Charlie in his office. After a brief struggle, the Kid overpowers Charlie and makes off with the money, narrowly avoiding the thugs Charlie has sent after him. The ensuing chaos allows Brainey and the others to escape.
Later that night, the Kid returns to the original Nellie Thursday home to meet with Moose Moran. The deal appears to be in jeopardy as Moran arrives with Charlie. Charlie demands that the Kid reimburse him, which would leave too little for Moran. However, the Kid hits a switch, revealing hidden casino tables. All are occupied, mainly by the escaped women. The Kid and his still-loyal friends hold off the gangsters as the police initiate a raid. Moran and Oxford Charlie are arrested. The Kid assures the judge who sentenced him earlier that he will focus his attention on the home, which he will make a reality. Nellie's husband Henry, free on parole, is joyously reunited with his wife.
The film is centred on the creation of ''The Night Watch'', Rembrandt's most famous work, depicting civilian militiamen who wanted to be celebrated in a group portrait. The film posits a conspiracy to murder within the musketeer regiment of Frans Banninck Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch, and suggests that Rembrandt may have immortalized a conspiracy theory using subtle allegory in his group portrait of the regiment, subverting what was to have been a highly prestigious commission for both painter and subject.
The film also depicts Rembrandt's personal life, and suggests he suffered serious consequences in later life as a result of the accusation contained in his most famous painting.
Two vagabonds, Max Millan, a short-tempered ex-convict, and Francis Lionel "Lion" Delbuchi, a childlike ex-sailor, meet on the road in California and agree to become partners in a car wash business, once they reach Pittsburgh. Lion is on his way to Detroit to see the child he has never met and make amends with his wife Annie, to whom he has been sending all the money he made while at sea. Max agrees to make a detour on his way to Pittsburgh, where the bank that Max has been sending all his seed money is located.
While visiting Max's sister in Denver, the pair's antics land them in a prison farm for a month. Max blames Lion for their being sent back to jail and shuns him. Lion is befriended by a powerful inmate named Riley, who later tries to sexually assault Lion, and while not succeeding, physically savages and emotionally traumatizes him. Max rekindles his friendship with Lion, and becomes his protector, eventually exacting revenge by beating up Riley. After being released from prison, the two continue to have a profound effect on each other, although they have both undergone personal transformations and their roles have shifted—with Lion still traumatized and no longer carefree and clowning nor able even to laugh or even smile, and Max loosening his high-strung aggression (at one point doing a tongue-in-cheek striptease to defuse a fight at a bar and to attempt to make Lion laugh again).
When the duo finally arrives in Detroit, Lion finds a payphone and calls Annie, now remarried and raising their five-year-old son. Annie is still furious at Lion for having abandoned her, and lies that she miscarried their son (adding spitefully, knowing Lion is Catholic, "He never even got born. Never got baptized. You know what that means; his soul can't go to heaven. That's what you did for your son's soul, you bastard. You sent it into limbo. That soul cannot go to heaven"). Lion is devastated, as is Annie when he hangs up after hearing the "news". When he gets off the phone, he acts overjoyed with Max about having a son. Shortly afterward, Lion has a breakdown while playing in a city park with children and later on becomes catatonic. Max promises Lion, now in a psychiatric hospital, that he will do anything to help him, and boards a train to Pittsburgh with a round-trip ticket.
In 1909, near the Mexico-United States border, Martha McCandles runs a massive ranch with the help of her sons Jeff, Michael, and James. The Fain Gang (The Fain Brothers, the Devries Brothers, John Goodfellow, Kid Duffy, Breed O'Brien, Pop Dawson, and Trooper) attacks the ranch, brutally slaying many members of the staff. Jeff kills the Devries brothers, but is badly wounded; his son, Jacob "Little Jake" McCandles, is kidnapped before the gang flees to Mexico, leaving behind a ransom note for $1 million ($30.6 million today).
Martha places the ransom in a strongbox, and delegates from both the United States Army and the Texas Rangers offer to take the box for her. Martha decides instead to send for her estranged husband Jacob "Big Jake" McCandles, who wanders the west as a gunfighter with his black Rough Collie mix, simply named "Dog". Jake arrives and they confer in secret about what to do with the box.
Michael McCandles, the youngest son, arrives on a motorcycle with news he has found the kidnappers. Martha decides to allow him and his older brother James to set off with the Rangers in REO Runabouts to try to overtake the kidnappers. Jake disapproves, and sets off with the box, a mule, packhorses, and his elderly Apache friend Sam Sharpnose, preferring to do things the old fashioned way.
The kidnappers ambush the Rangers, killing three of them and putting the cars out of commission. Jake allows his two sons to accompany him. Relations are strained between Jake and James after the former's long absence from home, but Michael is delighted to see his father again and impresses him with his skill as a sharpshooter. However, Jake is put off by Michael's more modern and genteel ways.
John Fain, pretending to be only a messenger boy, intercepts the group and warns them bandits are now after the box. He tells them the gang will kill Little Jake if Big Jake (who pretends to be a hired hand during the encounter) doesn't do things exactly the gang's way. He gives them further instructions on where the exchange will take place, in the town of Escondero.
On arrival, the family checks into a hotel and lays a trap for the bandits, killing them. During the attack, the strongbox is accidentally opened, revealing the money has been replaced by newspaper clippings. Both boys believe Jake has stolen the money, until Jake reminds them of the people that were killed by the Fain Gang, and that their brother Jeff has also been badly and possibly fatally wounded. He tells them that he and Martha, refusing to pay for that, took the money out.
Pop Dawson arrives with a message to meet the gang with the money in an old fort outside town. He tells them the rules - they are to ride together, and not try anything until after the gang has left with the money, because their own sharpshooter Duffy is hidden far away with a rifle trained on Little Jake at all times. Big Jake convinces Dawson that Michael was killed by the bandits, so he, James, Sam, and Dog follow Dawson to the fort.
Fain reveals he is the ringleader, and reiterates Dawson's threats. Jake throws the key to Fain while Michael gets into position atop the fort with his rifle. Just as Fain opens the chest and realizes the deception, Big Jake opens fire and kills John's brother Will, who is holding Little Jake. Michael takes out Duffy, Sam kills Trooper, and James shoots down Dawson and O'Brien but breaks his hand.
Fain and Big Jake find themselves both wounded and in a stalemate from behind their respective hiding places, and Big Jake tells his grandson to run to James. Goodfellow slashes Sam and Dog with his machete, killing the Indian, and pursues Little Jake into a stable, where Dog attacks Goodfellow a second time and is killed. Big Jake, out of bullets, makes a run for it and kills Goodfellow with a pitchfork in the stables.
John Fain corners the weaponless grandfather and grandson outside the stable, but Michael, having come down from his perch, shoots Fain from behind. As Fain dies, Big Jake finally reveals his true identity to him, and to Little Jake, who has never met his grandfather before. Reunited at last, the family acknowledges their renewed bond and prepares to go home.
The game is set in a fantasy world based on Aesop's "The Tortoise and the Hare", in which the enmity between tortoises and hares continues even after three thousand years. An evil mastermind tortoise named Devan Shell begins conquering planets, suppressing any native confrontation. One of such planets, Carrotus, is home to a peaceful hare kingdom that, once confronted by Shell, is able to provide enough resistance to fend him off. Enraged by his loss, Devan decides to kidnap Carrotus princess Eva Earlong and hide her on a distant airbase of unknown location to weaken the hares. In response, the king chooses to send Carrotus' hero Jazz Jackrabbit, who carries a blue LFG-2000 gun, to various planets conquered by Devan that might contain clues to the location of Eva's imprisonment. As Jazz travels through different worlds, he gains new weapons and meets new enemies in his pursuit to rescue the princess and save Carrotus from Devan Shell and his army of Turtle Terrorists.
Jazz is depicted as a bright green hare with a red bandana, bracers and a blue "blaster" gun.
The game begins as Jazz, during a routine mission, is captured by the Chameleon army on their home planet. Upon escaping, Jazz decides to retire from his job, but is prevented from doing so by R.A.B.T. HQ, which gives him a new mission to investigate a Saurian attack with the promise of a good money reward. Jazz discovers the involvement of the Turtle Army behind the attack, and upon following them he discovers his old nemesis Dark Shell, whom he believed dead, is seeking revenge on him for his previous defeat.
The film takes place during a 24-hour period. Henry Hackett is the workaholic metro editor of the ''New York Sun'', a fictional New York City tabloid, who loves his job but the long hours and low pay are leading to discontent. He is at risk of the same fate as his editor-in-chief, Bernie White, who put his work first at the expense of his family. Bernie reveals to Henry that he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and tries to track down his estranged daughter Deanne in an attempt to reconcile before his time is up.
The paper's owner Graham Keighley faces dire financial straits, so he has managing editor Alicia Clark, Henry's nemesis, impose unpopular cutbacks, as she schemes to get a raise in her salary. Alicia is also having an affair with ''Sun'' reporter Carl. Henry's wife Martha, a ''Sun'' reporter on leave and about to give birth, is fed up because Henry seems to have less and less time for her, and she dislikes Alicia. She urges him to seriously consider an offer to leave the ''Sun'' and become an assistant managing editor at the ''New York Sentinel'' (based on ''The New York Times''), which would mean more money and respectability for shorter hours, but may also be too boring for his tastes.
A hot story is circulating the city, involving the murder of two white businessmen in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Two African-American teenagers are arrested for the crime, which both Henry and ''Sun'' columnist Michael McDougal believe to be false charges when they overhear the NYPD discuss the arrest on the ''Sun'' office's police scanner. Henry becomes obsessed with the case, getting others from the ''Sun'' staff to investigate along with him. He blows his job offer at the ''Sentinel'' after he steals information about the case from the editor's notes while being interviewed for the job, reporting it during a ''Sun'' staff meeting. Martha discovers through her friend in the Justice Department that the businessmen were bankers who stole a large sum of money from their largest investor, a trucking company with ties to the Mafia. Henry begins to believe that it was a setup and the Brooklyn boys were likely just caught in the midst of it.
Henry leaves a dinner with Martha and his parents to go to the police station with McDougal to confirm that the boys were not responsible before they print the story. They corner McDougal's police contact Richie, who, through repeated interrogation and the promise of anonymity, admits that the kids are indeed innocent and just happened to be walking by the scene of the crime when they were caught. Henry and McDougal race back to the ''Sun'' office to discover that Alicia has approved the paper's original front-page headline and story stating that the teens were guilty. This results in a physical fight between Henry and Alicia after he tries to stop the presses printing the papers with the wrong information.
McDougal is threatened by an angry city official named Sandusky, whom McDougal's column had been tormenting for the past several weeks. Their drunken confrontation in a bar leads to gunfire, which gets Alicia shot in the leg through the wall. Martha is rushed to the hospital for an emergency caesarean section due to uterine hemorrhaging. Alicia is brought to the same hospital and has a change of heart. She calls the ''Sun'' office, has the print room stop the run, and the headline is corrected to Henry's suggestion, "They Didn't Do It", with McDougal's story, just in time for the following morning's circulation. The movie ends with Martha giving birth to a healthy baby boy, and a morning news radio report states that because of the ''Sun'' s exclusive story, the Brooklyn teens were released from jail with no charges pressed.
In the following table, the chapter number (#), chapter name and original magazine date of publication, and a brief synopsis are given. The nine stories are grouped into three parts.
The story of ''The Third Eye'' begins in Tibet during the reign of the 13th Dalai Lama. Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, the son of a Lhasa aristocrat, takes up theological studies and is soon recognised for his prodigious abilities. As he enters adolescence, the young Rampa undertakes increasingly challenging feats until he is recognised as a crucial asset to the future of an independent Tibet. Tibet's Lamas had foretold a future in which China would attempt to reassert its authority, and Rampa is operated upon to help him preserve his country. A third eye is drilled into his forehead, allowing him to see human auras and to determine people's hidden motivations.
With his third eye, Rampa can serve as an aide in the Dalai Lama's court and spy on visitors to the court as they are being received. The visitors upon whom Rampa spies include the scholar Sir Charles Alfred Bell, deemed by Rampa as naive but benevolent. In contrast, Rampa and others are certain that Chinese visitors are nefarious and are soon to attempt to bring conquest and destruction to Tibet. Tibet must then prepare for an invasion. During the story, Rampa meets yetis, and at the end of the book he encounters a mummified body that was him in an earlier incarnation. He also takes part in an initiation ceremony in which he learns that during its early history the planet Earth was struck by another planet, causing Tibet to become the mountain kingdom that it is today. The popularity of the book led to two sequels, ''The Doctor from Lhasa'' and ''The Rampa Story'', and Lobsang Rampa wrote twenty books in all.
The story is set in post-apocalyptic Australia, around a city called the Tert. There, a bounty hunter/bodyguard named Parrish Plessis has ended up working for a ganglord called Jamon Mondo. She wants out, and her answer arrives in the form of two men wanted in connection with the killing of a journalist called Razz Retribution (In this world, the army, churches and the government have given up on the world, so it is now ruled by the media).
The story is divided between the Tert, a rundown slum reminiscent of Mega-City One, and Viva City (a pun on the word vivacity), a walled suburb some forty kilometres up the coast.
