Thursday, July 06, 2006

View From The Treetops (7 July '06)

The Politics of Fiction


This post on Global Echo pricked my interest. It ponders the impact of fiction on our political awareness.
This particular post is No 5 in a series by Martin Johnson, read the previous chapters on his blog tamplins entire.

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He's The Man


"You lose your grip, and then you slip into the masterpiece"

In this LA Weekly (28 June) article entitled Exquisite, Greg Burke (55) talks to Leonard Cohen (71) about the tribute movie ‘I’m Your Man’.
Lenny proves once more to be both a great and a humble man.

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Being There (1979)


"As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden. "

In a recent post Barbara at Flaskaland reference the movie 'Shampoo' directed by Hal Ashby in 1975. Among other movies, Ashby later directed 'Being There' starring Peter Sellers and Shirley Maclaine.
The novel which was written by Jerzy Kosinski is a work of perfection and which suffers from not one wasted word. Kosinski also wrote the screenplay which renders the movie faithfully to the novel.
Sellers, in what turned out to be his last (and arguably his best) role, plays it straight and delivers the goods perfectly and without any of that barely contained mania normally associated with comics playing straight roles (ref: Jim Carey)
This of the story of Chance the gardener, who, when his millionaire patron dies, is ejected from the house where he has tended the garden for all of his life and the confines of which he has never once left. His only reference to life is via the television and his only topic of conversation is the garden.
Chance takes Chance into the limo of a senators's wife and he finds himself moving in Washington's highest circles.
This is satire at it's best.
Chance remarks while gazing from the limo's window: "This is just like television, only you can see much further."
This movie is one of that small group of movies which are as good as the novels that spawned them.

2 comments:

Rancho Perros Bravos said...

Chance. How good to remember that book again, I lost it years ago, along with title and authors name, but the memory of the story still surfaces. Excellent. This brings it back again. And to hear it is a movie just as good makes me want to see it.

Agnes said...

One of my favorites, the movie. Always loved it.

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