Arts Magic

Soon after being named the new leader of his high school's gang system, Kujo grows bored with the violence and hatred that surround him. He wants desperately to abandon his post… but his once-enviable position of power has a strange way of making him feel powerless.

In 1953, a young man steeped into a recording studio to cut a disc as a present for his mother. A year later, he returned to Sun Studios, and musical history was made. Mike Freeman takes us on a personal guided tour of the Elvis sites. Under his expert and enthusiastic guidance, we visit around 50 locations, including not only the famous Sun Studios, Elvis' high school and teenage home, but everywhere Elvis. We cruise from the eateries where the King used to hang out with his ""Mafia"" buddies, to the karate school where he perfected the kicks and punches that he was to incorporated into his stage act. We meet the Memphis folk who tell you how it all came about.

The Panther was Germany's response to the shocking experience of encountering the superior Soviet T-34 tank in the wake of the invasion of Russia in 1941. This program covers not only evolution of the Panther design, but through the use of combat footage, illustrates the Panther in action on all fronts on which the German army fought.

From 1940 until war's end, German industry produced a plethora of self-propelled weapons for the german Army. This unique compilation of combat fotage of tank destroyers and self-propelled artillery allows the viewer to gain insight into the variety and importance of such weapons to the German Army.

One of the keys to Germany's early victories during World War II was the Panzer tanks. Although their heavier counterparts historically have received more attention, the Nazis' light tanks -- the Panzer I and II -- nonetheless played an invaluable role. This documentary zeros in on the smaller, more nimble machines, which, despite their light weight and thin armor, were a critical component in the defeats of Poland, France, Yugoslavia and Greece.

By the end of World War I, missions of reconnaissance had been taken over by light armor. Early light tanks were still comparatively heavy, and it was only in the 1930s that the British took the first step in the right direction. Mussolini successfully used light tanks based on British designs and in Abyssinia, Hitler combined armored cars and light tanks in the invasion of Poland. And since World War II, in successful arenas of combat such as Vietnam and the Middle East, the future of the light armored vehicle as been assured.

The stalemate of trench warfare in World War I was finally broken by the tank and self-propelled gun, and Germany capitulated. These weapons came fully into their own in World War II, and combined with the tactics of blitzkrieg, gave Germany early supremacy. Ground support aircraft such as Stuka dive-bombers were used to devastating effect. The Soviet response to this combination was the T-34 tank whose 76 or 85mm gun could fire high explosive shells as well as armor piercing rounds.

Meet the Panzer III medium tank, one of Germany's showpiece weapons in World War II, often appearing in newsreel footage documenting early Nazi victories in Europe. Though it could easily hold its own against the Allied forces' tanks, the Panzer III met its match on the Eastern Front against the Russian T-34. By the end of the war, it had been shifted to secondary fronts and was often used as a command tank rather than on the main battlefield.