The game takes place in 2028. Caleb, the protagonist, has spent the last century since ''Blood'' searching for a way to resurrect his comrades, The Chosen, who were killed in the previous game by the Cabal, a cult dedicated to the worship of the evil god, Tchernobog. The Cabal, in the meantime, has spent the century since Tchernobog's death by Caleb's hands turning the cult into a global mega-corporation called CabalCo, which uses its economic influence to control the world's populace. This is all thanks to Gideon, the Cabal's current leader who has been raised to restore Tchernobog and destroy Caleb, now called the "Great Betrayer".
The game begins with Caleb riding a CabalCo subway train, where he discovers that Gideon is the one driving, after Gideon orders his troops to attack. Ready for a fight, Caleb pursues him through the train, which Gideon rigs to crash before escaping. After he regains consciousness, Caleb continues to chase Gideon through the city of New Town, leading to a few short encounters. He later catches up to Gideon in a CabalCo-owned museum, but before they fight, Gideon's bodyguard fires an experimental weapon creating a dimensional rift. Failing to harm Caleb, it instead brings back Gabriella, one of The Chosen, prompting Gideon and his companions to retreat.
From this point on, Caleb begins encountering strange creatures and people infested with strange mind-controlling parasites as he continues to hunt Gideon; fighting through CabalCo housing, steam tunnels, disease laboratories, and an air ship, before heading off to a Cabal controlled cathedral. Gideon is nowhere to be found and he is instead met with a giant of the creatures called the Naga, which Caleb defeats. Gabriella comes up from nearby subway tracks and probes Caleb about the creatures; Caleb has no good answer, and Gabriella expresses her doubts over Caleb's ability to handle this problem. Caleb tersely reassures her, and runs off to catch a train, which again crashes.
Caleb returns to his goal of killing Gideon, ignoring the creature problem, other than killing any encountered. After cornering Gideon in a CabalCo safe house, he is unexpectedly joined by Ishmael, another of The Chosen, after Gideon's bodyguard uses his weapon again. Gideon and his companions again escape, this time in a helicopter. After talking with Ishmael, Caleb fights his way through many CabalCo-owned institutions such as sewage and meat treatment plants and dams, as well as fighting through the subway system many times trying to get to the old underground.
Once there, he fights off a beast called a Behemoth and meets Ishmael again. During both encounters, Ishmael explains that the creatures are the inhabitants of an invading parallel universe, entering that world through tears in reality left by the death of Tchernobog, who maintained the walls separating realities, which have finally broken down due to the Cabal's experiments. Only Caleb can stop the invasion from consuming our world, as he inherited Tchernobog's power after killing the dark god. Caleb shrugs off Ishmael's concerns, not accepting his powers, and returns to hunting Gideon.
Just before he leaves, Ishmael explains the whereabouts of Ophelia – the final Chosen and Caleb's lover; she is at CabalCo headquarters in Gideon's temple, the epicentre of the rifts. Caleb proceeds there, and, after dealing with several Cabal-created obstructions such as a raised bridge, finds Ophelia. Gideon returns and carries Ophelia away before Caleb can rescue her. Angered, Caleb blasts his way through CabalCo's offices, electrical generation areas, CabalCo's R&D lab, and finally finds Gideon on the rooftops. After Caleb defeats Gideon, with Ophelia freed, Gideon retreats through a dimensional rift. Against Ophelia's advice, Caleb follows him through.
Caleb finds Gideon in an ancient temple, part of a large strange citadel, and faces his spider version. With Gideon dead, Caleb fights many of the otherworldly beings until he encounters three undead forms of his comrades. They introduce themselves as The Ancient One, the leader of the invasion. After clumsily explaining their plans, Caleb faces them, before falling and finding the being's true form. After defeating the squid-like creature, the real Chosen appear. Grudgingly, Caleb gives in to their wishes and re-binds the realities, and the four Chosen begin their long walk home.
''The Nightmare Levels'', released in August 1999, was an expansion pack for ''Blood II'' that provided background information on Caleb, Gabriella, Ishmael, and Ophelia, narrated by a deceased Gideon. As the Chosen continue to walk home to their world from the invading reality, they encounter a psychic beast known as the Nightmare that captures Caleb due to the Chosen attracting it by telling scary stories.
The player then has to relive some of the most horrific moments of the Chosen's lives – Caleb fighting the Cabal in the frozen north (''Blood'', episode two), the Cabal attack on Ophelia's sorority which led her to join, Ishmael's escape from his life as a circus freak into the Cabal, and Gabriella's spooky night in a haunted house.
Caleb pops in at the end of each of the other Chosen's stories, and tries to figure out what is going on. After Gabriella's nightmare, he is transported to a level resembling the old west, which he escapes back out into the otherworld. There he finds the Nightmare, surmises that it is the being responsible for his troubles, and slays it. Gideon finishes with an end narration, foretelling the Chosen's many adventures and conquests ahead of them.
''The Nightmare Levels'' reintroduced the Robed Cultist enemies from the original game, added the Gremlins enemies and the Nightmare boss, CabalCo cultists re-skinned as killer clown guards, and two new weapons – the combat shotgun and the flayer. The game also added new multiplayer (BloodBath) models (CabalCo cultists, Soul Drudges, etc.) and modes (such as "Zombie Head Soccer").
Three years after his previous defeat by Crash in ''Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex'', Doctor Neo Cortex returns to the Wumpa Islands to exact revenge on Crash. Cortex incapacitates Crash's sister, Coco, and impersonates her to lure Crash into a trap. After Crash's victory against Cortex and his Mecha-Bandicoot, Cortex and Crash are both sent plummeting down a hole and land in a cave. Enraged by his defeat, Cortex attacks Crash, and the pair engage in a prolonged fight across the cave. Upon returning to the surface, Crash and Cortex encounter a pair of interdimensional parrots named the Evil Twins, who plan to destroy the Wumpa Islands and steal Cortex's brain. After Cortex pleads for Crash's help, he is spontaneously attacked by bees and finds himself captured by Papu Papu and his subordinate tribesmen after stumbling into their territory. Crash rescues Cortex from captivity and escapes a pursuing mob of tribesmen. Crash and Cortex have another encounter with the Evil Twins, who bring a deity statue to life to attack the pair. Cortex, having learned that the Evil Twins come from the Tenth Dimension, concocts a plan and beckons Crash to his antarctic lair.
Crash and Cortex attempt to enter the Iceberg Lair through the front entrance, but the door is frozen shut, forcing the pair to take an alternate path inside. They inadvertently free Uka Uka in the process, who attacks them with a giant body formed from ice. Uka Uka is convinced by his twin brother Aku Aku to join forces and attack the Evil Twins themselves, but both are easily defeated. Cortex introduces the Psychetron, a device that will allow travel to the Tenth Dimension, but requires Power Crystals to function. Crash uses Cortex as an impromptu snowboard in an attempt to reach Doctor N. Gin's battleship and gather the Power Crystals, and destroys Dingodile's shack in the process. Crash's venture through the battleship eventually results in an explosion of a cache of TNT crates, which sinks the ship and propels Crash into a confrontation with Doctors Nefarious Tropy and Nitrus Brio on a distant ice floe. Crash returns to the Iceberg Lair with Cortex, where the latter is attacked by a recovered Coco, who believes that Cortex kidnapped Crash. Coco's assault sends two of the Power Crystals flying into the Psychetron, which damages the machine and paralyzes Coco in a chain reaction. Crash and Cortex set a course for Madame Amberley's Academy of Evil in the hopes of recruiting Cortex's niece Nina to assist in repairing the Psychetron.
Crash and Cortex sneak into the Academy through the sewer system, where they fend off an attack from Dingodile. After Cortex finds Nina and has an encounter with Madame Amberley, he recalls the origin of the Evil Twins; when Cortex was an 8-year-old student in the Academy, he used his two pet parrots Victor and Moritz as test subjects for a prototype of his Evolvo-Ray, but the experiment resulted in the parrots being transported to the Tenth Dimension, where they would be mutated by the environment's severe "reverso-radioactivity". The trio return to the Iceberg Lair, repair the Psychetron and travel to the Tenth Dimension to face the Evil Twins. Upon their arrival, Nina is kidnapped by an evil doppelganger of Crash and taken to his desolate home on Twinsanity Island. After cornering Evil Crash, Cortex valiantly offers himself in Nina's stead, which leads to a chase. Crash, Cortex and Nina escape Evil Crash and make their way to the Evil Twins' compound, where Cortex confronts the Evil Twins and commands them back into their cage. The Evil Twins transform their cage into a giant robot and engage in a final battle with the trio. The Evil Twins are defeated and flee the compound, only to be devoured by Evil Crash when they take refuge in his home. After the trio return to their own dimension, Cortex attempts to eliminate Crash, but the malfunctioning Psychetron teleports Cortex into Crash's mind, where he is trapped with a crowd of dancing Crash duplicates.
Marsha Robinson (Dyan Cannon) is a famous TV personality and has her own lifestyle and cooking show. Together with her husband Doug (Martin Mull), a dentist, her daughter Jane (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and her son Roger (Ryan O'Donohue) she lives in Beverly Hills. Marsha's TV show takes her and her family to Hawaii. When the Robinsons arrive in Honolulu their yacht is captured by 'modern pirates' at night and when they wake up in the morning they find themselves and their unbidden guests on the open sea. But being the Robinsons they trick the pirates and leave them behind in a lifeboat.
When things finally seemed to be good and the Robinsons try to sail to the next harbor, the yacht gets into a storm and the family shipwrecks on a deserted island. Of course, Marsha Robinson - being a socialite - freaks out and threatens her husband with a nervous breakdown if they aren't saved within the next 45 minutes and the rest of the family isn't fond of their situation either. But nobody saves them and nobody knows where they are. So there's nothing to do but settle in, survive and build a tree house.
Life on the island turns into routine, although Marsha films herself while giving statements about her family's miserable situation after the shipwreck - just in case they'll be saved and she has footage for TV shows.
Meanwhile the pirates have been stranded on the island, too, which the Robinsons do not know. The island also has an inhabitant, a shipwrecked surfer named Digger, who secretly eats all of Marsha's chocolates. The Robinsons get to know him when Doug has an underwater-accident and needs to be saved by a good swimmer. Jane falls in love with him. He helps the Robinsons finish their treehouse and becomes a member of the family.
The pirates discover the Robinsons and now the Robinsons need to struggle with the unbidden guests once again.
The plot revolves around a young boy named Travis (nicknamed "Tee") who learns from his master that he is the key to saving the world from an evil plot. Tee joins the secret organization of the Delta Knights and embarks on a quest to attempt to recover the lost treasures inside the fabled Lost Storehouse of Archimedes. The plot is markedly similar to that of Robert Heinlein's ''Citizen of the Galaxy'', including its essentially identical setup of a young slave boy—who is really the lost heir of a powerful family—being bought for a pittance by a seeming beggar, who is himself really a spy, and who suspects the boy's true identity.
In 2003, the controversial megacorporation ''Chaank Armaments'' is the world's leading manufacturer of cutting-edge weapons and military hardware. A cybernetically-enhanced supersoldier, codenamed "Hard Man", malfunctions and massacres the patrons of a roadside diner before being detained by security operatives led by John Carpenter. Public outcry ensues following the incident, the majority of complaints directed at the company's new chief executive Hayden Cale.
Chairman of the Board Scott Ridley, fearful of the potential termination of Chaank's contracts due to the bad publicity, tries to cover up the incident and numerous issues with ''Project: Hard Man'' itself. Cale demands immediate and full public disclosure, having purposely leaked a number of top-secret documents to the press in defiance of Ridley's attempts to suppress knowledge about his shadier activities. She also demands for Jack Dante, a deranged weapon designer and lead developer of ''Project: Hard Man'', to be fired. Despite Carpenter's acknowledgement of the project's numerous fatal flaws, the board simply ignores Cale's requests, no one seeming to care about her interests except for Dante himself. Cale is warned by a junior executive about Dante's unstable behavior and the fate of Nicholson, her late predecessor. Cale goes to confront him, demanding to know about Dante's secret project in Vault 10, for which he never submits progress reports on. Far from cooperative, he instead threatens Cale. Dante blackmails her with detailed knowledge of Cale's living situation, place of residence, and personal information. Cale asks Ridley for help, but he refuses while telling her that Nicholson took a similar interest in Dante's work. However, he was killed in a mysterious accident believed to have been an animal mauling. During their confrontation, Cale manages to lift Ridley's access card so she can investigate on her own. Dante learns that Cale has the card and confronts Ridley, subsequently killing him with a mysterious weapon.
Meanwhile, a trio of eco-warriors (Raimi, Weyland, and Yutani) infiltrate the Chaank headquarters in order to destroy its digitally-stored assets and send the company into bankruptcy. Carpenter calls Cale after finding Ridley's mutilated corpse which had an implanted life-sign transmitter. She investigates Ridley's death and discovers that whatever killed him came from Vault 10. Taking matters into her own hands, she terminates Dante's employment and seals the vault. Dante is about to shoot her when the eco-warriors show up and take everyone hostage. They demand access to the building's secure area in order to destroy the company's digital bonds, but Cale refuses to cooperate. Raimi goes to their alternate plan to cut through the bulkhead leading to the containment area. Dante, sensing his chance, "helps" them by suggesting they cut through one of the vaults surrounding the containment instead, suggesting they start at Vault 10.
Once the vault is open, Dante jumps in and activates his invention called the Frontline Morale Destroyer (aka "Warbeast"), which promptly kills Weyland. Raimi flees, meeting up with Yutani as well as the subdued Cale and Carpenter. Dante broadcasts his demands over the monitor system, demanding that his employment be reinstated and Cale to "interface with him on a regular basis".
