"Sling Blade"
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3 pages in length. Brilliantly characterized by Billy Bob Thornton, Karl Childers' mild mental retardation sets his life on an unexpected - and undesirable - course straight to prison. The inability to decipher what he saw when he came upon his mother and her lover, Karl's thought process runs amuck and he ultimately kills them both, costing him twenty-five years of his life behind bars. He learns a great deal in these more than two dozen years that help to guide him once regaining his freedom, however, the extent to which he has the capacity to absorb the same complex thought processes as those without mental handicaps is limited, and this limitation affords him only a simple - if not realistic - perspective of what goes on around him. No bibliography.
Filename: TLCSlingBlade.rtf

"Smoke Signals" and "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven"
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This 7 page report compares Sherman Alexie's 1993 book with the 1998 movie "Smoke Signals" directed by Chris Eyre tht it inspired. Both comment on the contemporary Native American experience and consider stereotypes about Indians. Both offer the outsider a glimpse of life in a truly "outsider" culture.
Filename: BWsignal

"Splendor in the Grass"
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An 8 page paper which discusses the movie "Splendor in the Grass" and further illustrates the works of Elia Kazan, who directed the movie, and William Inge, who wrote the screenplay. Bibliography lists 8 sources.
Filename: RAsplendor.wps

"Star Wars" - Crossover Development
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12 pages in length. Reaching the heights of merchandising and crossover development that other entertainment franchises only aspire to in their dreams, George Lucas's "Star Wars" enterprise has long tipped the moneymaking scale when it comes to spinning off his science fiction saga into a multitude of other factions. Bibliography lists 14 sources.
Filename: TLCStarWars.rtf

"Story of an Hour," "Araby," and "Casino"
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A 5 page paper which discusses similarities in Kate Chopin's "Story of an Hour," James Joyce's "Araby," and the film "Casino." The similarity focused upon is that which illustrates the realization of a truth, often a painfully accepted truth. Bibliography lists 7 sources.
Filename: RAchpnhr.rtf

"Tap"
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A 3 page paper which examines the film "Tap" starring Gregory Hines as it relates to tap dancing. Bibliography lists 1 source.
Filename: RAtap.rtf

"Teta I La Luna" – Catalan Identity
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5 pages in length. At first glance, one might not readily associate Bigas Luna's Teta I La Luna with Catalan cultural identity, however, the comedy goes well beyond its farcical façade to address Catalonia's long, arduous progression from past to present. That Luna's leading character – a young boy upset by the attention and suckling his new baby brother gets from his mother – seeks out other women upon which he can suckle illustrates through metaphor how Catalan's identity has long been associated with other cultural and social relationships; the boy's inability to stand on his own two feet and instead revert back to infantile behavior indicates the difficulty Catalans have had letting go of their oppressive past. Clearly, fortifying Catalan identity is much like breaking the bond between inherent to mother and child: It is not something accomplished with one abrupt effort but rather requires a weaning process the same as breast suckling. Bibliography lists 3 sources.
Filename: TLCCatalan.rtf

"The Asphalt Jungle" and "Citizen Kane" as Classics of Film Noir
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This 6 page paper discusses two films that are classics of the film noir genre, Citizen Kane and The Asphalt Jungle, with regard to the way architecture and the city are used as elements in the films. Bibliography lists 6 sources.
Filename: HVAspKne.rtf

"The Basketball Diaries" - Reaction
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4 pages in length. Director Scott Kalvert's interpretation of Jim Carroll's book entitled The Basketball Diaries illustrates how drugs are all too often employed as a pinch hitter when life gets too hard to handle. Leonardo DiCaprio's performance of a promising Catholic school basketball player who - through a chain of temptation and bad choices - finds his life spiraling down at a pace faster than he can contemplate; heroin becomes the only thing that allows him to cope - or at least he believes this to be true in his distorted thought process, a pseudo-reality embraced by myriad adolescents caught in the grips of teen angst. At the core of this film is the obligatory lesson that drugs are not the panacea for what ails. Bibliography lists 4 sources.
Filename: TLCBBallD.rtf