WCBE 90.5 FM: "It's Movie Time" - "Baadasssss," "Fahrenheit 911"-Tease, "Reality TV & The Documentary," "Monty Python's Life of Brian"

“It’s Movie Time” with John DeSando & Clay Lowe
“Baadassss,” "Fahrenheit 911"-Tease,
“Reality TV & The Year of the Documentary,"
“Monty Python’s Life of Brian,”
Taped: Noon, June 23, 2004
Air Time: 3:01 pm and 8:01 pm, June 25, 2004
Streaming live on the web at www.wcbe.org.

Clay
Mario Van Peeble’s “Baadasssss” is a love/hate tribute to his filmmaking dad . . .

John
“Fahrenheit 9/11" may crank up the heat on the White House . . .

Clay
Documentary films find new life in 2004 . . .

John
“Monty Python’s Life of Brian” is a passionate parody sure to reheat Christians. . .. . .

HIT MUSIC THEN UNDER FOR:

Richelle:
It's Move Time in Mid-Ohio with John DeSando and Clay Lowe . . .

MUSIC UP AND OUT

DeSando
I'm John DeSando

Clay (“Baadasssss”)
And I'm Clay Lowe.
John, Melvin Van Peebles found the mother lode of black gold when his “Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song” hit the screens in 1971.

Rude, crude, and full of angry dudes, porno chicks, and mean old red necked cops, Van Peebles rocked the film world when he parlayed his half million dollar investment into a $10 million dollar bonanza. He even got Bill Cosby into the game.

Now, some thirty year’s later Van Peeble’s son, Mario, has brought to the screen “Baadassss,” which tells the story of how his daddy became the father of blaxploitation film.

If you want to know what fueled the anger of black urban America in the early 1970s. And if you want to know what it was like to live in those psychedelic days when Viet Nam was the daily war of horror, then fasten your seat belts and hunker yourselves down because Mario Van Peebles, like his daddy, holds nothing back when the time has come for him to pour out his soul.

John ("Fahrenheit 911")
Clay, Michael Moore's soul has always poured into films such as "Roger and Me" and "Bowling for Columbine," so I'm anxious to see his "Fahrenheit 9/11" put the heat on the neocons for their close ties to Al-Qaeda and oil.

As a reader of “The New York Times,” you know liberal columnist Maureen Dowd bashes the Bushies most of the time. Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” is probably from the Dowd school of satire--Bush-centered and witty, not always objective but larded with facts we haven’t heard or seen spun in just her way.

Moore is always fun to watch, giving the liberals some comfort that not all is lost and the conservatives ammunition for their criticism of fuzzy-headed bleeding, spending hearts.

We'll see if The Cannes Palm D’OR was awarded to Moore for “Fahrenheit” because of his sense of humor or his objectivity.

Michael Moore does muckraking journalism that keeps a citizenry informed but rarely offers the defining argument in the endless debate among fundamentalist political organizations.

Clay (“Reality TV & The Re-birth of the Theatrical Doc”)
So, John, what a year this has been for lovers of documentaries and reality TV. From “American Idol” to “The Osbournes” to “The Swan” the networks have been exploiting their audiences’s need to see real people, doing real things on TV. And from “Control Room” to “Fahrenheit 911” film makers have been trying to help their audiences see more clearly through the fogs of war.

From “Nanook of the North” to “Night and Fog” to “Hearts and Minds” and “The Selling of the Pentagon” documentary filmmakers have traditionally been a cantankerous and outspoken lot. May the controversies they inspire, obsess and possess us forever.

John ("Monty Python’s Life of Brian")
Clay, The recent obsession with “The Passion of the Christ,” resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in box office receipts, means some satirical entertainment should be forthcoming from professional parodists. Or, someone could reissue the ‘70’s classic “Monty Python’s Life of Brian.”

When the three wise men enter the wrong hovel and mistake the baby Brian for the baby Jesus, Brian’s mother doesn’t know what myrrh is; the irony that most of us don’t either is essential Monty Python.

When a fey Pilate berates his centurions for smirking at the mention of his friend, “Bigus Dickus,” the Pythons sustain the humor for minutes beyond what any comedy troupe could ever dare to do.

When scores of hapless victims hanging on crosses sing about how great life is, everyone who suffers under trickle-down theories or preemptive warfare should be amused at the common man’s naiveté.

Here is the antidote to Mel’s madness.

Clay
John, enough of YOUR maniacal madness,it’s grading time.

John
Hooray!

HIT DRUMS

Clay
“Baadasssss” gets a “B” because “it’s a movie about blacks, for blacks, and by blacks” that white folk should see . . .

John
"Baadassss" is an "A" because AIN'T no white man gonna dare give it less . . .

Clay
Guess you didn’t hear me . . .

John
"Monty Python's Life of Brian" earns an "A" because ARDENT ANYTHING is vulnerable to satire . . .

Clay
You know folks, we were out of town during the press screenings of “Fahrenheit 911,” but be sure to tune in next week when WE get to join in on the fun.

I’m outta here.

John
I'm outta here too.

Clay

See you at the movies, folks.

HIT MUSIC

Richelle:

The Award Winning "It's Movie Time" with John DeSando and Clay Lowe is produced by Richelle Antczak in conjunction with 90.5 FM, WCBE in Columbus 106.7 FM in Newark, WYSO, etc. Reviews on the web, etc., etc.

MUSIC UP AND OUT