Redemption Rock

Peter Vala, a 42-year old man who used his belligerent strength to strangle his girlfriend to death many years ago, is serving a prison sentence for murder. Perhaps you’re picturing him in a maximum-security prison, wearing an orange jumpsuit, surrounded by electric fences and armed guards with attack dogs. In reality, Vala, who has biceps the size of footballs, is being held in a place where many of us would consider a vacation. In Oslo, Norway lies a minimum-security prison, Bastoy, where…

In their documentary Brother’s Keeper (1992), filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky portray the life of Delbert Ward and his take in a court case revolving around his brother’s death. On one side, there are the New York State Police and a handful of locals who believe the Delbert is the one who murdered his brother while they were sleeping. However, the Ward family itself and most of the local town people who through the trial fight alongside the Wards to prove Delbert is innocent.…

In the preface of Philip Zimbardo’s non-fiction book, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, he uncovers various reasonings on what influenced him into conducting the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE). Part of his inspiration for writing this book was heavily based on the Abu Ghraib Prison Trial where he was the expert witness to one of the prison guards, Sergeant Ivan “Chip” Douglas, who was convicted of the many tortures and murders of the prisoners that occurred at…

Leah Jennings Gish Screening Essay Seven Psychopaths The film I watched at the Gish Theatre on Tuesday November 3rd with my entire recitation class with Alesa McGregor. The film Seven Psychopaths is written and directed by Oscar-winner Martin McDonagh. The comedy Seven Psychopaths follows a struggling screenwriter (Colin Farrell) who unintentionally becomes intertwined in the Los Angeles criminal underworld after his friends (Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell) kidnap a gangster's (Woody…

The film The Wall is directed by Doug Liman which he also directed the film “Mr. & Mrs. Smith.” The Wall is led by three actors Aaron Taylor- Johnson as Sgt. Allen Isaac, John Cena as Staff Sgt. Shane Matthews, and Laith Nakli the voice of Juba an Iraqi sniper. The film is set in 2007 in Iraq at an oil pipeline where Sgt. Isaac and Staff Sgt. Matthews were called on to secure the area after they were informed there was a shootout. When the soldiers arrived, they encountered a sniper that was…

The Shawshank Redemption, widely considered one of the greatest movies of all time, is a film released in 1994 that was based on a short novella written by Stephen King in 1982. The screenplay, written and directed by Frank Darabont, is a period piece, set in the 1940’s, based on a friendship between two cons serving life sentences for murder, in Shawshank State Penitentiary. Andy Dufresne, played by actor Tim Robbins, is a banker who has been convicted of killing his unfaithful wife and her…

don’t make it right boss” (Luke, Cool Hand Luke). Within the films Cool Hand Luke and Shawshank Redemption, one can discover that through drinking issues of each character that prison is in fact obviously terrible. However, with the fact that prison does also come to an end for some the friendships and plans that are made, are forever lasting. Between the two films Cool Hand Look and The Shawshank Redemption, there are a number of similarities and differences expressed through each of the given…

Charles "Charlie" Harmon was an assistant district attorney who later started fixing his cases with a defense attorney named Arvin Baker. Background Harmon graduated from law school alongside Jamie Ross and they became friends throughout their careers. While Jamie became a defense attorney, Charlie became a prosecutor. At some point in his life, he married a woman named Lisa and they had two children. He worked in Brooklyn until he transferred to the Special Narcotics Bureau of the Manhattan…

Con artist Verbal Kint is the survivor of a massacre at the harbor of San Pedro Bay, and he’s interrogated by U.S. Customs Agent Dave Kujan (Chazz Palminteri). Wanting to know the whole story, Kujan convinces Kint to talk. Since he’s already gotten near immunity, Kint obliges by starting the tale six weeks earlier when five cons meet one another in a line-up. While sitting in a cell, they decide to team up and rob corrupt members of the New York City police department. Then they’re off to L.A.…

These two movies are based on a novel called The Getaway by Jim Thompson, which published in 1958. The first movie came out at 1972 and the second came out at 1994. The first movie earned over $36 million in USA. And the remake earned $30 million. The story line are so similar. The first version movie is that Carter “Doc” McCoy was in jail at Texas. He told his wife, Carol, to do anything in order to have a deal with Jack Beyon, who was immoral businessman. Beyon used his power and got Doc a…