Seven years have passed since Antony's departure from Rome, and the former commander, dissipated and debauched - held in thrall by the charms and sexual prowess of his new bride, Cleopatra, withholds precious shipments of grain from Rome, where people die in the streets from hunger. Unable to incite a war with Antony and Egypt without committing political suicide, Octavian sends Atia and Octavia to Alexandria to mediate and reason with Antony; a strategy which proves predictably unsuccessful.
Brian Greene and an ensemble cast perform this theatrucak work tracing Albert Einstein's electrifying journey towards one of the most veautiful ideas ever conceived - the General Theory of Relativity. With state of the art animation and innovative projection techniques, Light Falls illuminates Einstein'sbreakthuroug moments, near misses, agonizing frustrations, and final emergence into the light, as one intrepid mind took on the universe... and won. Best-selling author, superstar physicist, and cofounder of the World Science Festival Brian Greene (The Elegant Universe, The Fabric of the Cosmos) and award-winning actor Paul Rudd (Ant-Man) perform this dramatic story. Featuring an original score by composer Jeff Beal, Einstein’s electrifying journey toward his greatest achievement is brought vividly to life.
Between 1850 and 1950, three cataclysmic revolutions shook China to the core, but out of them, today's China emerged. The film begins in Canton with the meeting of a US missionary and a Chinese student. Inspired by the Christian story and calling himself God's second son, Hong unleashed the bloodiest war of the 19th century, the Taiping Rebellion. As imperial China weakened, foreign influence grew. Treaty ports expanded, bringing growth and wealth, trams, railways and western sensibilities. But this provoked another surge of violence, the Boxer Rebellion, an attack against the foreigners, which was crushed by those same foreigners, who extorted a huge indemnity - $60 billion in today's money. Then in 1912, the empire fell, and many groups contested China's future. In World War I, China sent 100,000 men to the western front, only to be humiliated at Versailles when German colonies in China were handed to Japan. Between the two world wars, the disparity between rich and poor, city and countryside increased. We visit Hong Kong's Peninsular Hotel in the jazz age and then follow Mao on the Long March to Yan'an, the heartland of revolution. World War II came to China two years earlier than it did in the west. Wood talks to a survivor of the Japanese massacre of Nanjing in 1937 and then charts the triumph of the communists, before ending the story with Mao's death and the boom time of the last 30 years. The series ends with the warmth of the Chinese family and, at Beijing's Altar of Heaven, a final haunting glimpse of eternal China.
Cicero is finally undone by his duplicity in the form of Titus Pullo, acting upon Octavian's request to assassinate all supporters of Brutus in Rome. Pullo and Vorenus enjoy a happy if counterfeit outing with their families in the countryside to hide their assassin mission. Vorena the Elder's dangerous dalliance with one of Mimeo's men continues, and the torrid affair between Octavia and Agrippa escalates. Atia's casual cruelty to ask for the assassination of people she doesn't like results in complete disaster for Octavia's friend Jocasta.
The tale of one of China's most famous dynasties begins with the amazing story of Hongwu, a peasant rebel who founded one of greatest eras in Chinese history. The film takes us to his great capital Nanjing, with its 21 miles of walls, each brick stamped with the name of the village that made it. Following the trail, we go to the Bao family village and see the villagers act a Ming murder story. Like many authoritarian states, the Ming were obsessive about architecture. We see the giant fortifications of the Great Wall, the ritual enclaves of the Forbidden City in Beijing and travel with bargeman Mr Hu down the Grand Canal, China's great artery of commerce right up to the present day. We then hear about Admiral Zheng He's voyages to Africa and the Gulf decades before Columbus, watch the construction of an ocean-going wooden boat 250ft long, and hitch a ride on a replica Ming junk in the South China Sea. As state prosperity grew, so did a rising middle class. Wood looks at Ming culture in Suzhou, the 'Venice of China'. Staying in a merchant's house, he discovers the silk, ceramic and lacquer-making industries, and visits one of the most beautiful gardens in the city. Then on to Macao and the arrival of Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci, who hoped to convert China to Christianity. In the cathedral in Beijing, we learn more about these fateful exchanges with the west. Finally in Shaoxing, we visit the house of the 'Ming Proust' and at grassroots the Zhao family in Fujian where the film ends in an elegiac mood with the fall of the Ming in 1644.
Vorenus and Pullo return to the Collegium in Rome with Vorenus' family, but some of the 'changes' that Pullo had warned him about regarding his two daughters Vorena both the Elder and Younger, as well as his wife's son, begin to manifest themselves into hostility and resentment. But Vorenus is completely oblivious to this, and is too blissfully happy to return to the role of 'father'. Meanwhile, Octavian finally returns and manages to negotiate the Senate Consul's seat from a scheming Cicero.
Unable to incite a war with Antony and Egypt without committing political suicide, Octavian sends Atia and Octavia to Alexandria to mediate and reason with Antony; a strategy which proves predictably unsuccessful.