Ron Silver

In the mid-1980s, New York has declared war against Organized Mafia. Mafia soldier Jackie DiNorscio (Vin Diesel) and 19 of his peers have been waiting a year for their federal racketeering trial to begin under The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). While out on bail, Jackie is shot by his drug addict cousin Tony Compagna (Raúl Esparza). Jackie was in his home, sleeping, when Tony entered via the front door, walked up to Jackie's bedroom and pumped 4 bullets into him. But Tony was so nervous that his aim was all over the place and Jackie survives. At the hospital, Jackie refuses to name Tony to the cops as the shooter. He claims that he never saw anything. Afraid of being killed by the extended mob family run by Nick Calabrese (Alex Rocco), Tony agrees to be a government witness for district attorney Sean Kierney (Linus Roache). Shortly after, Jackie is arrested and sentenced to 22-30 years in prison after being set up in an unrelated drug sting by the DEA. Kierney tries to pressure Jackie into cooperating with the government against his co-defendants in order to get an early release date, but Jackie flatly refuses. Upset over the results of his previous trial, Jackie fires his lawyer (who had already charged him $250,000 for his last trial and had already spent $60,000 on the RICO case) and decides to represent himself. Nick Calabrese (Alex Rocco) is the most senior mafia figure on trial, which includes Carlo Mascarpone (Frank Pietrangolare) (undereboss of Lucchese crime family in New Jersey), Gino Mascarpone (Paul Borghese) (Ran day-to-day operations of gambling, extortion and loan sharking for his boss Nick), Danny Roma (Family soldier and enforcer), Alessandro Tedeschi (Nick Puccio) (loan sharking and gambling), Tino Bellochio (numbers and gambling), Dominic Crespi (gambling) and Jackie (cocaine distribution). This adds to the burdens of the court, already having to deal with 20 defendants and their lawyers. Judge Sidney Finestein (Ron Silver) strongly advises against it but lead defense attorney Ben Klandis (Peter Dinklage) agrees to assist Jackie. Both Klandis and Kierney recognize Jackie's ability to charm the jury, but his arrogant, vulgar behavior eventually starts irritating everyone. The defense lawyers in particular believe that Jackie is ruining their chances by defending himself at the trial. Klandis still believes that Jackie was able to get the jury to laugh and a laughing jury is not a hanging jury. As revenge, Kierney arranges for Jackie to have all of his prison privileges revoked. Specifically, Jackie's lounger is taken away, and he cannot sleep as he needs to be half sitting due to his bad back, to get any kind of sleep. Jackie even gets Ben to get him permission to have lunch with the fellas at the court. No one is more upset than Nick, who believes Jackie will cost them the trial and threatens to sever himself from the case. Nick tells Jackie that he is only sucking up to the jury so he can walk and tells Jackie he doesn't trust him one bit. Nick won't allow Jackie to have lunch with the family. As weeks turn into months, the court case evolves into a marathon affair. Jackie badgers an FBI agent who claims that he saw Nick at an Italian restaurant with Italian males, kissing his ring and he is the boss. Jackie gets aggressive to prove that there was no way that the agent knew that all males in the restaurant were Italian. The judge warns Jackie multiple times, but he continues to speak his mind. The Judge fines him $10,000 for contempt of the court. Kierney wants Jackie kicked off the case, but Judge Finestein reluctantly agrees to keep the trial going. Jackie realizes he has gone too far and apologizes to the judge. Agent McQueen (Domenick Lombardozzi) testifies that he worked undercover as a mafia soldier at the New Jersey sea ports for 2 years. He testifies that he witnessed Tony hand over $7000 to Nick as his cut from a drug deal, and Nick accepting the money. Nick's lawyer gets McQueen to accept that the payment could have been for an outstanding loan that Tony owed Nick. Jackie cross questions McQueen and establishes that he was responsible for Jackie's brother's death, by giving him access to alcohol, even though he knew that Jackie's brother was an alcoholic. Wanting to remove the possibility that even one defendant gets acquitted, Kearny offers a final plea deal to all the defendants. In return for pleading guilty, they will all get shorter sentences than they would be facing if found guilty. Jackie tells his co-defendants that he refuses to take a deal even though he is already serving a long sentence for drug trafficking. This convinces Nick and the others to turn down the deal too. The final witness is Jackie's cousin Tony. Klandis is able to use Tony's heavy drug use to discredit him as a witness and Jackie emotionally cross-examines his cousin and asks why he betrayed his love for him. After 21 months of testimony, the trial concludes with closing arguments. The prosecution and defense teams return to their homes expecting the jury to deliberate for at least a week. However, after only 14 hours of deliberation the jury returns a verdict of not guilty on all charges. While the rest of the defendants leave the courtroom with their families, Jackie returns to prison to finish his sentence. He receives a hero's welcome at the correctional facility, where fellow prisoners chant his name and reach out to shake his hand. The end title cards explain that the real Jackie DiNorscio served 17 and a half years before being paroled in 2002. He died of natural causes.