Raimi and Yutani cancel their operation in an attempt to escape from the building, along with Carpenter and Cale. Carpenter is killed by the Warbeast inside of a lift. Later on, Raimi, Yutani, and Cale manage to reach the top floor of the building, which holds classified items, whose existence even Cale is unaware of. Among the classified items are the primary components of ''Project: Hard Man'', including advanced weaponry and armour. Raimi suits up and downloads the Hard Man data into his brain. Fighting off the Warbeast, he manages to slow it down enough to allow an escape via an outdoor service elevator. Yutani, however, is killed by the Warbeast after hitting his head and falling in front of it. Once Raimi and Cale make it back to the surface, they have an encounter with a police officer who is quickly killed by the Warbeast as it leaped down from the rooftop. It chases Cale and Raimi back into the building. Fortunately, Raimi is able to partially incapacitate the Warbeast. However, the explosion knocks him unconscious. The machine takes Cale back to Dante. During their conversation, Raimi regains consciousness and subdues Dante. The two escape, and Hayden traps Dante inside of Vault 10 with his own Warbeast. A closing shot of Vault 10's reinforced door implies that Dante is now being hunted by his creation.
The story is very short, only three pages in length, and takes the form of Mike Donovan's account of an incident that occurred on Titan, one of Saturn's moons. He tells of a malfunctioning robot named Emma that escaped from the base and was later encountered by Donovan while he was lost during a storm. While Donovan's life was in danger, Emma chose to protect its offspring, a small robot that it had built, instead of assisting him. This was a direct violation of the First Law of Robotics, which states that "a robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm". Apparently, maternal instincts in the robot took precedence over its programming.
While such direct disobedience of the First Law is not described in any other robot story by Asimov, he points out that the story is told by Donovan, who may be an unreliable narrator. Asimov admits that "I was being funny at the expense of my robots". In ''The Complete Robot'', he also points out that this story is intended as a parody and is not to be taken seriously.
At the novella's beginning, the protagonist, Bev Jones, confronts the death of his wife. She was in a hospital when it caught fire. As the firemen's union was striking, the hospital burned to the ground. Bev is left alone with his daughter Bessie, who is thirteen years old but sexually precocious and unable to comprehend the difference between reality and fantasy, due to a thalidomide-like drug taken by her pregnant mother.
The death of his wife engenders in Bev a deep-seated hostility towards the union system – her last words were, "Don't let them get away with it". This is, however, not the first time Bev has been opposed to it, for he had previously been a history lecturer who stepped down as his work was considered expendable by the union-based system which favoured education of practical value.
Employed as a confectioner, he goes to work one day despite his union being on strike. For working during a strike, his union membership is revoked, making him effectively unemployable. Knowing that he will soon lose his home, he takes Bessie to a state-run facility where she will be cared for with other girls like herself.
Bev then becomes something of a vagrant, travelling around London and falling in with a group of similarly unemployable dissenters. With these, he engages in petty theft from shops to survive. Apprehended during one such sortie, he is sentenced to re-education at a state institution, which is neither a prison nor a psychiatric hospital, but contains elements of both.
At the re-education centre, Bev is subjected to propaganda films and lectures, which have the aim of converting him into a useful member of society (a theme which Burgess also examines in ''A Clockwork Orange)''. He meets the powerful union official Pettigrew, who warns Bev that his day is over and that Syndicalism is the future of Britain. Despite this, Bev is unconverted and – having served his sentence – leaves as a free man.
Having been informed that Bessie will be ejected from the care facility because he refuses to recant his beliefs, he returns to London. In need of an income and a place to live, he joins a network called ''The Free Britons'', which aims to provide infrastructure and order during the increasing strike-related chaos sweeping Britain. Bev effectively sells his daughter as a wife to a wealthy sheik, who takes a fancy to her during a visit to the Al-Dorchester, reasoning that at least this way she will be safe and satisfied. Meanwhile, he discovers that ''The Free Britons'' is a front for an Islamic group aiming at the re-establishment of Britain as a Muslim state.
Bev, because of his education, is employed as the mouthpiece of the Free Britons and called upon to report on the events of the general strike. He is frustrated when his work is censored by the leader, a man known as Colonel Lawrence. The spreading strike action reaches fever pitch and becomes a general strike, reported to the reader mostly in diary form. Charles III takes command of the country as it grinds to a halt. A few months after the strike, Bev is arrested again and sentenced to life in a secure institution, which again is neither prison nor hospital. The only way out of this facility is to be retrieved by a family member.
There, he revives his teaching career by giving informal history lessons to other prisoners. As the years stretch on, his syllabus (which had started with Anglo Saxon England) passes through the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and approaches the late 20th century.
Snippets of news often circulate among the inmates, some of which suggest that the Muslim conversion of Britain is well-advanced (for example, it is claimed that inhabitants of the Isle of Man have recently discovered that a stimulant-depressant drug has been replacing alcohol in their beer for several years, in line with Muslim prohibitions). There is however no way in which the inmates can verify whether these news items are correct.
Bev finds it increasingly difficult to explain the continuity of history in terms of the present. Unable to do so, Bev suggests that they can start over again and work their way back to the present, after which his class spontaneously dismisses itself. Alone at night, Bev slips out of the dormitory in which he sleeps, creeps out into the grounds of the institution, and kills himself by deliberately touching the electric fence.
Quark gives Kira a Bajoran earring, which she immediately recognizes as belonging to Li Nalas, a Bajoran war hero long thought dead. Li is being held on the desert planet Cardassia IV, so Kira requests a runabout for a rescue mission. Sisko tells her he will consider it, but while he considers the matter, O'Brien discovers graffiti from an extremist faction called "The Circle", who want to expel all non-Bajorans from Bajor. Seeing this convinces Sisko that Bajor needs a leader like Li Nalas and he grants Kira the runabout.
Kira and O'Brien, disguising their runabout as a Lesseppian transport, travel to Cardassia IV and discover a labor camp with more than a dozen Bajorans. O'Brien pretends to solicit Kira to one of the soldiers, tricking him into lowering the force field that surrounds the camp. They rescue Li and several other prisoners. Before Kira and O'Brien return to DS9, Gul Dukat contacts Sisko to inform him that the Cardassian government has issued a formal apology and that the remaining prisoners are en route to Bajor. Bajor's provisional government, on the other hand, chastises Kira, because her actions might have resulted in war with Cardassia.
DS9's Bajoran population greets Li Nalas as a returning hero. Sisko and Kira urge him to help bring stability to Bajor, but shortly thereafter Li is caught trying to stow-away on a departing freighter. He relates to a puzzled Sisko that he never wanted to be a hero; he killed an unarmed Cardassian out of necessity in a purely chance encounter, and his fellow Bajorans eventually turned him into a legend. Sisko convinces Li to stay, because Bajor needs a legend like him.
After a trip to Bajor, Li Nalas returns with Minister Jaro Essa of the provisional government. The Chamber of Ministers has invented a new title for Li: "Navarch." However, the title means little; seeing Li as a threat to their power, the politicians have made him liaison officer to DS9 and "promoted" Kira to Bajor, where they believe she can pose them no more danger.
Kira Nerys has been relieved of her position as Bajoran liaison officer on Deep Space Nine, and her friends Odo, Dax, Bashir, O'Brien, and even Quark come to her quarters to say farewell. Vedek Bareil is the last to arrive; he invites Kira to visit his monastery on Bajor. She accepts and, reminiscing, realizes how much she hated her position as liaison officer a year ago and how much she cherishes it now. Li Nalas, who is to replace her, reassures her and Sisko that he did not want the job and that he knows no one can replace Kira.
On Bajor, Kira and Bareil grow close and Bareil allows Kira to consult one of the Bajoran Orbs for guidance. She has a vision that includes her and Bareil as lovers, which she conceals from him. Meanwhile, on Deep Space Nine, Quark has heard that the Kressari are arming the xenophobic "Circle" movement, so Odo blackmails him to find out more. After conducting several searches of a Kressari freighter, Dax and O'Brien conclude that there is no evidence of foul play. The freighter departs with Odo assuming the form of a rat and stowing away.
Sisko visits the commander of the Bajoran militia, General Krim, and becomes convinced that the military will not stop the Circle's coup. While on Bajor, he also visits Kira. Shortly after he leaves, however, several masked members of the Circle kidnap her. Bajoran politician Jaro Essa reveals to Kira that he is the true force behind the Circle. He solicits her help, but while she has no love for the provisional government, she tells Jaro that votes, not weapons, are the way to change a government. Quark eventually learns where Kira is from his "contacts". Sisko and the others mount a rescue mission and take her back to the station.
Odo returns, reporting that the Cardassians are arming the Circle through the Kressari in an attempt to force the Federation off Bajor, allowing Cardassia to reconquer it. Unfortunately, by the time this is revealed all communication between Deep Space Nine and Bajor has been cut off.
Jaro goes to Vedek Winn, seeking her support as a spiritual leader in order to legitimize his coup. Several Bajoran assault vessels approach DS9, ordering all non-Bajorans to evacuate. Sisko seeks Starfleet's help, but his superiors order him to comply with the evacuation order. Regardless, Sisko and the crew refuse to give up without a fight.
Bajoran assault vessels approach Deep Space Nine as part of a military coup against the Bajoran government led by the xenophobic "Circle" movement. Sisko announces that he is evacuating the station's civilian population and anyone who wishes to leave; the entire crew volunteers to stay with him and fight. Li Nalas calms the flood of civilian passengers by inspiring courage in his fellow Bajorans. Quark ends up left on the station when a scheme to make money buying and selling seats on the evacuation ships backfires.
Once the Bajoran forces arrive, there is no sign of Federation presence; however, General Krim suspects Federation personnel are still aboard. Coup leader Jaro Essa orders Krim to capture Li Nalas alive, convinced that he can bribe Li into joining the Circle. Krim's soldiers begin a search of the station; security chief Odo uses his shape-shifting abilities to help the crew avoid detection.
Kira and Dax are sent to bring evidence that the Cardassians are backing the Circle to Bajor. Dropped off on a moon where the Bajorans stored a number of small starfighters during the occupation, they manage to get one of the craft working and fly to Bajor. Their ship is shot down by Bajoran fighters and they crash.
Sisko and the crew trap a group led by Krim's second-in-command, Colonel Day, in a holosuite. Sisko informs the soldiers about Cardassian involvement with the Circle and releases Day to pass the information to Krim, but the colonel instead tells Krim that the Federation is attempting to wrest control of DS9 from the Bajorans. A scan for Federation communicator signals reveals that they are hiding in the conduits, and Odo informs Sisko that the soldiers intend to flood the conduits with gas. Part of the crew distracts the bulk of the Bajoran forces, after which Li and Sisko capture Krim in an attempt to reason with him.
Although Kira was injured in the crash, Dax gets her to Vedek Bareil's monastery. She and Kira disguise themselves as clerics to travel to the Chamber of Ministers. Once there, Kira confronts the ministers with proof of Cardassian involvement. Upon learning of the Cardassian involvement, Krim gives control of DS9 back to Sisko and goes down to Bajor to resign. However, Colonel Day attempts to assassinate Sisko in revenge; Li Nalas steps in the way of Day's weapon blast and is killed; Day is put under arrest. Later, Sisko tells Chief O'Brien that Li was a hero of the resistance and that is the way he will remember him.
Tomás returns to Mexico after a seven-year trip around the world to visit his friends Carlos and Ana, a couple going through relationship problems. Ana is seduced by Tomás, who is also her ex-boyfriend, which causes Carlos to kick Tomás out of their home. Although instead of Tomás leaving, Ana leaves and moves across the street to the apartment of their friends Miguel and Andrea, another couple going through problems. The situation becomes a ''battle of the sexes'' when Miguel is kicked-out for cheating on Andrea and sent to live with the "guys" across the street and María, their friend, joins the "girls" in a boycott against all men. Tomas then has a fling with Andrea and gets caught in the act. After seeing the emptiness of his life, punctuated with him making a scene at a local nightclub, Tomas declares his love for Ana before apparently committing suicide by walking into an elevator shaft.
In the Region 4 DVD version, several alternate final scenes are explored, including Tomas surviving the fall and emerging in a full body cast.
Peter "Junior" Potter has graduated from Harvard and heads west to the western town of Sawbuck Pass to claim his father's fortune. Driving into town in a jalopy, wearing a comical plaid suit, he splashes mud all over a crowd of townspeople. He discovers to his horror that practically everyone in town claims to be owed money by his father, and that his father's treasure chest is empty.
Strutting around town in his dramatic red and white striped Harvard blazer, Junior stalls the townfolk for as long as he can, continually making allusions to his wealth. An old-timer, Eb, convinces him the gold does exist, but it is hidden.
In the saloon, he makes the acquaintance of a singing cowboy named Roy and a sexy saloon performer with the masculine name of Mike, who has to fend off Junior's persistent advances. In the bar, Mike and Roy sing "Buttons and Bows" while Potter raps about Harvard.
Junior tries to romance Mike and she drugs him. While he is asleep, she assumes her alter ego of "the Torch" and leads her gang in a night time raid. Junior provides a perfect alibi. The townsfolk have sabotaged Junior's car, but he improvises and adds cart wheels to escape the town. He drives across the desert with two vultures hitching a ride. He goes to the ghost town of Sterling City. He finds Eb dead in a barber's chair. Roy arrives and accuses him of murder. Junior disguises himself as Roy to try to escape on Trigger. Roy is a government agent with a Smith & Wesson Model 320 Revolving Rifle hidden in his guitar case, bent on capturing her.
