Word: slings
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Citizen Ruth and Sling Blade are directorial debuts with regional roots (Omaha, Nebraska, and Benton, Arkansas). And both feature star turns with a twist: Burt Reynolds as an Operation Rescue-style evangelist, John Ritter as a gay, discount-store manager. But these films have more serious novelties to offer. Citizen Ruth is, lo and behold, a political satire, and Sling Blade has the richness of a fine Southern Gothic novel...
Like Ruth, Sling Blade's Karl Childers (Billy Bob Thornton) is a brain-damaged naif taken in by strangers. When he was 12, Karl killed his mother and her lover. Now, 25 years later, he is released from a mental hospital and befriended by a boy (Lucas Black) who could be a healthier version of the lonely, imperiled child Karl was and still is. Rural Arkansas is home to some very decent people--the boy Frank, his mother and her boss (Ritter), Karl and his various keepers--and one or two moral skunks, notably the loutish boyfriend (Dwight Yoakam...
...They were met with a full-blown attack from the spectators. Kids with supersoakers and an artillery of water balloons ran interference and diverted the attention of the firefighters. The junior high students went for the firefighters on top of the trucks, launching water balloons with their three-man sling-shot. The adults manned the garden hoses. The fire department soon ran out of water and we declared victory. However, our fire fighters are resourceful folks and stole our water balloons. They won that year, but now we hide the ammunition behind women in wheelchairs...
...Nobody does anything but sling mud--I really want issues, not fighting," said Janet Boyden, taking a break from a round of bowling in Raymond...
...poetic justice in some members of the Chicago Board of Trade, as ADM helped FBI agents launch a 1989 sting that led to several commodities traders being convicted on fraud and racketeering. "There is a lot of snickering because ADM has finally got its ass caught in a sling," said a board member of the Board of Trade. "There is just this whole sweet irony of their getting stung after initiating a sting...