A biography of sports legend Muhammad Ali, focusing on his triumphs and controversies between 1964 and 1974. In 1964, a brash new pro boxer, Cassius Clay, explodes on to the scene. Bold and outspoken, he cuts an entirely new image for African Americans in sports with his proud, public self confidence and his unapologetic belief that he is the greatest boxer of all time. To his credit, he sets out to prove that with his highly agile and forceful style soon making him a formidable boxer who claims the heavyweight championship. His personal life is no less noteworthy with his allegiance to the Nation of Islam, his friendship with the controversial Malcolm X, and his abandonment of his slave name in favor of Muhammad Ali stirring up controversy. Yet, at the top of his game, both Ali's personal and professional lives face the ultimate test when the military draft rules are changed, making him eligible for military induction during the Vietnam War. Ali refuses to submit on principle to cooperate in a war for a racist nation that treated his people so poorly. The cost of that stand is high as he finds himself unable to legally box in his own country while his case is contested in court. What follows is a battle for a man who would sacrifice so much for what he believes in and a comeback that cemented his legend as one of the great sports figures of all time. —Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com) Notoriously obsessive director Michael Mann and star Will Smith devoted nearly two years and over 100 million dollars from the coffers of Columbia Pictures and other financiers to creating this biography of boxing great Muhammad Ali, which focuses on the ten-year period of 1964-1974. In that time, the brash, motor-mouthed athlete quickly dominates his sport, meets and marries his first wife (Jada Pinkett-Smith), converts to Islam (changing his name from Cassius Clay), and defies the United States government by refusing to submit to military conscription for duty in Vietnam. His world heavyweight champion title thus stripped from him entirely for political reasons, the champ sets about to win back his crown, culminating in a legendary unification bout against George Foreman (Charles Shufford) in Zaire, dubbed the "Rumble in the Jungle." In his travels, Ali becomes a symbol of power to disenfranchised African-Americans everywhere and meets such luminaries as Malcolm X (Mario Van Peebles), Martin Luther King Jr. (LeVar Burton) and Maya Angelou (Martha Edgerton). Muhammad Ali from 1964 to 1974, told in three braided threads. The boxer: from becoming champion to regaining the championship. Religion and politics: Cassius Clay becomes a Black Muslim, truncates a friendship with Malcolm X, perhaps is Elijah Muhammad's pawn, refuses induction into the US military, and faces a five year prison sentence while his case goes to the Supreme Court. Family: he marries twice and by 1974 marriage two is strained, defends his white trainer, has a brother in Bundini Brown, and is wily with Howard Cosell. Throughout, Ali keeps his own counsel: in the ring, at the induction center when he won't step forward, and in friendship, love, and victory. —<jhailey@hotmail.com>

Zane Zaminski (Charlie Sheen), a radio astronomer working for SETI, discovers an extraterrestrial radio signal from Wolf 336 (An F class star. These stars have from 1.0 to 1.4 times the mass of the Sun and surface temperatures between 6,000 and 7,600 K), a star 14.6 light years from Earth. Calvin (Richard Schiff) is Zane's colleague at the observatory and Char (Teri Polo) is an investment banker and his girlfriend. As soon as Zane hits the signal, he and Calvin run the entire sequence of detection protocols to confirm that the signal is genuine and from an extra-terrestrial source. Zane runs the first 2 steps of the protocol, but the signal fades away when he tries to get an independent source to verify the signal. The signal lasted 42 seconds. Zane reports this to his supervisor, Phil Gordian (Ron Silver) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but Phil dismisses the claims. Phil says that Wolf 336 is a variable star and thus no intelligent life can thrive in such a volatile environment. Zane and Calvin say that Wolf 336 was a stable star and has only been variable for the last 50 years or so. Zane speculates that the signal might be a distress call. After Zane leaves, Phil destroys the tape of the signal that Zane brought with him. Zane soon finds that he has been fired because of supposed budget cuts, and blacklisted, preventing him from working at other telescopes. Zane finds that Phil had told the other observatories that Zane was faking signals to keep his job at JPL. When Zane confronts Phil and asks for his tape back, Phil denies any knowledge of it. Calvin tells Zane that the DOD folks have confiscated all of their original research, including the back-up data on the signal. Later the same DOD agents arrive at Calvin's home, presumably killing him. Taking a job as a television satellite installer, he creates his own telescope array using his