WCBE 90.5 FM: "Bobby," "For Your Consideration," "Shut Up and Sing"

WCBE 90.5 FM
It’s Movie Time: "Bobby," "For Your Consideration," "Shut Up and Sing"
Co-hosts, writers & producers: John DeSando & Clay Lowe
Recorded: Wednesday, 1:00 pm, November 29, 2006
Air Time: Friday, 3:01 pm and 8:01 pm, December 1, 2006
Streaming live on the web at http://www.wcbe.org .

Clay

"Bobby" is an uneasy mix of fact and fiction . . .

John

“For Your Consideration"  should be not be CONSIDERED for an OSCAR . . .

Clay

"Shut Up and Sing" showcases the integrity of the Dixie Chicks . . .

HIT MUSIC, THEN UP THEN UNDER FOR:

Richelle Antczak McCuen

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

MUSIC BRIEFLY UP THEN SLOWLY DOWN AND OUT

John: I'm John DeSando

Clay: And I'm Clay Lowe

John ("Bobby" 127 words)

“His passion has aroused the best and the beast in man. And the beast waited for him in the kitchen.” Theodore White about Bobby Kennedy

Film clips in the flaccid film Bobby of him before his assassination are a reminder of the Kennedy charisma and the loss both brothers’ deaths brought. Besides the obvious Crash parallel, Bobby takes the late Robert Altman approach to the day of Robert Kennedy’s death to show in the hotel the intersecting lives that’ll be defined by this history.

Perhaps the point in the disappointing vignettes at the Ambassador Hotel is that all these characters are allowed to age with unremarkable lives while this promising young leader will be shot down.

“Has anybody seen my friend Bobby?  Where has he gone?”

Clay ("Bobby" 126 words)

He’s gone with the wind, John, like our youth, but he’ll not be forgotten.  Perhaps loved, perhaps hated, but not forgotten.

Too bad, however, that the movie wasn’t more about Bobby and less about the lives of the people who just happened to be there the night he was murdered.

The “Grand Hotel” set-up was not a bad idea. Robert Altman pulled it off brilliantly in “Nashville” (which also happened to end in an assassination).

Unfortunately, “Bobby’s” director, Emilio Estevez, was not able to as skillfully weave together the disparate hopes and dreams of the movie’s background characters into an equally meaningful metaphor.

Maybe that’s why you leave the theatre wishing the movie had been less about the minor characts and more about the issues “Bobby” believed in with such passion

John ("For Your Consideration" 129 words)

Here’s even LESS less:

Whenever I review a film, I put out my sensors for the “buzz,” that mysterious rumor cloud praising or damning a film most critics haven’t seen, much less those doing the praising or damning.

Christopher Guest’s For Your Consideration satirizes this subtle form of marketing or sabotage, sometimes spot-on funny, but most of the time tired.

However, I was certainly amused by the take on the film critic duo, whose obligatory disagreements turn them into mush when they have to agree---MAYBE like us!
Creative minds need to take a different angle or perhaps a stronger light on the Hollywood spoof, in the spirit of the cinematographer in the film who says when asked to heighten the key light: "It's brighter than Stephen Hawking in here."

Clay ("Shut Up and Sing" 131 words)

Well, folks, you may or not believe that the Dixie Chicks have creative minds, but you’ll walk away from “Shut Up and Sing” knowing they’ve always been willing to speak them.

Veteran documentary filmmaker Barbara Koppel, teaming up with Cecilia Peck, spent three years following this outspoken trio of country singers as they achieve both wanted and unwanted fame,
At issue, in the film, is a remark made three years ago by lead singer Natalie Maines while singing at a concert in London. Distressed by our going to war in Iraq she lets her audience know she’s ashamed that President Bush is also from Texas.

Bring on the swift boats.

“Shut Up and Sing” may not a great documentary, but you’ll be glad you found out about what they’re all about.

But enough of flaccid films, over-hyped movies, and angry Southern warblers, John, because it's grading time.

John

Holy HYPING Hollywood, Hooray.

HIT DRUMS

John

"Bobby" earns a “D” because it’s a DISASTROUS attempt to capture a true hero . . .

Clay

"Bobby" gets a "C" because it's a CRIME it wasn't better . . .

John

"For Your Consideration"  earns a “C” because it’s a CONSIDERABLE disappointment . . .

Clay

"Shut Up and Sing" gets a "B" because the angrier they got, the BETTER they sang . . .

DRUMS OUT

John

Clay: There is more truth in David Hockney’s painting, Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy, which I saw last week at London’s National Portrait Gallery, than all the hours of documentary we’ve seen this year.

Or have you so influenced me that I now accept portraiture as superior to caricature? 

This is all too deep for me.

I'm outta here.

Clay

Not to worry, John.   As Paul Klee once said,  "My faces are truer than life," and that certainly holds true for the ones I've taken of you.  They too will someday hang in a rotunda.

I’m outta here too.

See you at the movies, folks.

HIT CLOSING THEME THEN UNDER FOR

Richelle:

The Award-Winning "It's Movie Time" with John DeSando and Clay Lowe is written and now produced by John DeSando and Clay Lowe in conjunction with 90.5 FM, WCBE in Columbus, Ohio.

MUSIC UP, THEN DOWN AND OUT

Copyright by John DeSando & Clay Lowe, 2006