The town is attacked by Indians. Junior is at first too scared to fight and Roy fights alone. Paleface's ghost appears and convinces him that Hell is fine. He grabs a gun and starts firing. Firing from the barber's chair, it starts to spin with shots going in random directions. One shot hits a moose head, where his father's gold begins to pour out. Mike arrives and helps in the fight. Mike and Junior escape on his improvised car.
Roy fights the gang in their hideout in an abandoned mine. With a bit of accidental help from Junior, they win the fight.
Junior is waiting for Mike when she comes out of prison (with four Junior Juniors). They say goodbye to Roy as Trigger has a triumphant rear-up silhouetted against the sunset.
Three women in their early 20s, Margo, Kelly, and Cece, are roommates living in Los Angeles working menial jobs by day, and by night they enjoy the vibrant and decadent nightlife of the city.
Margo has a boring job in telemarketing, Cece gets fired from her job at a department store, while Kelly works in a pet store and is very good at selling pets, mainly thanks to her looks.
It is Friday night and the women are getting ready for a night out on the town. However, Margo and Cece soon discover that Kelly has taken Margo's car to go meet a DJ she's infatuated with.
Luckily, Kelly's date for the night, Clifford, one of her many infatuated customers, arrives to pick her up, so Margo and Cece hitch a ride with him to go to the club where the DJ is working. Cliffie (as Cece calls him) reluctantly tags along a rollercoaster ride with them and learns how the women usually spend their nights out.
Meeting rock star Bruno X, surviving a police raid, getting dumped by DJ Brad, taking a trip on ecstasy, escaping from crazed fans and a run-in with a sexual criminal are some of the situations the group gets themselves into.
The action takes place in a London hotel overlooking Hyde Park in a series of four plays:
*''Settling Accounts'' Brian Cronin and Billy Fox. Brian is a successful Welsh novelist; Billy is his manager, whom Brian has caught in the process of running off with all his money. In the film, this pair was changed to Debra and Paul Dolby, a newlywed couple from New York City who are on their honeymoon. Paul has disappeared after the couple had an argument on the plane, and now Debra is caught in a chain of increasingly ridiculous lies when she runs into his relatives at the hotel who are holding a welcoming party for the two of them.
''Going Home'' Sharon and Lauren Semple. A mother and daughter on a shopping trip. Lauren convinces her mother to go on a date with an elderly man they had just met, even though Sharon is heavily against it. While at dinner with the man, she is puzzled by his rather eccentric mannerisms.
''Diana and Sidney'' Sidney and Diana Nichols. A divorced couple: she is an actress, and he is living with his male lover. Now he claims he needs money from her to help pay the medical bills for his partner who is dying from lung cancer. The pair are based on characters from ''California Suite'', played in the 1978 film by Michael Caine and Maggie Smith.
''The Man on the Floor'' Mark and Anne Ferris. An American couple who are in London to see the Wimbledon Championships. Their plans are put on hold, however, when Anne loses the tickets, Mark's back gives out, leaving him immobile and in pain on the hotel floor, and they are asked to move because they have accidentally been given Kevin Costner's suite.
With the exception of Sidney and Diana's storyline (and Brian and Billy's in the play), the plots are largely comedic.
Aspiring teenage musician Anna Coleman lives with her widowed therapist mother, Tess, and younger brother, Harry. Tess is about to marry her fiancé, Ryan, whom Anna has not entirely accepted because her own father died three years earlier.
At school, Anna's English teacher, Mr. Elton Bates, treats her unfairly, giving her an F on every assignment regardless of how well she does. She is also feuding with Stacey Hinkhouse, her former best friend-turned-nemesis. Anna has a crush on a school staff member, Jake, of whom her mother disapproves. Anna plays guitar in a band, Pink Slip, which is scheduled to audition for a spot in Wango Tango at the House of Blues, the same night as the wedding rehearsal, so Tess forbids Anna from going. At a dinner at Pei-Pei's Chinese restaurant, the two get into a heated argument. Pei-Pei's mother interrupts their quarrel by giving them fortune cookies. They both go into separate rooms, read their fortunes aloud, and immediately feel an intense earthquake to which the rest of the restaurant is oblivious.
The next morning, Anna and Tess wake up in each other's bodies. "Anna" (Tess in her daughter's body) goes to school and begins to fully understand her daughter's woes. She experiences bullying from Stacey and recognizes Mr. Bates as an old high school classmate, realizing that he is treating Anna unfairly as revenge for Tess turning down a prom invitation from him. "Anna" threatens Mr. Bates with reporting him to the school board unless his treatment of Anna stops. Meanwhile, "Tess" (Anna in her mother’s body), after giving her new body a makeover, has difficulty handling the patients. At lunchtime, "Anna" and "Tess" return to the restaurant, but Pei-Pei explains that only showing selfless love for each other will cause the switch to be reversed.
"Tess" attends Harry's parent-teacher conference, where she reads a composition about how much he actually admires Anna, and decides to be nicer to him. "Anna" attempts to make amends with Stacey, but Stacey frames her for cheating on a test and "Anna" gets sent to detention. When Jake notices "Anna" sneaking out of detention, he offers to help her finish the test. Jake takes "Anna" to the file room in the teachers' lounge and she realizes that she misjudged him, but he loses his enamoration towards "Anna" after she sabotages Stacey's test by erasing most of the answers and writing "I'M STUPID!" on it. Ryan surprises "Tess" with a talk show interview to discuss her latest psychology book. To disguise the fact that she hasn't read the book, "Tess" goes into an amusing tirade about getting older. "Anna" and Jake watch the interview on television and while she is embarrassed, he is impressed. "Tess" bumps into Jake at his second job, a coffee shop, and they bond over their favorite music.
At the rehearsal dinner, Anna's friends Maddie and Peg, two of her bandmates, try to convince "Anna" to sneak off to the audition, but they are caught by security. Ryan surprisingly gives "Anna" permission to go, explaining that he just wants the kids to accept him, and urges "Tess" to support the band, finally winning her over. Since "Anna" cannot play, "Tess" plays the guitar backstage while "Anna" only pretends to play. Realizing her daughter is indeed musically talented, "Anna" promises to treat her daughter's band with more respect, and during the show, Jake becomes enamored with "Anna" again upon seeing her perform.
Back at the rehearsal dinner, "Anna" tells "Tess" to ask Ryan to postpone the wedding, so that her daughter will not have to marry him in her mother's body. Instead, "Tess" proposes a toast, finally accepting Ryan because of how happy he makes her mom. This act of selfless love switches back Anna's and Tess' bodies. Tess and Ryan later marry, she and Anna finally reconcile, realizing how tough their lives are, and Tess allows Anna to start dating Jake.
At the wedding, Pei-Pei notices her mother offering Anna's grandfather, Alan, and Harry two fortune cookies after seeing them argue. She immediately rushes over, tackles them both, and grabs the cookies. During the credits, Anna is playing with her band at Ryan's and Tess's wedding.
In 1986, Nick Parker and Elizabeth James meet on the ''Queen Elizabeth 2'', fall in love and get married. Soon, they give birth to twins named Hallie and Annie. Shortly after the twins' birth, Nick and Elizabeth divorce with Nick being given custody over Hallie and raising her in California where he owns his own vineyard. Meanwhile, Elizabeth raises Annie in London where she works as a wedding gown designer.
11 years and 9 months later in the year 1998, the twins are coincidentally sent to the same summer camp where they form an intense rivalry. When Hallie and her friends perform a dangerous prank on Annie's cabin, Hallie and Annie are sent to the isolation cabin where they begin to bond over some of their common interests. When they realize each has a divorced parent, they show one another a photograph of the parents with whom they have never met and discover they are twins who were separated at birth. They decide to switch places to get their parents to meet again and get back together; each girl trains the other to be like her.
In London, Hallie happily meets Elizabeth, the family butler Martin and her maternal grandfather. She learns that Elizabeth and Nick met on a cruise line and fell in love. Meanwhile, in California, Annie meets Nick and their family nanny, Chessy. Much to her dismay, she learns that Nick has fallen in love with a young woman named Meredith Blake who only has an interest in Nick's fortune. Annie phones Hallie and attempts to persuade her to bring their mother to California to try and break up Nick and Meredith but Hallie refuses.
Chessy, meanwhile, has noticed that "Hallie" has changed a lot; Annie reveals her identity, but Chessy keeps this a secret. Nick informs Annie that he is marrying Meredith, much to Annie's dismay. In a phone conversation, Annie informs Hallie of the upcoming wedding between Nick and Meredith. However, Hallie is discovered by her grandfather, who forces her to tell her mother that she is in fact Hallie, not Annie. Elizabeth and Hallie decide that they need to travel to California to agree on joint custody of the twins between each parent.
Annie and Hallie both arrange with Martin and Chessy for a meeting between Nick and Elizabeth at the Stafford Hotel in California, although only Elizabeth is aware of this. Elizabeth and Nick are reunited and Nick happily realizes that he has had Annie with him since the camp. Elizabeth also meets Meredith and learns that she and Nick will be getting married. Annie and Hallie attempt to recreate the night where their parents met by arranging dinner on a yacht. Nick and Elizabeth agree that Hallie will go to London over Christmas and Annie will spend Easter in California, but decide against resuming their relationship, with Elizabeth planning to fly back to London with Annie the next day. However, the two twins refuse to reveal which one is which unless the four of them go on a camping trip together. Elizabeth insists that Meredith go in her place, wanting her to get to know the girls before she marries Nick.
The girls play a series of pranks on Meredith, including putting a lizard on her head and filling her insect repellant with sugar and water. When the girls place her mattress on a lake, Meredith is furious and vows to get rid of them, demanding that Nick chooses between her and them. Finally seeing Meredith's true nature, Nick chooses the girls over her, causing dismayed Meredith to break off the engagement and call off the wedding. On returning home, Nick is somewhat relieved to be free of Meredith. He shows Elizabeth his wine collection which includes wine they drank at their wedding. The two realize they are still in love, but decide to go their separate ways with the twin they have custody of.
Elizabeth and Annie arrive back in London. They are stunned to find Nick and Hallie, who flew to London via Concorde. Nick reveals he feels bad about not going after Elizabeth the first time. The two finally kiss, signifying their intention to resume their marriage. The end credits show photographs from their wedding which also takes place on the QE2 with Hallie and Annie as bridesmaids and Chessy and Martin getting engaged.
Introverted geek Clifford Skridlow (Dan Aykroyd) is a professor of comparative literature at the financially strapped Monroe College in Chicago.
Smooth Walker (Howard Hesseman), a pimp, owes $80,000 to "Mom" (Kate Murtagh), a gruff Chicago mob boss. Attempting to weasel out of his debt, Smooth invents a fictitious mobster, the flamboyant "Doctor Detroit", a ruthless chiropractor who allegedly is overrunning Smooth's turf. Smooth sees Clifford out to dinner alone at a restaurant, and decides to enlist him to pose as the "Doctor." Smooth and his girls Monica (Donna Dixon), Jasmine (Lydia Lei), Karen (Fran Drescher), and Thelma (Lynn Whitfield), party with Clifford and give him the best night of his life. The next morning, during a faculty meeting, Clifford gets a phone call from the girls and learns about their troubles with Mom, that Smooth has skipped town, and that according to Smooth, they are now Clifford's girls. Clifford agrees to assume the persona of Doctor Detroit in an effort to help them out of their jam.
Meanwhile, Monroe College anticipates a corporate endowment from Rousehorn Consolidated Industries to be presented by its CEO, Harmon Rousehorn (Andrew Duggan). If the contribution is large enough, it will allow the college to remain open.
While Clifford is teaching classes, grading papers, catering a faculty party and assisting in hosting the visiting CEO, his Doctor Detroit alter ego has to find a way to get Thelma out of a solicitation charge, hold Mom at bay, and appear at the Players Ball to be proclaimed the new King of the Pimps while simultaneously appearing at Monroe College's annual Alumni Dinner. When Mom shows up at the Players Ball, she figures out that Doctor Detroit and Professor Skridlow are one and the same, and duels him with sword-length kebab skewers in front of the assembled academics. Mom is defeated, and the two functions combine into one joyous, spectacular party, as the ultimate fates of all are revealed, including Clifford's marriage to Karen.
Thousands of years ago, the planet Cybertron was consumed by a civil war between the two Transformer factions, the Autobots led by Optimus Prime and the Decepticons led by Megatron. The Autobots want to find the All Spark, the source of all Cybertronian life, so they can use it to rebuild Cybertron and end the war between the Autobots and the Decepticons, while the Decepticons want to use it to defeat the Autobots and conquer the universe. Megatron found the All Spark on Earth, but crash-landed in the Arctic Circle and was frozen in the ice. Captain Archibald Witwicky and his crew of explorers stumble upon Megatron's body in 1897. Captain Witwicky accidentally activates Megatron's navigational system, causing his eyeglasses to be imprinted with the coordinates of the All Spark's location. Sector 7, a secret United States government organization, discovers the All Spark in the Colorado river and builds the Hoover Dam around it to mask its energy emissions. The still-frozen Megatron is moved into this facility and is reverse engineered to advance human technology.