customers' dishes in the neighborhood, operating it secretly from his attic with help of his young next-door neighbor, Kiki (Tony T. Johnson). Zane relocates the signal, but it is drowned out by a terrestrial signal from a Mexican radio station. Zane is now confused because this signal seems to be Earth based. He knows that the first signal came from space, but then he found the next signal (identical to the first one) coming from Earth. Zane speculates that this is a communication signal. Zane attempts to tell his former coworker, Calvin (Richard Schiff), but finds he has just died suspiciously from carbon monoxide poisoning. Zane travels to Mexico and finds the radio station was burnt to the ground. Searching the local area, he comes across a new power plant. There is an assassination attempt on Zane, and he survives. He runs after the assassin and corner him, but when he is distracted for one second, the assassin folds his legs in a crooked way and jumps over the roof of the nearby building to escape. Zane does not see this. Climatologist Ilana observes that the Earth's temperature has recently risen several degrees, melting the polar ice. She has discovered flower patches growing in the middle of the Arctic ice. Ilana has been trying to get her hands on the satellite data on greenhouse gas concentrations in the Earth's atmosphere to work on her hypothesis, but the data has been denied to her for several months, claiming that the satellite recording the data had a malfunction and the new satellite has not been put in place by NASA. Ilana gets her hands on some data from ground stations, weather balloons and other informal sources and finds that greenhouse trace gases concentration has increased by 700% in specific locations such as Mexico, Ecuador, and Brazil. According to projections, this would lead to 12 degrees rise in Earth's surface temperature over the next 10 years. Ilana decides to travel to Mexico to take further reading and confirm her hypothesis. There, Zane runs into Ilana and helps Ilana Green (Lindsay Crouse) protect her atmospheric analysis equipment from the plant's overzealous security forces. Ilana is investigating the power plant, which seems to be one of several recently built facilities across the world that may be responsible for the rise in temperature. The two are released, but without Ilana's equipment. Surprisingly, Zane realizes one of the guards could pass as the identical twin of his former boss, Phil, except that he is of Mexican ethnicity (whereas Phil is not). As Zane and Ilana regroup, Phil instructs some agents, posing as gardeners, to release an alien device in Zane's attic that creates a miniature black hole, consuming all of Zane's equipment. Zane leaves Ilana to again investigate the power plant and she is soon killed by a deadly scorpion planted in her room. Zane discovers the plant is a front for an underground alien base. The very different looking aliens are able to disguise themselves with an external skin to infiltrate our society. Zane finds that all of the bases expel large amounts of emissions into the atmosphere. Zane is discovered but escapes back into the nearby town and attempts to convince the local sheriff of the situation. However, alien agents bring Ilana's body to the police station, making Zane a suspect in her death, Zane escapes and sneaks back into the United States. Zane accosts Phil on the JPL grounds, forcing him to admit that the aliens are trying to raise the Earth's temperature to not only kill off humans but make the planet hospitable for themselves. Zane secretly records the conversation and once Phil discovers the recording, he sends agents to stop Zane. Zane returns home to find his attic devoid of equipment. He figures out the only way to broadcast the tape is to go to a nearby telescope and beam the signal directly to a television satellite, broadcasting it worldwide. With the help of his girlfriend Char (Teri Polo) and Kiki, he travels to the telescope. Phil and his agents soon disable the telescope controls from the main building. Zane leaves the tape with Kiki and instructs him to transmit it when he gives the order and then he and Char sneak over to the telescope's base and barricade themselves in the control room. Zane makes the necessary adjustments and tells Kiki to active the tape, but Kiki reveals himself to be an alien agent, and opens the door to allow Phil inside and confiscate the tape himself. Phil and his agents ram down the door to the telescope room with a van, but Zane freezes them with cryogenic gases. As he works to free the tape stuck in Phil's frozen jacket, one of the agents drops a sphere which starts to form another singularity in the room. Zane and Char escape through the telescope's optical path before the device implodes most of the telescope base, exiting safely onto on the collapsed dish. In the distance they see Kiki, and Zane tells him to tell the aliens that he will soon broadcast this tape; they watch as Kiki runs off. In the film's epilogue, Zane's conversation with Phil is broadcast across the globe.

