AS FRESH AS IT GETS
The spring growing season has been good up here on the Pine ridge. Our upper raised bed, on the back hill, has yielded an abundance of great lettuce.
FLYING ULTRA FIRST CLASS
The Weekender Video was spotted by Beverly. You've got to see this to believe it.
REEL NOTES
THE COMPANY YOU KEEP
If you were politically active, motivated or interested during the turbulent 70's, Robert Redford's THE COMPANY YOU KEEP, will register with you and may even ring a few bells.
A former Weather Underground activist goes off the grid as a reporter pursues a story, the dimension of which he does not understand. It is a superb reprise of the dilemma, how far do you go to stop a government that is doing wrong? That question ripped the peace movement, mobilized to stop the war in Viet Nam, when more radical elements amped up the fight to include bombings and violence.
Susan Sarandon's monologue, shortly after she is arrested for an old crime, is a brilliant restatement of just that. You may wonder if much has changed at all?
A thrilling intrigue, the film is smart, some of the dialogue plays back like history and is star laden. Robert Redford acts and directs. Great performance from Shia LaBeouf and superb smaller role performances from Chris Cooper, Terrence Howard, Stanley Tucci, Richard Jenkins, Sam Elliot, Julie Christie, Nick Nolte, Brendan Gleeson and Sarandon.
I took a personal interest in the side bar story of the role of the reporter. Back in the day I was assigned to cover the anti war movement which included New Mobe, Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee, SDS, Draft Resistance, the Black Panthers and more. Some of the questions and emotions Redford surfaces are flashbacks for some of us, and just old history to younger viewers.
It came as an odd reminder that bombings in that era were done by Americans angry at the Viet Nam war. Deadly, disruptive and dangerous though they were, they seemed less sinister than those by modern terrorists. But America in the 60's and 70's was a vastly different place than America today. Redford draws that in a stoic way. It's a film that will make you think.
It came as an odd reminder that bombings in that era were done by Americans angry at the Viet Nam war. Deadly, disruptive and dangerous though they were, they seemed less sinister than those by modern terrorists. But America in the 60's and 70's was a vastly different place than America today. Redford draws that in a stoic way. It's a film that will make you think.
See you down the trail.