In the present day, the Decepticons—Blackout, Scorponok, Frenzy, Barricade, Starscream, Brawl and Bonecrusher—have landed on Earth and assumed the disguise of Earth vehicles plus have setup a conspiracy. Blackout and Scorponok attack the U.S. SOCCENT military base in Qatar and try to hack into the U.S. military network to find the location of Megatron and the All Spark. Their mission is thwarted when the base staff severs the network cable connections. While Blackout destroys the rest of the base, Scorponok chases a small group of survivors who have photographic evidence of the robots, but he is eventually repelled. During this battle, the military discovers its only effective weapons against the Transformers' armor are high-heat sabot rounds.
After Blackout's failure, Frenzy infiltrates Air Force One to try again to hack into the military network, and in doing so plants a virus, before he is cut off at the last second. He finds the map imprinted on Captain Witwicky's glasses, whose descendant, Sam Witwicky, intends to sell on eBay. Frenzy and Barricade begin tracking Sam's location. The Autonomous Robotic Organism (shortened to "Autobot") Bumblebee is also on Earth, disguised as a 1976 Chevrolet Camaro, and is bought by Sam while shopping for his first car. Bumblebee helps him woo his crush, Mikaela Banes. Bumblebee leaves at night to transmit a homing signal to the rest of the Autobots and Sam sees him in robot mode. Barricade confronts Sam and demands Archibald's spectacles, but Bumblebee rescues him and Mikaela. After Bumblebee upgrades his vehicle form by scanning a 2006 Chevrolet Camaro, they leave to rendezvous with the rest of the Autobots: Optimus Prime, Jazz, Ironhide, and Ratchet—who have landed on Earth and taken the forms of Earth vehicles as well. Sam, Mikaela, and the Autobots return to Sam's home and obtain the glasses. Soon special agents from Sector 7 arrive and capture Sam, Mikaela, and Bumblebee.
Frenzy, disguised as a mobile phone, secretly accompanies the group to Hoover Dam and releases Megatron from his frozen state. Locating the All Spark, Frenzy sends an alert to the other Decepticons. While at the base, Agent Simmons shows everyone in on this that they have had precise contact with the "Transformers" and that the Decpticon's have formed a conspiracy to free Megatron and eliminate humanity. He demonstrates the All Spark's capabilities by transferring its raw energy into a cell phone, bringing it to life, but is forced to kill it when it becomes too violent. Sam later convinces the Sector 7 to release Bumblebee so that he can get the All Spark, which he shrinks to handheld size, to Optimus Prime. Frenzy's virus has shut down government communications, but a pair of hackers manage to establish a signal to the Air Force. The Autobot-human convoy goes to nearby Mission City to obtain a radio that will guide the Air Force's defense and secure a rendezvous point as a safe destination for All Spark. The Decepticons attack and Bonecrusher, Frenzy, Jazz, Brawl, and Blackout are all killed during the ensuing battle, but Sam manages to ram the All Spark into Megatron's chest, killing Megatron and destroying the All Spark. Optimus takes a fragment of the All Spark from Megatron's corpse, but realizes that with its destruction, their homeworld Cybertron cannot be restored. The US government decommissions Sector 7 and has the corpses of the defeated Decepticons dumped into the Laurentian Abyss. As Sam and Mikaela begin a relationship and Optimus sends a signal to other surviving Autobots directing them to Earth, Starscream escapes into space.
"If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth" is the story of Marvin, a child who lives in a lunar colony. One day, his father drives him across the surface to see a glimpse of Earth, glowing with lethal radiation. Marvin recalls that Earth was made uninhabitable in a nuclear war. The colony is the last vestige of mankind, but without a goal to strive for, it will die. The ultimate purpose of the colony will be to one day reclaim a cleansed Earth, for which reason the space ships still stand waiting on the lunar plain. It took individual effort to save and maintain the colony, when it had almost failed, and to provide confidence that in the distant future the colony would restore mankind's cradle.
Marvin returns with his father to resume their exile, without looking back. However he realises that one day he will take his own children to view the dead Earth and give purpose to a further generation.
When Katara was eight years old, her mother, Kya, sacrificed her life during a Fire Nation raid in order to protect Katara, since she was the only waterbender in the southern tribe. Though her interests lay in developing her waterbending skills, she resigned herself to cooking and cleaning duties while her brother, Sokka, trained to become a warrior. Three years later, Katara's father Hakoda, and the other warriors journey to the Earth Kingdom to oppose the Fire Nation, leaving Katara, Sokka, and their grandmother Kanna to look after the tribe.
The events of ''Avatar: The Last Airbender'' begins six years later, when Katara and Sokka find Aang in suspended animation and identify him as the Avatar, a messianic figure. To assist the Avatar and to further her mastery of waterbending, Katara joins Aang in his quest to reach the Northern Water Tribe and find a waterbending master, with Sokka alongside them. Upon arrival, Master Pakku refuses her apprenticeship because the customs of the Northern Water Tribe dictate that women cannot learn waterbending as a martial art, but upon noticing Katara's necklace, which he himself gave to Katara's grandmother, he agrees to teach her. Katara having achieved her own expertise, Pakku deems her sufficient to teach Aang.
Katara then accompanies Aang to the Earth Kingdom for him to learn earthbending. At an Earth Kingdom stronghold, General Fong places Katara's life in danger to induce Aang's Avatar State, but achieves only destruction. After the earthbender Toph BeiFong joins the group to teach Aang, Katara and Toph initially quarrel but thereafter become friends. In the Earth Kingdom's capital, Katara encounters antagonist Prince Zuko and his sister Azula; during the battle, Aang is injured by Azula's lightning, whereupon Katara takes him to safety and eventually mostly heals his physical wounds.
In a village burdened by the Fire Nation's pollution, Katara disguises herself as the river spirit the Painted Lady in order to help the village. While staying with the semi-reclusive Hama, the protagonists learn she is a waterbender from the Southern Tribe who was imprisoned by the Fire Nation. Later, she offers to teach Katara a waterbending technique called "bloodbending", which enables physical control of animals and humans. When Katara refuses to learn this technique, Hama uses it on Aang and Sokka, forcing Katara to use the technique herself on Hama. When Prince Zuko joins the protagonists after the Invasion fails and gains everyone's trust, he fails to do so with Katara until he assists her in finding the man who was responsible for killing her mother, during the process of which she uses bloodbending. Though deciding not to take her revenge nor forgive, she does come to terms with Zuko and accepts him as her friend.
During the four-part series finale, Katara assists Zuko in preventing Azula from becoming Fire Lord and battles her, eventually defeating her, and heals Zuko. When the war ends, she is seen in Ba Sing Se with the other protagonists and shares a kiss with Aang, starting a romantic relationship with him.
In the sequel series ''The Legend of Korra'', Katara, now eighty-five, is one of the three surviving members of the original Team Avatar, along with Zuko and Toph. She is a high-ranking member of the White Lotus and took it upon herself to train Korra in waterbending, becoming the latest in a line of masters to serve as a teacher to multiple Avatars. Katara and Aang are also revealed to have had three children: the non-bender Bumi (who later acquires the ability to airbend), the waterbender Kya, and the airbender Tenzin. She plays a minor role in the first season of the series, only giving Korra her blessing to leave for Republic City to train with Tenzin and attempting to unsuccessfully heal her after she loses her waterbending, firebending, and earthbending abilities to Amon.
In the second-season premiere "Rebel Spirit", Katara is seen celebrating with her children at the Southern Water Tribe's Glacier Spirits Festival. While together with them, Katara, holding her new grandson Rohan, watches sadly as she notices Kya and Bumi joking at Tenzin's expense. At the end of the episode, Katara implores that Tenzin take his brother and sister with him to the Southern Air Temple, saying that he will enjoy looking back on the time he had to spend with his siblings and that it might be best for the three to visit their father's home together. In "Harmonic Convergence", Katara is seen in her healing hut tending to injured Southern Water Tribe soldiers, and later used healing to keep her granddaughter Jinora's body alive while her soul was trapped in the spirit world. In ''Light in the Dark'', she is seen listening to Avatar Korra addressing the independent Southern Water Tribe and how she decided to have spirits and human coexist by leaving the spirit portals open.
In the fourth season episode "Korra Alone", Katara aids Korra in healing her body after being poisoned by Zaheer at the end of the third season, enabling her to walk again after being a wheelchair user for over six months.
When the story begins in Book One, Iroh is accompanying his nephew the banished Prince Zuko in his quest to capture the Avatar, a superhuman whose task to maintain world order makes him a threat to the Fire Nation's campaign of conquest. Having learnt of the plan of Zhao, a Fire National admiral, to kill the moon spirit to take away the Water Tribes' power of waterbending, disrupting the natural order, Iroh attacks Zhao and is named a traitor.
During Book Two, he and his nephew are now fugitives from the Fire Nation. After being gravely wounded by his niece Azula and cared for by his nephew, Iroh teaches Zuko a waterbending-inspired technique of redirecting lightning, which can be generated by an advanced form of firebending which Zuko, with his unfocused mind, has been unable to master, but which his sister and competitor to the throne, easily commands, being a firebending prodigy. Iroh eventually takes refuge in Ba Sing Se, where he and Zuko operate a tea-house. Iroh is dismayed when Azula convinces her brother to betray them and is arrested while covering Aang and his friends' escape from the conquered city.
In Book Three, held in a Fire Nation prison, Iroh fakes madness while preparing himself for the solar eclipse, during which Firebending does not work. Once the eclipse begins, Iroh escapes his cell, being a formidable opponent even without the use of firebending. In the series finale, Iroh has called the White Lotus to free Ba Sing Se from the Fire Nation—fulfilling his childhood vision, but as a liberator, not a conqueror. After the war ends, Iroh is offered the Fire Lord's throne, but he asks Zuko to be crowned instead. Soon after Zuko's coronation as Fire Lord, Iroh returns to Ba Sing Se to operate his tea shop; the final scenes of the series take place in that shop.
In the comic book sequel ''The Promise'', Iroh offers Aang and Zuko advice on dealing with the Harmony Restoration Movement, a movement that aims to expel members of the Fire Nation ethnic group from Earth Kingdom territory; he also invents bubble tea. In the comic book ''The Search'', Iroh becomes acting Firelord while Zuko travels to locate his mother Ursa. Bored with his new title, he uses his authority to declare a National Tea Appreciation Day.
In the sequel series ''The Legend of Korra'', Iroh is revealed to have used a form of astral projection at the time of his death to become a resident of the Spirit World. In the episode "A New Spiritual Age", Iroh comes to the aid of Aang's successor as Avatar, Korra, who is trapped unprepared deep in the Spirit World. In the episode "Darkness Falls", having known them in life, Iroh encounters Aang's children Tenzin, Kya, and Bumi when they enter the Spirit World and provides them with hints as to the location of the spirit of Tenzin's daughter Jinora. Korra again encounters Iroh in "The Ultimatum", when she enters the Spirit World in search of the anarchist terrorist Zaheer. Korra explains to Iroh that she is confused and doesn't know how to deal with the threat Zaheer poses to both the newly reformed Air Nation and the world. Iroh suggests that Korra seek Zuko's counsel, as Aang once did.
Zuko's grandson is named Iroh in honor of his great-granduncle, and is a general of the United Forces, the armed services of the United Republic of Nations, a multi-ethnic nation founded by Aang and Zuko out of territories that were disputed between the Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom after the end of the Hundred Years' War.
During a plasma storm, Deep Space Nine is evacuated, with only a skeleton crew remaining behind to maintain the station until the event passes. Posing as a cargo transport in distress, an unjoined Trill, a pair of hired Klingon mercenaries, and a former prostitute named Mareel board the station and overpower the crew. Major Kira tries to take Mareel by surprise, but Mareel outfights her. The Trill, Verad, once applied to be joined with a symbiont and was rejected; now he wants the Dax symbiont. After restraining the shapeshifting Constable Odo in a container and taking the rest of the crew hostage, he forces Dr. Bashir to transfer the symbiont into his body. Without her symbiont, Jadzia will die within hours.
Bashir has one of the Klingons assist him as he tries to save Jadzia's life. Meanwhile, Commander Sisko deals with Verad, who now has the memories of all the Dax hosts, including Curzon Dax, who was a very close friend and mentor to Sisko. He implores Verad to set things right, but sees that he intends to let Jadzia die. Meanwhile, Mareel, whom Verad had befriended early in life, begins to realize how much the man has changed since he received the symbiont, and begins to think the joining may have been a bad idea. However, she remains loyal to him.
The bartender Quark, who helped Verad and his crew board the station by bypassing the security lockdown, pretends to be injured and thereby provides Bashir with the opportunity to sedate one of the Klingons. He then cracks the lock on the container holding Odo. Once Verad discovers what has happened, he heads for his ship, taking Kira as a hostage.
By the time Verad reaches his ship, Odo has released the docking clamps, leaving him stranded. Kira overpowers the Klingon who is holding her, but in the confusion Verad slips away, heading for another ship. In the meantime, Mareel now knows that the man she loves truly is gone and decides to help Sisko. Sisko confronts Verad at the airlock. Believing that Sisko will not shoot his old friend and risk damaging the recently joined symbiont, Verad begins to walk away, but Sisko stuns him with a phaser. The Dax symbiont is returned to Jadzia, leaving Verad alone with himself once again.
In 1995, Lyla Novacek is a cellist studying at the Juilliard School and living under the strict rule of her father. Louis Connelly is the lead singer of an Irish rock band. They meet and have a one-night stand, but are unable to maintain contact. Lyla discovers that she is pregnant. Following an argument with her overbearing father over her unborn baby, she is struck by a car, forcing her to give birth prematurely. While Lyla is unconscious, her father secretly puts the baby boy up for adoption, telling Lyla that her son died.