In 1863, Confederate soldiers are carrying a gold bullion as a payday for the army. Suddenly, they are cornered and gunned down by a highwayman using anachronistic automatic pistols and futuristic tech equipment, leaving them stranded and dead. The mysterious highwayman steals the trunk containing the gold and then suddenly vaporizes into a gelatin like mist. In 1994, 131 years later in Washington DC, the U.S. government creates the Time Enforcement Commission (TEC) to combat the misuse of newly developed time travel technology. They have discovered that the same gold bullion was used in recent arms purchases. The TEC is to detect "time ripples" among the time-lines and to stop them from happening before they reach the present, since people cannot travel forward in time to the future, they always travel back to either change history or steal riches. (Note: the mysterious highwayman who killed the Confederate soldiers in 1863 to steal their gold is never seen again or identified). Senator Aaron McComb (Ron Silver) volunteers to fund and oversee the commission. Meanwhile, police officer Max Walker (Jean Claude Van Damme) is offered a job as an agent for the Time Enforcement Commission. He meets his wife Melissa (Mia Sara) at a local shopping mall where he stops a purse snatcher. He notices three odd-looking punk men following them despite never seeing them before. Walker and Melissa go home to their large fancy house and later make love. Later that same evening, Max is attacked in his home by the same intruders he saw earlier at the mall and Melissa is killed in an explosion, destroying his house. Ten years later in 2004, Walker is now a veteran TEC Agent. He is sent back to October 1929, in the middle of the Wall Street crash to arrest his former partner Lyle Atwood (Jason Schombing) for taking advantage of the U.S. stock-market crash. After subduing Atwood's bodyguards, Walker interrogates Atwood who reveals that he is working for Senator McComb, who needs money for his presidential campaign. Terrified by McComb's threat by sending hitmen back in time to murder his ancestors, thereby wiping out his existence, Atwood tries to kill himself by jumping out a window. Walker catches him as he falls and takes him back to 2004, but Atwood refuses to testify against McComb and the TEC agency sends him back to 1929, right where he left off, this time falling to his death. Senator McComb arrives at the TEC agency to oversee the work and to congratulate Walker for his recent successful mission. Walker implies to McComb that he knows all about his dirty dealings behind the scenes in Washington and about his means to acquire money for his campaign. McComb leaves the facility and orders his aide to have Walker killed. The next morning, two assassins break into Walker's small apartment and attempt to kill him, but Walker, a trained martial arts expert, kills both assassins after a violent and protracted fight. While still trying to investigate McComb to expose him of corruption, Walker is partnered with agent Sarah Fielding (Gloria Reuben), and sent back to 1994 to investigate a pending ripple, where they find a young Senator McComb arguing with his business partner Jack Parker about their company's new computer chip. Parker offers to buy McComb's share of the company, but suddenly, the older McComb arrives from 2004 to warn his younger self that the chip will make huge profits. A fight starts when Walker is double-crossed by Fielding, who reveals she works for McComb. McComb kills Parker, wounds Fielding, attempts to kill Walker, and manages to escape back to 2004. When Walker returns to 2004, he finds that things have become worse. McComb now owns the computer company, with no record of Parker. He is almost guaranteed the Presidency with his finances and approval rating. The TEC is being shut down on account of budget cuts. There is also no record of Fielding. Realizing that he has to repair things, Walker hijacks the original prototype time machine (which McComb had been using for their illegal trips) with the help of Commander Matuzak (Bruce McGill), who sacrifices himself when McComb's men attempt to stop Walker from escaping. Finding himself once more in 1994, Walker finds Fielding in the hospital, where she agrees to testify against McComb. Whilst trying to find Fielding's DNA from a blood sample in the lab, Walker finds a sample of Melissa's blood and it indicates she is pregnant. Walker realizes her death occurred later that night, and he decides to stop it. After