being there and wordplay
Last night I watched Being There and tonight I saw Wordplay.
Being There is an odd movie. I saw it a lot of years ago with my parents and for some reason was reminded about it recently. A simple-minded gardener who’s never left his employer’s house has to leave after the employer dies. After an accident he is taken into a house of wealthy family. Pretty soon, his slow way of speaking and talk of gardening are taken as great signs of wisdom deep metaphors. Pretty soon he’s on national TV.
It’s a pretty funny and clever movie. I was pretty entertained by it.
Wordplay is another weird-word competition documentaries, in lines with Spellpound (spelling bee) and Word Wars (scrabble). Wordplay is about cross word puzzles and cross word puzzlers. It not only covers the national competition but the history and famous cross worders (like Jon Steward, Clinton, etc.). It was an entertaining movie. I’d put it at better than Word Wars but not as good as Spellbound (but Spellbound’s pretty high on my list).
An additional note is that I’m pretty sure I saw 1.5 seconds of Dan Katz in Wordplay.