Eleven years later, the baby is living in a boys' orphanage under the name Evan Taylor, where he is assigned to a social worker named Richard Jeffries. Evan is a musical genius and displays savant-like abilities and perfect pitch, which often causes him to be bullied. Convinced that his parents will find him, Evan runs away to New York City, "following the music" in the hope it will lead him to his family. He finds a boy named Arthur busking in Washington Square Park and follows Arthur to his home in a condemned theatre, where Evan is introduced to “Wizard” Wallace, an arrogant and aggressive vagrant and musician who teaches homeless, orphaned, and runaway children to be street performers. Evan tries playing Wizard's prize guitar, Roxanne (a Gibson J150ec). Evan is so good that Wizard gives him his old spot in Washington Square Park, along with the guitar, which was also Arthur's. He gives Evan the stage name "August Rush" and tries to market him to clubs. Seeing the posters that Jeffries has placed for the runaway Evan, Wizard destroys all the ones he finds, hoping to keep Evan for his own gain.
Louis now lives in San Francisco as a talent agent, while Lyla is a music teacher in Chicago. Louis reconnects with his brothers and decides to try to find Lyla. Lyla is called to her father's deathbed, where he confesses that her son is alive, causing Lyla to abandon her dying father and immediately start looking for her son.
On arriving at Lyla's apartment in Chicago, Louis talks to one of her neighbors, who mistakenly tells Louis she is on her honeymoon. Despairing, he ends up in New York, where he gets his band back together. After Jeffries meets Wizard and Arthur on the street and becomes suspicious, the police raid the derelict theatre in which Wizard and his "children" are living. Evan manages to evade the police and remembers Wizard's advice to never reveal his real name to anyone. Evan (now "August") takes refuge in a church, where he befriends a little girl named Hope, who introduces him to the piano and written music. Hope brings August and his abilities to the attention of the parish pastor, who takes August to Juilliard, where he once again impresses the faculty. A rhapsody takes shape from August's notes and homework.
In New York, Lyla goes to Jeffries' office, and Jeffries identifies Evan/August as her son. While looking for him, she takes up the cello again and accepts an offer to perform with the Philharmonic at a series of concerts in Central Park. August is selected to perform the rhapsody he has been composing at the same concert. However, Wizard interrupts the rehearsal and, claiming to be his father, manages to pull August out of the school.
On the day of the concert, August is back in his spot in Washington Square, while Wizard makes plans to smuggle him around the country to play. He meets Louis, and unaware of their blood relationship, they have an impromptu guitar duet. August tells him of his dilemma, and Louis encourages him to go. That evening, with help from Arthur, August escapes from Wizard through the subway and heads for his concert. Louis, after his own performance with his reunited band, sees Lyla's name on one of the banners and also heads for the park. Jeffries finds a misplaced flyer for "August Rush" with a picture, and also heads for the concert.
August arrives in time to conduct his rhapsody, which attracts both Lyla and Louis to the audience, where they are reunited. August finishes his rhapsody and as he turns to discover his parents, he smiles knowing that he has been right all along.
Four episodes of ''The New Files'' series serve as the finale for the Griffin arc of the television series. The rest of the series mainly consists of side stories that take place during or after the TV show.
"Dangerous Diana" Medford (Crawford) is outwardly flamboyant and popular but inwardly virtuous and idealistic, patronizing her parents by telling them not to stay out late. Her friend Ann chases boys for their money and is as amoral as her mother.
Diana and Ann are both attracted to Ben Blaine (Brown). He takes Diana's flirtatious behavior with other boys as a sign of lack of interest in him and marries Ann, who has lied about her virtues. Bea, a mutual friend of Diana and Ann, also meets and marries a wealthy suitor named Norman who loves her but is haunted by her past.
Diana becomes distraught for a while about the marriages of her friends with questionable pasts. She decides to go away and Bea throws a raucous bon voyage party at the yacht club (complete with sculpted ice ocean liner centerpiece), which Ben declined to attend and made Ann decline as well. The same evening Ann hopes to meet up with her lover, Freddie, telling her husband she is going to see her sick mom. When her mom calls and Ben realizes Ann has lied to him yet again, they get into an argument and Ann storms out to meet Freddie.
Now alone, Ben decides to stop by the party where he and Diana realize their love for each other. Meanwhile, a drunken Ann follows Freddie into the party only to find Ben and Diana alone together in a quiet room. She causes an uproar, after which both Diana and Ben leave the party declaring their love but ultimately saying goodbye to one another.
Norman arrives at the dwindling party to find Bea trying to help the inebriated Ann home. On her way out, Ann mocks a trio of cleaning women and reflects on her and her mother's gold-digging strategy. Distracted by this, she stumbles and falls down a flight of stairs to her death. Headlines tell of Diana's return home after two years away, upon which she and Ben are happily reunited.
In the early part of the book it becomes apparent that Francie's mother is frequently abused both verbally and physically by her husband, Benny, a bitter alcoholic. Francie's mother often considers suicide and is committed for a time to a mental hospital.
Francie seems largely unaware of the trouble at home, and spends the early part of the book in the company of his best friend Joe Purcell, hiding out in a chicken-house and shouting abuse at the fish in the local stream. The two befriend classmate Phillip Nugent, the son of Francie's sanctimonious neighbour, Mrs. Nugent, but end up stealing his comic books. Francie recalls vividly an episode in which she hurls a torrent of verbal abuse at Francie's mother, claiming that the Brady family are "a bunch of pigs". Francie takes this insult to heart, and begins to harass the Nugents when they are walking through the town, denying them access through a certain street until they pay the fictional "Pig Toll tax". So begins an unhealthy obsession that underpins the rest of the novel.
Word comes that Francie's uncle Alo, who is something of a local celebrity, is coming to town. A party is arranged and most of the town turns up. Alo arrives and sings with his guests late into the night, and Francie observes his uncle with admiration. Eventually the guests leave, and Benny, drunk as usual, launches a verbal assault at his brother, claiming he is a fake and a liar, to the protestation and horror of Francie's mother. Alo is totally dejected and leaves.
Francie is horrified at the treatment of Alo, and runs away from home. He spends some time thieving in Dublin, and when he returns he discovers his mother has committed suicide, for which his father blames him. Again, Francie's mind turns to the Nugents. He attempts to harm Phillip after luring him to the chickenhouse, but Joe stops him. Eventually he breaks into the Nugents' house when they are out and pretends to be a pig, defecating on the floor. The Nugents interrupt him and call the police.
Francie is sent to an 'industrial school' run by priests. During the course of his internment he is molested by one of the priests and befriended by a gardener who claims to have been an Old IRA member and close associate of Michael Collins. He claims to have forgotten all about the Nugents, and is determined to get back to town and resume his carefree friendship with Joe.
On release Francie heads back to town, fully expectant of a friendly welcome by Joe. However he finds it hard to get in touch with his friend, and when he does Joe is reluctant to talk to him. When Francie is attacked by Mrs. Nugent's brother, Buttsy, and his friend Devlin, Joe disowns him.
Francie gets a job in the local abattoir, impressing the owner with his ability to unflinchingly kill a piglet, and dedicates himself to this job, aiming to make his father proud. He has also begun drinking at weekends with the local drunk, and he goes to clubs with the specific aim of getting into fights. After some months, the police enter his home to discover that his father has been dead for a long time, and Francie is committed to a mental hospital.
After he is released, Francie discovers that Joe is attending boarding school in Bundoran, County Donegal. He decides to go there, and en route he stops off at a boarding house where his father had said he and Francie's mother had spent their honeymoon. He interrogates the landlady, and she informs him that his father had treated his mother terribly for the duration of their honeymoon. Francie resumes his travels and arrives at Joe's school in the middle of the night. He breaks in and, coming face to face with Joe, discovers that his friend has outgrown him and, worse, befriended Phillip Nugent.
Francie returns home and resumes his job at the butchers. One day, while on his rounds, he calls at the Nugents' house. Mrs. Nugent answers and Francie forces his way in. He attacks her and shoots her in the head with the butcher's bolt gun. He cuts her open and writes the word 'PIG' over the walls in an upstairs room with her blood. He puts her into the cart in which he transports the offal and meat-waste, covering her body with the detritus. He casually resumes his rounds and makes his way back to the abattoir, where he is apprehended by the police. He leads them on a wild goose chase for Mrs. Nugent's body, and escapes from them for a time, but he is recaptured and eventually imprisoned after revealing where her dismembered corpse is.
Humanity has fled the devastated surface to the underground where the upper classes inhabit higher levels with better air. Ryu is a low level citizen who rebels against the government to save the life of Nina, who cannot survive underground due to experimental surgery to convert her into an air purification machine. Ryu can transform into a dragon.
Ryu's must ascend with Nina and the ever-watchful Lin from a kilometer below ground to the surface, traversing dark passageways and fending off encounters. On the lowest levels are those with low D-ratios; as one ascends the inhabitants' D-ratio increases. D-ratio determines social status. The highest D-ratio a human can achieve is 1/4 - this is the Dragon Quarter of the title, a one in four chance of linking with an available dragon.
There are two subplots; the first concerns the six mysterious rulers of the underground world, ubiquitous in their ability to acquire and act on information. These rulers reveal a legend that a boy with the power to become a dragon will return the world to the surface. The second subplot is a rivalry between Ryu and Bosch, an entitled, monomaniacal elitist. Bosch initially uses Ryu as his lackey to increase his rank, but inadvertently releases Ryu's ability to become a dragon. Seeing this power, Bosch undergoes dragon fusion and gains the ability to also become a dragon.
Ryu invades the upper levels. Three of the five regents which govern Ryu's world have fallen to his blade before he faces Elyon, aka "Origin", the leader of the Regeants and first host of the dragon Odjn. Elyon acknowledges none have come closer to reclaiming the surface world than Ryu. He summons two pieces of himself that he had he banished to extend his life. After a fierce battle Elyon is defeated and Ryu notes that Elyon was "Odjn's first", alluding to Elyon's responsibility for humanity not reclaiming the sky hundreds of years ago. Ryu, Lin and Nina approach the hatch itself, where Bosch intercepts them, now containing his own true dragon, Chertyre, instead of a mere construct. Bosch is defeated and gives himself over to Chertyre to manifest himself in the world again. Ryu is forced to use his D-Breath attack to channel Odjn's power against Chertyre. This brings his D-Counter to 100%, something to be avoided during other points in the game. Ryu's D-Counter rises far above 100%, and he finally defeats Chertyre and opens the way to the surface. As he lays dying, Ryu tells Lin and Nina to go on ahead, that he'll catch up with them in a moment.
As Nina and Lin ascend the spiral staircase to the surface, Odjn appears, asking if Ryu has any regrets. Ryu says he has none, and that reaching the surface was his only goal. Odjn exults, telling Ryu that it was not Odjn's power which brought Ryu this far, but Ryu's own determination. As Lin and Nina grieve, Odjn restores Ryu's life.
Set in 1960s to 1970s, the novel tells of Patrick "Pussy" Braden's escape from the fictional Irish town of Tyreelin and a drunk foster mother, to find herself and the biological mother who gave her away. Bad luck surrounds her until she finds temporary contentment with a married politician who acts as a sugar daddy. The latter is killed by either the IRA or the Ulster Defence Volunteers, leaving Braden alone once again. She moves to London, becomes a prostitute in Piccadilly Circus, and later is arrested on suspicion of an IRA bombing, only to be released a few days later. She later embarks on a search to find her mother.
The book focuses on the life of Gullytown homeboy Pat McNab, the village idiot. The alternately adoring and criticizing attention by his mother, Maimie and the total abusiveness of his father finally send him over the edge.
He responds by ridding Ireland of "germs," however, in this case, the "germs" are people. He kills both his father and mother, his neighbors and local visitors to the village. His list includes four-legged "germs" as he kills several donkeys.
He then digs his mother up from her grave after the removal of each succeeding "germ".
The title "Emerald Germs of Ireland" is similar to Patrick McCabe's ''The Butcher Boy'' which often brings up a music book titled "Emerald Gems of Ireland".
Security guards Chuck and Bobby hear a sound coming from Howard County Bank and Trust and find a floor polisher that night custodian Ernest is trying to turn on. Ernest dreams that he would be a clerk, but he ends up making a mess in the bank and he becomes magnetic after being electrocuted. The next day, bank president Oscar Pendlesmythe's assistant, Charlotte Sparrow, requires him to clean up his disastrous mess and asks Ernest out to dinner to give him advice. He later receives in the mail a summons to jury duty. During the trial, convict Rubin Bartlett, who is being tried for killing a fellow prisoner, notices that death row inmate Felix Nash resembles Ernest. Rubin's lawyer convinces the jury to tour the prison, where Ernest is kidnapped by Nash and another inmate named Lyle and forced to switch places with Nash. He has numerous misadventures in prison until he is sent to the electric chair in Nash's place.