going back to Fielding's room, he discovers that she has been murdered and he is framed as the prime suspect. He goes to the mall where he and Melissa met that night. Eventually, Max Walker finds her and manages to convince her he is from the future. He also sees the three thugs who attacked him and realizes that they are McComb's men whom were sent back to kill him before he joined the Time Enforcement Commission. That evening, McComb's thugs break into Walker's home, like before, only this time the older Walker is waiting for them. Without his younger self realizing this, the older Walker helps to fight off the bad guys. Together, they and Melissa win, though the younger Walker is wounded. The 2004 McComb then takes Melissa hostage. When the older Walker finds McComb is holding Melissa, the corrupt senator then sets a time bomb. He then shoots Melissa, just before the young McComb appears, having been deceived into coming to the house by a fake message from Walker. Walker grabs the young McComb and pushes him into the older one, causing them to become a writhing, screaming mass which melts into nothingness (since according to the time theory, no two persons can exist by physically touching each other). Walker carries the wounded Melissa out of the house just before the bomb explodes, destroying the house just like before. He lays the unconscious Melissa beside his younger self and leaves the scene before the local police and fire department arrives. Walker returns to 2004, and the time-line has been corrected. The Time Enforcement Commission still exists, Fielding and Matuzak are alive, and McComb does not exist, having vanished ten years earlier. As Walker returns home, he is happily shocked to find himself living in the same house which was rebuilt. Melissa is alive and their nine-year-old son is waiting to greet him. As Walker walks into the house for dinner, Melissa has something to announce to Walker... implying that she is pregnant again.

The life of Buddy Young, a comic legend in flashbacks but an old man looking for work in the present. Buddy Young was the comic's comic, beloved by everyone. Now, playing to miniscule crowds in nursing homes, it seems like everybody but Buddy realizes that he should retire. As Buddy looks for work in show business, he realizes that the rest of the world has forgotten the golden days of Buddy Young, and that there just may not be room in the business for an old comic like himself.

3 unlike couples get to know each other thru a committee at a private NYC school. Tale of three different couples (Yuppies, Hippies and Society Folk) who find some common ground and become friends after being assigned to the same school project. Their lives are turned upside down by divorce, indictment and sex but their friendship remains strong. —Susan Southall <stobchatay@aol.com>

A rookie in the police force must engage in a cat-and-mouse game with a pistol-wielding psychopath who becomes obsessed with her. On her first day on the job, NYPD officer Megan Turner, the lone officer on the scene, shoots and kills the perpetrator of a supermarket hold-up. Since no gun was found on the perpetrator's person or at the scene and none of the witnesses could corroborate Megan's story definitively that the perpetrator was indeed wielding a gun, she is suspended from active duty. She is quickly albeit temporarily reinstated to the position of homicide detective because the spent shell casing from the bullet used in a subsequent murder had her name carved on it. This murder ends up being only the first in a series. Working on the case with fellow homicide detective Nick Mann, Megan initially has no idea who in her life could be the murderer. In short order, the murderer does show himself to her. He is commodities trader Eugene Hunt who she met immediately following her suspension and who she has since dated. He also implies to her that he was in the supermarket at the time of the hold-up and that he fled the scene with the perpetrator's gun. The supermarket shooting caused a psychotic break in him which resulted in among other things his obsession with her. However, beyond his implications only to her of being the murderer, Megan has no hard evidence that would stand up in a court of law that Eugene is indeed the murderer. Megan has to convince her colleagues, especially Nick, that she is telling the truth about Eugene, while stopping him from killing again and equally as important stopping him from his continued psychological torture of her.

