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contains spoilers (sort of) I'm talking to my students this week about summary, and the related skills of selection and compression. As an in-class exercise, we watched the first ten minutes of Raising Arizona today (everything up to the opening credits) and I asked them to summarize those ten minutes as a series of 8-10 plot points. Afterwards, I asked them to condense those plot points to four sentences or less. One student, mishearing, said "four words or less?" I corrected him, but then thought about it for a second and said "couple decides to kidnap?" After class, on the phone, CJO and I realized that many films can be aptly summarized in four words. For instance (spoilers follow): Star Wars Episode Three: "Anakin becomes Darth Vader" The Village: "Luddite myth-management prevails" Babe: "Laudable pig herds sheep" The Usual Suspects: "Criminal outwits cop, partners" (CJO's suggestion: "Playing dumb pays off") Feel free to post your own four-word summaries in the comments area...

Tuesday, January 17, 2006 1:44 PM   Comments: Post a Comment