The electrocution fails, and Ernest is transformed into a type of superhuman, with the ability to shoot lightning bolts from his hands. Lyle stands in his way, only to reveal he has taken a liking to Ernest and tells him to stop Nash. Ernest offers to free Lyle, who declines on the basis he is a guilty man who must serve his time. Ernest escapes from the prison and makes his way home, only to discover that his Pee-wee Herman–like décor has been replaced by a slick lounge lizard style of decorating. He exclaims, "I've been vandalized—by Elvis!" Ernest then goes to the bank, in his old clothes, only to find that Nash has assumed his identity and is in the process of robbing the bank and is holding Chuck and Charlotte hostage. During the ensuing battle between the two of them Ernest gets electrocuted yet again. Now Ernest has become polarized and gained the ability to fly. He uses his super powers to fly through the skylight of the bank with a bomb that Nash had attached to the vault which leads to a spectacular mid-air explosion. Everyone thinks that Ernest has been killed, until Ernest falls through the skylight and lands on Nash. Ernest tiredly declares, "I came, I saw, I got blowed up" and then faints.
The film depicts five individuals living on a small platform floating in space. These men are all identical apart from a number at the back of their coats: 23, 35, 51, 75, and 77. Whenever one of them moves, the platform tilts and the others must move as well to ensure that the platform does not tip over. They all move out to the edge of the platform, take out fishing rods, and cast their lines over the edge. The one numbered 51 reels in a large, heavy box while the others scramble to the opposite side of the platform. One by one, the individuals inspect the box: it has a wind-up key that causes the box to play music. As each man in turn moves to inspect the box, the platform becomes unstable, prompting each of the group to converge in the center to keep the platform from tipping over. The man with the number 75 attempts to tip the box over the edge, but number 51 counterbalances the platform to prevent it. These two scuffle briefly, causing the box to slide to number 23, who tap dances to the tune as the others look on. 75 moves away from the center of gravity, tipping the platform and causing the box to slide toward him, but 23 sits on top of the box and moves with it.
The added weight moves the box to the very edge of the platform. The others rearrange themselves to bring the box back to the center. Riding the box as it slides from side to side, 23 pushes 35 off the platform as the former slides to the very edge. The others rearrange themselves again to compensate for the loss of mass. 51 trips and falls over. 75 shoves 77 to the ground as he avoids the careening 23. 77 scrambles to the opposite edge as 23 moves with the box again. 23 kicks 75 off the platform, unbalancing the platform and causing 77 to fall over the edge also. 23 gets off the box, approaches 51 and kicks him over the edge. Now alone, 23 turns around to look at the box, which is perched on the edge farthest from him. Without the others, 23 has to maintain the balance on his own, keeping the box out of reach. One step back and he falls, one step forward and the box falls. He can only watch as the box slowly winds down and plays its music, which 23 is unable to hear.
Art critic and forgery expert George Steele (O'Brien) is stopped by a policeman as he breaks into the Manhattan Museum. He claims that he was in a train wreck. Police Lieutenant Cochrane (Wallace Ford), however, finds no recent wreck. Steele, unsure himself what happened, relates the bizarre events leading up to the present. A flashback ensues:
Museum director Barton (Erskine Sanford) reprimands staff member Steele over the sensational style of his public lectures and is annoyed that he wants to demonstrate a forgery detection method by X-raying a masterpiece that was recently exhibited, Dürer's ''Adoration of the Kings''. Afterward, while having a drink with girlfriend and magazine writer Terry Cordell (Claire Trevor), Steele receives an urgent telephone call informing him that his mother has been taken to a hospital. He rushes to Grand Central Station and catches the last train. About 40 minutes later, Steele watches helplessly as another train crashes head on with his.
Cochrane reveals that Steele's mother was never taken to the hospital. Anxious to avoid a scandal, Barton pleads with Cochrane not to arrest the man. Stevenson, the curator and Steele's friend, and Dr. Lowell (Ray Collins), a member of the museum's board of directors, vouch for Steele's character. In private, Traybin (Herbert Marshall), an art expert with Scotland Yard investigating the suspicious loss of a Gainsborough painting, tells Cochrane he wants Steele freed, with detectives discreetly following him, as he is uncertain if Steele is involved. Steele is released, but is fired by Barton at the direction of the museum board because of his alleged mental instability.
Steele sets out to re-enact the train ride, hoping to find out what is going on. He learns that a drunk was taken off at the next station by two men and believes the supposed drunk was actually himself. He informs Stevenson of his discovery. Steele begins to suspect that the Gainsborough supposedly lost in a fire at sea was actually a fake. Later, Stevenson calls Steele to tell him he has discovered that the fire was not an accident and to meet him in the museum vault that night. When Steele arrives, however, he finds Stevenson dead. Seen standing over the body by an employee, he flees. Although both Traybin and Terry plead with him to turn himself in, Steele is determined to exonerate himself.
He coerces Barton to meet him and confirms that the Gainsborough "lost" was indeed a forgery and was destroyed to conceal the existence and theft of the original. Steele follows Barton to a party given by a museum board member, where he learns by eavesdropping from the fire escape that the shipment of the Dürer painting to London has been unexpectedly advanced. Steele sneaks aboard the ship, where he finds a fire burning in the bonded cargo hold. He removes the painting from its frame to save it, only to discover he has been locked in. The ship's crew arrives to put out the fire, followed by Traybin and Cochcrane, who spots Steele. Steele escapes with the painting from the ship by shinnying down the hawser mooring the ship to the dock, where Terry picks him up in her car.
Terry persuades Mary, Barton's secretary, to arrange for Steele to X-ray the painting, which he confirms is a copy. However, as Terry, Mary, and he are leaving, he is knocked out and Mary pulls a gun on Terry. Terry and the punchy Steele are taken to the estate of Dr. Lowell, who is behind the thefts and forgeries. He explains to Terry that as a frustrated art lover, he could never have acquired such fabulous works legitimately. Before killing them as the only witnesses to his scheme, Lowell uses narcosynthesis on Steele to assure himself that Steele did not tell the police, the technique he also used to make Steele believe he was in a train wreck. Lowell waits for a passing scheduled train to mask the sound of gunshots, but Traybin and Cochrane intervene, shooting Lowell just before he can kill Steele. Traybin had been waiting outside the entire time, waiting to determine where the stolen art is concealed. To save herself from being charged as an accessory to Stevenson's murder, Mary shows them the location.
Jake Farris, a down home country singer stuck in a long-term contract performing at "The Rhinestone", a sleazy urban cowboy nightclub in New York City, boasts to the club's manager, Freddie, that she can make anybody into a country sensation, insisting that she can turn any normal guy into a country singer in just two weeks. Freddie accepts Jake's bet, putting up the remainder of Jake's contract (if she wins the bet, the contract becomes void; if she loses, another five years will be added). He then ups the ante: if Jake loses, she must also sleep with him.
The problem is that Freddie can select the man, and he selects an obnoxious New York City cabbie named Nick Martinelli. Nick not only has no musical talent whatsoever, he claims to hate country music "worse than liver". Realizing she is stuck with Nick, she takes him back to her home in Tennessee to teach him how to walk, talk and behave like a real country star. While there, he has to put up with Jake's constant nagging and berating him about his behavior, the culture-shock of not knowing anything about the South, and Jake's ex-fiancée Barnett Kale who befriends Nick, then turns on him when he realizes that he and Jake have developed feelings for one another.
It all leads to Nick performing a song at The Rhinestone where the crowd is a crazed group of hecklers and are "out for blood." After Nick's first attempt to sing bombs, he turns to the band and says, "Okay guys, let's pick up the beat" and the band begins playing the song in a more Rock n' Roll version and he wins the crowd over. In the end, Jake gets her contract back and she and Nick begin to sing another song with the implication that they will continue their budding relationship together.
The structure of the film consists of several subplots which all revolve around an intertwined cast of characters.
The film begins by introducing Richard (John Hawkes), a shoe salesman and recently separated father of two. After being thrown out by his wife Pam (JoNell Kennedy), he gets an apartment of his own to share with his children, Peter (Miles Thompson) and Robby (Brandon Ratcliff). He meets Christine (Miranda July), a senior-cab driver and amateur video artist, while she takes her client to shop for shoes, and the two develop a fledgling romantic relationship.
Robby, six years old, and his 14-year-old brother, Peter, have a joint online chat, which he later depicts in another chat session as "))<>((", an emoticon that means "pooping back and forth, forever." This piques the interest of the woman at the other end and she suggests a face-to-face meeting. When Robby and the woman meet at a park, she realizes he's a child and kisses him and walks away.
Two of Richard's teenaged neighbors, Heather (Natasha Slayton) and Rebecca (Najarra Townsend), develop a playful relationship with a much older neighbor Andrew (Brad William Henke) who works in the shoe store with Richard. He does not say much, but he keeps leaving signs on his window about what he would do to each of them. As a result of this relationship, Heather and Rebecca ask Peter if they can practice oral sex on him, so that he can tell them which of the two does it better; so they do. He says both were exactly the same. The daughter of a neighbor peeks in the window, sees what is happening, and quickly leaves. Heather and Rebecca later come to the neighbor's house intending to have sex with him as practice, but he appears afraid when he sees them through his window and he pretends not to be home.
Meanwhile, Christine's work is rejected by a contemporary art museum, but then later accepted by the curator, who turns out to be the woman who was instant messaging with the brothers.
The plots come together in the end, with Peter developing a friendship with the daughter of a neighbor, having been introduced to the hope chest that she has, Christine and Richard displaying a show of mutual acceptance of their attraction to each other, and, as a final plot device, Robby finding that the noise he had awoken to early every morning was that of an early-rising businessman tapping a quarter on a street sign pole. When asked why he is doing it, he stops and turns around, saying "just passing the time", and gives Robby the quarter. When his bus drives away and Robby tries it out himself, the sun heightens with each tap, time literally passing as he does it.
Krusty the Clown is persuaded by Bart Simpson to appear at a comedy festival organized by Jay Leno. His outdated and offensive material fails to impress the audience when compared with the trendier comedians also appearing. Discouraged by a negative review of his act, Krusty goes on a bender and passes out on Ned Flanders' lawn. While recovering in Bart's memorabilia-covered room, Krusty realizes that he should have spent more time honing his act rather than selling out, and he enlists Bart and Leno's aid. However, his attempts at observational humor fall flat with the Simpson family. Krusty holds a press conference to announce his retirement and in short order launches into a bitter tirade against modern-day comedians. The audience finds Krusty's rant hysterically funny and he subsequently announces his return to comedy.
Krusty is inspired to return to doing low-key events, where he structures a new image for himself as a stand-up comedian who tells the truth, criticizes commercialism, and refuses to sell out to corporate America. He also changes his appearance, sporting a dark sweater and tying his hair in a ponytail. Observing his newfound popularity, two marketing executives try to persuade Krusty to endorse a new sport utility vehicle called the Canyonero. Although he tries to resist, he eventually succumbs to the lure of money. After promoting the Canyonero at a comedy performance in Moe's Tavern, he is booed off stage by the patrons. He finally admits to himself that comedy is not in his blood and selling out is. The episode ends with an extended advertisement for the Canyonero, as Krusty and Bart leave Moe Szyslak's tavern in Krusty's new SUV.
An overly upbeat anti-smoking music group called Butt Out, which incorporates elements of dance and hip-hop into its routine, performs at South Park Elementary. The boys are put off by the annoying unoriginality and lame, condescending nature of the performance, in which the performers proclaim that, if everyone refuses to smoke, they can grow up to be "just like [them]". The boys take this literally and go behind the school to start chain smoking, which they do, despite it causing them to cough furiously. When their school counselor, Mr. Mackey, approaches, the boys discard their still-lit cigarettes into a nearby dumpster, which causes a fire that burns down the entire school. When the boys are brought before the principal and their parents, the adults are initially enraged and ashamed not at the school burning down, but at the boys smoking (in fact, the school burning down is never acknowledged by either the principal or the parents). They then convince themselves that the blame lies with the tobacco companies, whose advertising campaigns have influenced the kids. The boys happily transfer the blame to avoid punishment, but Kyle recognizes the pattern of a ''South Park'' storyline and unsuccessfully tries to get his friends to avoid the coming calamity. The town summons celebrity spokesman Rob Reiner to combat the spread of smoking among children in South Park. Despite the fact that Reiner is vehemently against smoking and willing to tell everyone how unhealthy it is, he is extremely gluttonous and disrespectful to those who do not share his viewpoints, constantly eating junk food and taking pride on imposing his will on others. Cartman, however, comes to look up to Reiner precisely because of this.
Reiner disguises himself as a woman (wearing a wig, but not shaving his massive beard) and takes the boys on a tour of a tobacco factory. The vice president teaches them the history of tobacco, and explains that, as the dangers of smoking have been made known, the surgeon general mandated warning labels on cigarettes so those who choose to smoke or not can make informed choices, which Kyle finds reasonable. Reiner reveals himself after snapping a picture of the boys, and throws one of the employees over the railing to the factory floor before fleeing. Reiner takes the boys back to his anti-smoking encampment and tells them he is going to introduce them to some really "decent and caring" people of his "Anti-Smoking" staff, who are shown to be pale, hunched-over, hissing, and dressed in black. Reiner intends to Photoshop the photograph in order to falsely depict the executive giving cigarettes to kids. By now, Stan, Kyle, and Kenny are disgusted with Reiner and his tactics, so when Reiner offers them the opportunity to appear in an anti-smoking TV commercial, they decline, but Cartman eagerly agrees.