In 1960 New York City, Arthur Shelton (John Doolittle) prays at the bedside of his young son, Bobby, who is sick with scarlet fever. On the street outside the apartment building, God (George Burns), dressed as an elderly man in a baseball cap and a gray sweatsuit, writes the boy's name on a notepad and promises to watch over him, hoping at the same time that He's not making a mistake with this one. Twenty-four years later in Los Angeles, California, the same Bobby Shelton (Ted Wass) is a struggling singer-songwriter married to Wendy (Roxanne Hart), a supportive wife and social worker. After another record company flatly rejects his latest composition, Bobby agrees to play a wedding for $500.00. Dejected, he tells himself he would "sell his soul to the devil" to be a success in the music business. The devil (George Burns in a dual role), who is disguised as a cigar-smoking talent agent named Harry O. Tophet, receives Bobby's message while driving back from Miami after a personal assignment, and notices on his car computer that God has "watched over" Bobby since 1960. The devil, however, declares out loud that he has priority if a person directly asks for him. During the wedding reception, the devil/Harry O. Tophet appears and gives Bobby his business card, promising to book him at venues such as Carnegie Hall and Madison Square Garden. Although Harry claims to represent "all the big names... sooner or later," Bobby is not familiar with the agent. Nevertheless, he is impressed when Harry orchestrates a series of pratfalls among the wedding guests. Harry then disappears before Bobby can say anything more to him. When Bobby comments that he is flipping out, he turns over Harry's business card and sees that it says on the back of it "You're not flipping out." Meanwhile, rock star Billy Wayne (Robert Desiderio) panics when he realizes that his seven-year contract with the devil expires at 12:00 midnight. At Astral Records, Bobby and his longtime talent agent, Charlie Gray (Eugene Roche), arrive for an appointment with executive Gary Frantz (Ron Silver). As they wait in the reception room, Harry arrives and forces Bobby to choose between the two agents. Bobby takes a chance on the determined old man and politely fires Charlie. When Harry proposes a $3.5 million recording deal for Bobby, Frantz and his colleague laugh. At the same time, Harry hands Bobby a seven-year representation contract and tells him that if he signs it, they will stop laughing at him. When the young musician hesitates, Harry suggests a trial period and extends the contract to 12 years. As soon as Bobby signs, his name on the signature line magically changes into "Billy Wayne," and Frantz suddenly agrees to the $3.5 million-dollar contract with the famous rock star. Although Bobby still thinks that he is himself, everyone else around him now recognizes him only as Billy Wayne. Meanwhile, the real Billy Wayne has been transferred into Bobby's body without any memory of his former life. When Bobby telephones his wife to tell her the good news about the recording contract, he realizes that another man has replaced him and that Wendy is also unaware of the switch. By now Bobby has long since discovered that his deal with Harry was actually a deal with the devil, who reveals much later that he had lied about the trial period; Bobby is now in this for the long run. When Bobby asks the devil if he can ask one question, he lets him do so. Bobby asks, "Why do I still think I'm me? And what happens when my contract runs out?", the devil replies, "That's two questions. I only said you could ask one." During his first concert, Bobby is initially hesitant in front of screaming fans, but soon becomes more comfortable on stage. As the tour continues, he relishes the experience of being a rock star with a private plane, female groupies and magazine cover photos. Back in Los Angeles, Bobby arrives by helicopter at his hillside estate, knowing that he still thinks that he is himself rather than a celebrity. He stops outside the loft apartment that he shared with Wendy and appears to be regretful. Five months later, the devil visits Bobby again and mentions that God has become bitter and that He rarely makes personal appearances on Earth. That night, Bobby is stunned to find out that Wendy is pregnant, but is relieved to discover that the child was conceived before the deal with the devil was made. Desperate to return to his wife, Bobby begs to be released from his contract, but the devil refuses. When he consults a Catholic priest and a Jewish rabbi about the unholy arrangement with the devil, the two religious leaders consider the musician to be mentally disturbed. On the street, Bobby encounters an itinerant Black sidewalk preacher who simply tells him to look for God in the desert. With a sudden urge to visit Las Vegas, Nevada, Bobby tells Gary Frantz to book his next tour at Caesars Palace. After the first concert, Bobby asks the casino operator to page "the Lord" for him. When God telephones the musician's suite, Bobby thinks at first that He is Harry after hearing His voice until God tells him to look out of his window. Bobby does and sees a rainbow appear out of nowhere and without any rain. God then reassures Bobby and mentions that he has been watching over him ever since 1960. However, the Almighty does not offer His immediate help and abruptly hangs up, but not before telling Bobby that it wouldn't hurt to give all praises to Him in the highest. Bobby does so and asks to see another rainbow, but after he waits all day, none appears. Finally, by nightfall Bobby gives up and goes out of his hotel room for the next concert, just barely missing another rainbow appear, again out of nowhere and without any rain, in the night sky. Waiting in his dressing