WCBE90.5 FM: "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story," "Ask the Dust," "Blue Velvet," "The Saddest Music in the World"

WCBE 90.5 FM: “Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story,” “Ask the Dust,” "Blue Velvet," "The Saddest Music in the World”
It's Movie Time co-hosts, writers, producers:
John DeSando & Clay Lowe
Air Time: 1:01 pm & 8:01 pm, March 24, 2006
Streaming Live on the web and on-demand at: http://www.wcbe.org

The Script

Clay

“Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story” is a wacked out salute to an unfilmable novel . . .

John

“Ask the Dust” is Robert Towne’s dusty descendent of his Chinatown . .

Clay

“Blue Velvet” is Guy Maddin’s pick to screen at the Wexner this week end . . .

John

"The Saddest Music in the World” is sadly too complex for its music . . .

HIT MUSIC THEN UNDER FOR:

Richelle:

"It's Movie Time" in central Ohio with John DeSando and Clay Lowe.''

MUSIC UP, THEN UNDER FOR

John

I'm John DeSando

Clay

And I'm Clay Lowe (“A Cock and Bull Story”  129 words)

CROSS FADE MUSIC TO EITHER HANDEL'S “SARABANDE” OR NINO ROTA’S “AMACORD” THEN UNDER FOR

Folks, not since Laurence Sterne destroyed hundreds of acres of trees to come up with enough paper to publish his eight-volume novel, “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy,” has an author spent so many pages detailing the events that led up to his character’s birth and conception.

And not since the narrator of Big Fish sent his character squirting out of his mother’s womb and sliding down a slick hallway, has a new born baby made such a sensational entrance on film.

Chock full of surprises, none is more so than director Michael Winterbottom’s decision to make “Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story” into a movie about making a movie.  The result, of course, is chaotic, but it’s that chaos that sources the movie’s sheerest of delights.

John (“Ask the Dust” 137 words)

“I am a lover of beasts and men.”

Clay

Sounds like a lead in to The Aristrocrats, John.

John

Not QUITE that crude.

Colin Farrell’s writer, Arturo Bandini, reveals his humanistic longings and along the way his inexperience with humans. His love is the Mexican beauty Camilla, played better than Katy Jurado could by Salma Hyeck, with whom he fights to the very end. But it is a passionate love nevertheless.

This is 1935 LA, land of love and art, with a whole bunch of racism thrown in between the abstractions.

Cinematographer Caleb Deschanel's shots are each a marvel of painterly cinema, just the right brownish, noirish lighting and shadows to create a marginal world of dream and destitution where only love could sub for wealth.

Towne, however, tempers the darkness with hope, reminding us at the end of his towering Chinatown that it’s out of our hands.

Clay (“Blue Velvet” 136 words)

There’s not much hope in David Lynch’s dark and jazzy  “Blue Velvet,” folks, but the film does hold its own with the more recent edgy cinematic offerings: “True Romance,” “Fargo,” “Kill Bill,” and  “Dogville.”

Firmly rooted in the surrealistic traditions of Bunuel and Dali’s “Un Chien Andalou” -- you know the movie with the slashed eyeball and the disembodied hand? 

John

Unforgettable images.

Clay

Indeed.

Anyway, Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” features a discarded human ear that’s discovered in a vacant lot by an innocent young man who lives in  an equally innocent town that’s located somewhere smack in the middle of America.

The lid soon blows off the town’s delusional innocence, however, when further acts of sadism and violence are quick to follow

Despite the terribly overwrought performances of Dennis Hopper and Isabella Rossellini, “Blue Velvet,” still manages to pack a deadly wallop.

John (“The Saddest Music in the World” 136 words)
 
Help me find my WAY with this puzzle.

Guy Maddin’s` The Saddest Music in the World is a `musical' set in Winnipeg in Depression 1933, where Lady Port-Huntly (Isabella Rossellini) is holding a saddest music contest.
The film is surrealism of the sort that marries the Melies brothers in their `Trip-to-the-Moon' wildest to `The Twilight Zone' in Rod Serling's most hilarious moments (and that's pretty unusual). Saddest Music satirizes old movies and creates a new look built on nostalgia and freedom from convention that some call “expressionism.”

”Saddest Music” is bizarre enough to satisfy the geekiest cultist in our audience. For the rest of us, just trying to appreciate all the signposts Maddin constructs to further his absurd vision is, well,  exhausting.

Wordsworth's thoughts apply because we at least hear “the still, sad music of humanity.”

Clay

Enough of Cockeyed Winterbottoms, Small Town Violence, and Mad Man Maddin, John, because it’s grading time . . .

MUSIC OUT, CUT TO DRUMS, THEN UNDER FOR
John

Holy Blue Bulls,  Hooray!

HIT DRUMS, THEN UNDER FOR

Clay

“A Cock and Bull Story” gets an “A” because it’s a muddle of a movie ABOUT making a movie that works . . .

John

“Ask the Dust” earns a “B” because it’s a very good “B” movie . . .

Clay

“Blue Velvet” gets an “A” because evil ALWAYS sucks us in  unAWARES . . .

John

"The Saddest Music in the World” earns a “B” for its BRAINY BEAUTY . . .

Clay, given your Canadian sympathies, I can see you drinking beer out of Isabella Rossellini’s artificial leg.

I'm outta here.

Clay

Drain out the beer, John, because after all these dark movies, I’m ready to down a Black Russian . . .

I'm outta here too.

See you at the movies, folks.

HIT MUSIC, THEN UNDER FOR

Richelle

The award winning "It's Movie Time" is co-hosted, written, and now produced by John DeSando and Clay for WCBE 90.5.

MUSIC UP, THEN DOWN AND OUT

Copyright John DeSando & Clay Lowe, 2006