Cartman appears in the commercial to claim he is dying of lung cancer from secondhand smoke, but discovers at the end of the shoot that Reiner and his group intend to kill him and claim it actually ''was'' from lung cancer. Cartman flees to his friends, who, at first, refuse to help him when they learn that Reiner plans to kill him, fearing that they will be killed, as well, if he were to be found with them. Eventually, however, they relent and decide to help him, after all. They consider taking him back to the cigarette factory, as they know that the vice president there will not support Reiner's plan and will protect Cartman from him. Kyle again warns that this is following a formula, and it will lead to a confrontation between the town and the factory, where they will have to admit they lied about why they smoked and talk about what they have learned. However, the group goes to the factory, anyway, knowing that it is the only way to keep Cartman safe, and the townspeople confront them with Reiner (who is eating an entire cake). The townspeople turn on Reiner when he tells them his plan (with Stan's father, Randy, even telling him outright that killing Cartman is "not right") and, as he attempts to explain why it is acceptable, Kyle goes into a speech (which he briefly breaks almost immediately to comment to Stan, "See? I knew it.") about people needing to take responsibility for their actions, and calls Reiner a fascist for imposing his will on others. Now deciding that he no longer respects Reiner, Cartman stabs him with a fork, revealing "Reiner" to be a boneless sac filled with green goo, who completely drains. The parents then ground the four, as they now know they smoked of their own will, and though Stan is relieved that the ordeal is over and the four have "learned [their] lesson", Kyle disappointedly replies, "No, we didn't, dude. No, we didn't."
ZX Spectrum version
The game is set in the near future, where a team of scientists have developed two robotic aircraft carriers to colonise an archipelago of sixty four islands. Unfortunately, the more advanced carrier falls into the hands of a terrorist organization, and they plan to conquer the archipelago for their own evil ends. It is the player's job to use the less advanced carrier to colonise the islands and destroy the enemy carrier.
The game begins with Reed, Sue, and Johnny on a roof lying helpless after being knocked unconscious by a blast from Doctor Doom. Sue is the first to recover, so when she sits up and turns around, Dr. Doom is preparing to fire an electric blast at them. Sue holds it off with her force field and calls Ben Grimm for help. Then it cuts away to Ben, who is recovering in the transformation chamber after having his rocklike exterior genetically removed from him. As he contemplates why the circumstances have led to this, he remembers the period when all of this happens.
This is when it reverts to the beginning of the movie: Reed signs the pact, they go into space, and Ben gets the samples ready. In space, they are hit by a cosmic storm which alters their DNA and gives them superpowers. If it hadn't been for Victor, they might never have arrived back to Earth and into his medical compound, where they recovered. When Ben discovers that he has become a monster-like figure, he deserts the other three and heads home.
Ben runs on a rampage to try to calm himself. This brings the army to New York under the control of a deep, dark, sinister figure who is yet to be revealed and they try to get Ben under control. However, after Ben and the other three rescue a fire truck from falling off the Brooklyn Bridge, the forces lay off and watch the Fantastic Four to see if they become hostile.
Reed attempts to find another power source, but is interrupted by a call for help. It seems that strange creatures have invaded Grand Central Station and the police seem to have no effect against them. The Fantastic Four stop the creatures from invading the city and face their leader, the Mole Man and his mighty pet. Because of the utter destruction caused by their fight with this giant monster, the city is in a mess and Victor blames Reed for all this mess.
With Ben in hand, Reed sets out to identify their mutation and possibly cure them of it. He constructs a machine with Victor's help which will use cosmic rays to reverse the signal being sent through their bodies by the mutation. He then turns to sources to power this machine and identifies a cosmic meteor that landed in the jungle of southern Mexico. They travel to Tikal to retrieve this meteor when they encounter Diablo, who desires to have this meteor so he can harness its power to conquer the world. The Fantastic Four defeat him and bring the meteor back, but its power is insufficient to power the machine. Later, Victor invites Sue to the opening of his Egyptian wing in the museum that night.
While they are there, Alicia Masters is kidnapped by the mummy creatures who have come to life by the Puppet Master, which throws Ben into an outrage. Reed intends to disable the security system to free her, but they have to deal with animated mummies and dinosaurs. They free Alicia but end up destroying half the museum while repelling the reanimated creatures, which infuriates Victor to no end.
In his last attempt to alleviate his anger towards them, he has a conversation with Sue in which he attempts to find out why she continues to stay with Reed. She says she can't abandon them because they're her family now, which prompts Victor to send Doombots after them to destroy them after they finish their meeting. The four have a massive battle in Times Square, which they nearly demolish with the help of the VDI Mechs, prompting Nick Fury, to take them to the Vault prison for their safe keeping.
They arrive there and are quarantined until Dragon Man decides to break out and cause utter chaos. The Fantastic Four's security systems are deactivated and they try to restore order. They are successful in their mission so when they reach the entrance at the top of the prison, they encounter Fury who agrees to release them on one condition: that they find out what happened to his laboratory. When they arrive, they discover it has been taken over by mutated plants and insectoid creatures and they must destroy the station after obtaining the power source they need to finish powering Reed's transformation chamber. This proves to be successful and the machine is powered up to its maximum.
With this knowledge, Victor travels to the Baxter Building with the intent to defeat the Fantastic Four. He sets Reed's security systems against them and lures Ben to the transformation chamber where he steals his power. The remaining three fight against an enhanced Dr. Doom but his power is too great and they are defeated. Ben, however, feels terrible for leaving his friends just because he wanted to look normal again, so he decides to re-enter the transformation chamber and turn back into the Thing. Dr. Doom is about to destroy them when Ben busts out onto the roof and savagely attacks him, allowing his teammates to recover. They fall to the street and the other three join them there to finish Doom once and for all.
At a statue of Benjamin Franklin, the leader of a tour group of mice reveals the contributions of a mouse named Amos to Franklin's career, reading from Amos' diary, titled ''Ben and Me''. After describing the exploits of some of his ancestors, Amos tells his own story: The eldest of twenty-six siblings living in the Christ Church in Philadelphia, he sets out on his own in 1745 to find work. Having no luck, he takes shelter in Ben's shop and befriends the beleaguered printer. Amos invents bifocals for Ben and inspires him to create the Franklin stove. Amos also helps Ben turn his dry publication, ''Poor Richard's Almanack'', into a successful newspaper, the ''Pennsylvania Gazette''; Amos acts as journalist and helps Ben operate the printing press. As the years pass, Amos helps Ben advance socially and build his reputation.
Ben makes Amos an unwitting test subject in his experiments with electricity, sending him into the air as part of his kite experiment. Amos is nearly killed when the kite is struck by lightning and crashes to the ground. Furious, he leaves Ben and moves back in with his family.
Years later, during the early stages of the American Revolution, Ben is sent to England to try to reason with the king, but the mission is a failure. In 1776, Ben begs Amos for help. Amos agrees on the condition that Ben sign a contract agreeing to his terms. As Ben is reading the contract, Thomas Jefferson comes by, struggling with writing the introduction to the United States Declaration of Independence. The language in Amos' contract inspires Jefferson, and becomes the Declaration's introduction. Amos accompanies Ben to the signing of the Declaration.
The film features three men who each only believe in one thing: one in Good, one in Truth, and one in Beauty. They cast themselves onto a small island where they sit next to each other. Many days pass, and they begin to express themselves. It starts in small ways, simply making noise. The three start to annoy each other, and they stop. As more time passes, however, they begin to express their ideas.
Truth is first. He sits in yoga positions and begins to project shapes, such as suns, lotus flowers and four almond-shaped eyes. These eyes move around in strange patterns before becoming part of a four-eyed demon who dances for a moment, then explodes. A pinball bounces between many pairs of eyes, building up speed before landing on Truth's head, which causes him to visualize an expanding shape, and reveals itself to be a huge, beautiful flower. The shape collapses, which stuns Truth out of his trance, much to his embarrassment.
Beauty performs ballet and transforms into a Nubian figure. He morphs into calligraphy-like shapes before changing to his normal shape, but in a white robe. He begins to play a flute, flowers growing around him as he plays faster and faster before he becomes one himself. A Greek statue of a woman appears. The ''William Tell'' Overture begins to play, and a tall man and a short man carrying a frame walk up to the statue and "capture" it inside it, removing its head and base. They walk on as the Overture plays, but the picture soon splits in half, since the men walk at different speeds. Confused, they put it back together after several odd attempts, and soon climb a long staircase with it. They climb high up into the sky into an art gallery, where it's placed with hundreds of identical pictures, except for one.
This picture shows a scene where a small head, in profile, sees an object and begins to talk happily about it, his speaking expressed by a cello playing. Another man comes next to him, facing him, and sees the object as well. He discusses it with him, but the two heads soon begin arguing harshly. A pillar grows out from under the left head, making him sit above the other. He responds by growing another column underneath him, and the two heads quickly try to one-up each other, their columns growing and their arguing becoming worse. Soon, they can't go any higher, and push themselves into each other, forming a babbling head in front-view. The scene zooms out to show dozens of these heads on high columns, chattering away. Beauty's vision ends here, and he bows to the other two.
Good expresses himself next, kissing the other two and dancing. He transforms into a figure with a robe, begins to make noises like a pipe organ, then transforms into a church-like structure with an onion dome. Small black figures go through a door at his base, and turn white as they go through it. He transforms into a warrior with a huge sword and shield, blood running down his sword, before changing back to his old shape. A beautiful woman approaches and tries to seduce him, but he pushes her away. Another figure offers him wine, but he flattens him with a hammer, then transforms into a futuristic warrior with a ray gun. A large heart comes out of the ray gun and shatters, breaking his meditation. He looks at them, embarrassed.
More time passes, and Beauty starts to express himself again, changing into the Nubian figure with a harp, playing a repetitive tune and swishing his long hair. This annoys Good, who responds by gathering smaller figures to join hands around him and playing the same tune back at him. Truth, hovering overhead, is annoyed at both of them. After trying to outdo each other, they all abruptly change back. Soon, though, Beauty is at it again, and Good responds by forming into a warrior with a blunderbuss and a small army gathers around him. Initially concerned, Beauty responds by changing into the Nubian figure with a fencing foil. Good attempts to shoot him, but Beauty dodges his shots and skewers his army (after a long dance) and starts playing them like his harp, which infuriates Good.
Truth hovers above, angry at the both of them, and after a sporadic fit, a snake coils around him, possibly representing the caduceus. After this, they all change back, but Good and Beauty are plotting against each other. Good raises his fist, which grows and grows until it hovers over him and flattens him, possibly representing punishment for thinking evil thoughts. Good grows into a huge monster, ten times the size of the other two, but each time he does, the fist bears down on him again. In response, Beauty turns back into the figure, this time with a bow and arrow, and shoots the fist, to Good's alarm. A drop of blood falls on Good, which sends him into a rage as Beauty cockily plays his tune on his bow. He changes into the monster, grabs Beauty, throws him against the ground and kicks him. He pulls off his hair and throws it back at him, which causes Beauty to lose his temper, and he transforms into a similar monster to fight Good.
Good and Beauty approach each other with daggers and soon run into each other. They get tangled up, and soon start to resemble a bull. Up above, tangled in the Caduceus, Truth is angry at them. He puts on a lab coat, and the Caduceus transforms into a chemistry coil. Good and Beauty soon appear to transform into a machine, tank treads, nuts and rivets appearing across their bodies, much to Truth's dismay. He walks over to a chalkboard and begins to write formulas on it. As he does, it grows and grows, and eventually takes on the shape of a giant nuclear bomb, 100 times his size, pointed down at them. He doesn't notice it initially until it begins to tick. The ticking builds and builds as the three look on, terrified. It soon explodes, and the three men change back. Horrified by this vision, they immediately leave the island.
In 19th century Vienna, Tom Cat and Johann Mouse played by Jerry Mouse live in the house of composer Johann Strauss. Whenever Strauss plays the piano, Johann comes out of his hole to dance to the music, and Tom would repeatedly try to catch him with no success. One day, Strauss goes away on a journey, much to Tom's dismay. Tom realizes that the key to catching Johann would be through music, so he begins teaching himself how to play the piano using Strauss' written tutorial, "How to Play the Waltz in Six Easy Lessons." As Tom plays the piano, he is able to lure out and capture Johann, but his playing is immediately praised by the house servants, and so he lets go of Johann and happily continues his performance.
Tom's piano playing and Johann's dancing spread by word-of-mouth across Vienna, eventually reaching the Emperor of Austria. Tom and Johann are then commanded to perform at the palace before the emperor. Tom and Johann perform with vigor and delight at the palace, but Tom eventually succumbs to his instincts and tries to chase after Johann, only to fail once again and making the audience clap once again.
Emperor Frederick IV of House Corrino is desperate for the harvesting of the valuable drug melange (also known as "the spice"), found only on the planet Arrakis, to pay off all of his debt incurred on internecine wars with family members. To achieve this, he now offers the sole governorship of Arrakis to whichever of the three Houses (Atreides, Harkonnen, and the non-canon Ordos) delivers the most spice for him. War begins as deputations from all three Houses arrive on Arrakis.
The player is a military commander from a House of their choice. In the first few missions, the objectives are to successfully establish a base on an unoccupied territory of Arrakis, to harvest spice, and to defeat intruders. Later, when the three Houses divide Arrakis among them, the player has to assault and capture enemy territories. When the player dominates Arrakis on the world map, the two other enemy factions ally against their common enemy. The final showdown is the battle between the player's House against three enemy sides, among them Frederick's forces the Sardaukar (an unplayable elite force whose heavy infantry are particularly powerful). The introductory, mission briefing and endgame cutscenes are different for each House, in keeping with their very disparate world views. The weaponry and units also vary from house to house.