room before the concert, Bobby attempts to free himself from Billy Wayne's life forever by committing suicide. He swallows several handfuls of pills with liquor. Meanwhile, in the casino, God and the devil meet face-to-face for the first time in a long time and play poker together for the soul of Bobby Shelton. If the devil wins, Bobby Shelton will die as Billy Wayne and be remembered with other fallen rock superstars such as Elvis Presley, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin. During the game, seemingly out of nowhere, God raises the stakes and wagers the billions of souls that are on His list and that He is currently watching over. If the devil wins, all of them are his along with Bobby. If God wins, the devil will never be allowed to ever interfere in their lives, even if they directly ask for him or even if they beg for him. The stakes are too risky for the devil and he folds, conceding Bobby's soul. As God presents His weak card hand, the devil realizes too late that his opponent was bluffing all the time and had nothing. When he asks why he folded, God says, "I put the fear of Me into you." In the dressing room, Gary Frantz finds Billy Wayne's body unresponsive on the floor, while Bobby Shelton gets up and slips out of the room, surprisingly unnoticed by anyone. After a doctor declares Billy dead, Bobby finally feels that he has been released from the rock star's life. Meanwhile, God tears up Bobby's contract to the devil. The devil asks God to play double or nothing, but God refuses him, saying that He got what He wanted. When the devil then asks God why He took such a big risk for Bobby, God says that he wouldn't understand and besides, He had to take him down a peg because he had been getting a bit cocky lately. Later, a wise-cracking God, who bears a strong resemblance to the devil, presents himself to Bobby and explains that He had promised his father that He would look after Bobby when he had scarlet fever as a child in 1960, adding that Arthur Shelton's prayer for his son was very convincing. God both tells Bobby to go back to his wife and also assures him in no uncertain terms that next time He will not bail him out. Unaware that her actual husband has been away for the past few months, Wendy welcomes Bobby home that evening. He tells her that he has had a life-changing experience. Five years later, Bobby rushes to the bedside of his sick daughter and softly sings to her the same song that his father had sung to him when he was sick as a child. Suddenly, Bobby hears the voice of God singing the same verse of the song that he had just sung. When Bobby asks "God?", God then reassures him by telling him "Sing", which he gladly does.

After five successful years of living and working together, a couple decide to get married. But what they don't count on is how to survive the honeymoon. When a professional couple who have lived & worked together for many years finally decide to marry, their sudden betrothal causes many unexpectedly funny and awkward difficulties. They soon find that being married is often quite different from being "best friends." —Ary Luiz Dalazen Jr. <ajr@fortalnet.com.br> Richard Babson and Paula McCullen are successful Hollywood screenwriting partners, best friends, roommates and lovers. They decide to take the next step in their relationship by buying a house together. Because of the symbolism of the house purchase, Richard is able to convince an initially reluctant Paula to get married, her reluctance due to it meaning that she has to be a grown-up in life, just one of her many neuroses. In agreeing to get married, Paula in turn is able to convince Richard to take a cross-country train trip first to visit her parents in Buffalo, New York for a week to help celebrate their fortieth anniversary, then to Vienna, Virginia to visit his parents for a few days, Paula and Richard who have yet to meet their respective in-laws. Beyond the pressures they face from their producer Larry Weisman concerning their latest screenplay, Richard and Paula may not be able to survive not only as a married couple but as a partnership in all its aspects on this trip, as each not only can see into the future of their spouse by his/her parents, but the state of marriages in all their facets the longer they progress. The situation is exacerbated by their marriage being placed under a microscope by those around them. —Huggo

In a small Texas town, mentally ill Vietnam veteran John Kirby (Brian Libby) goes insane and kills two people of a family he was staying with. Sheriff Dan Stevens (Chuck Norris) and his deputy Charlie (Stephen Furst) responds and eventually arrests Kirby, but Kirby breaks out of the handcuffs, hits other officers and grabs one of their guns, forcing the officers to open fire and shoot Kirby. Kirby suffers severe gunshot wounds and is near death. Kirby is transported to an institute where his psychiatrist, Tom Halman (Ron Silver), works along with Medical Doctors Spires and Vaughn (Steven Keats and William Finley respectively), who are also genetic engineers. In an attempt to save Kirby, Dr. Spires suggests that they use the formula they created. However, Dr. Halman objects in light of Kirby's psychosis. Dr. Spires first decides that Halman is right, but then ignores the consequences and proceeds to use the formula once Dr. Halman leaves. The formula makes Kirby nearly invulnerable, leading to the deaths of many more people (which includes Halman and his wife, the two doctors who revived him and Charlie). Sheriff Stevens tracks down Kirby in the hope that he can put an end to the carnage. He finally finds Kirby and is able to throw him down a well. As Stevens leaves, however, Kirby's head comes out of the water, meaning he was not killed, at which point the film ends.