WCBE 90.5 FM: "Catch and Release," "Smokin' Aces"

WCBE 90.5 FM
It's Movie Time: "Catch and Release," "Smokin’ Aces"
Co-hosted, produced & directed by John DeSando & Clay Lowe
Air Time: Friday, 3:01 pm and 8:01 pm, January 26, 2007
Streaming live on the web at http://www.wcbe.org .

John

"Catch and Release" is the worst romantic comedy of the year . . .

Clay

"Smokin’ Aces" is the bloodiest . . .

HIT THEME MUSIC

Richelle:

"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

I'm Clay Lowe . . .

John ("Catch and Release")

She has dimples, an upper lip looking like a hammer hit it, and she gets the best Hollywood roles. As that Julia Roberts glides into middle age, her younger version, Jennifer Garner, may be the heir apparent but not for her role as Gray Wheeler in Catch and
Release.

Gray's fiance has died and she discovers his indiscrete past. The film has nothing new or comic to say or laugh about grief and discovery, just about unchecked lusts for love and food (Clerks’ Kevin Smith is a sloppy, overweight, loveable friend, infrequently funny, as when an erotic massage therapist literally jumps his bones).

Catch and Release is a romantic comedy whose romance is low-grade (she just lost her fiancé, for goodness sake) and comedy low-ball.

Clay ("Catch and Release")

John, low-grade indeed.  "Catch and Release" writer, Susannah Grant, who brought home the goods with her feminist friendly "Erin Brockovich," has waded in way over her head this time around.  And this, her first attempt to direct one of her own scripts, only further muddies the waters.

Too bad for ingenue Jennifer Garner, because not even Julie Roberts, nor even the great Hepburn, could have helped to save this picture.

Garner's character, understandably, is in a gray funk during most of the film's opening scenes.  But neither the director, nor the script, nor the movie's fairly talented cast is able to metamorphose the movie's tragic opening into a heartwarming comedy.

The good news is, the movie's trendy Colorado setting will have you thinking about planning a vacation there, come June. 

John ("Smokin’ Aces")

OK—How about Nevada’s Lake Tahoe, then?

It’s not the witty Departed or the verbally abusive Reservoir Dogs, but Smokin’ Aces is bloodier than both and may rival Dogs and even Pulp Fiction for amusing absurdity. Aces is aces for a kind of sick mayhem that can be funny, often because of the street trash talk and off-the-wall plot.

The film traces several hit men and women converging on a Lake Tahoe resort where a notorious gangster is dieing but calling for the heart of a rival for $1 million. It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World with guns, a treasure hunt that brings in FBI agents, hookers, and international stars of the mob world.

Director Joe Carnahan doesn’t have the finesse of Quentin Tarantino, yet he does have a deft hand at making violence interesting.

Clay ("Smokin’ Aces")

Violence interesting, John, where have you been during the evening news?  Violence, it would seem, is intrinsically fascinating.

What a no brainer.   Our culture is in love with violence.  So, if you accept that, "Smokin' Aces" is just perversely bloody fun.

But, because Carnahan, like Tarantino - and Kubrick before him, has a talent for morphing the elements of extreme pop culture: music, fashion, jivey talk (and our the love of guns), into grand cinematic blood baths . . .  perhaps they'll finally help us get the picture that violence is indigenous, at least to culture as we know it today.

"Smokin' Aces," along with "Kill Bill" (and Mel Gibson's recent "Apocalypto"), may be nothing more than outrageous appeals to our baser instincts.  But that turns out to be a message of its own, eh?

But enough of swelling lips, bloody hipsters, and pop-cultural introspection, John, because . . . it's grading time . . .

HIT DRUMS, THEN UNDER FOR:

John

Holy Herpes, Hooray

"Catch and Release" earns a “D” for DEADLY DIALOGUE . . .

Clay

"Catch and Release" gets a "D" because good writers do not always make good DIRECTORS . . .

John

"Smokin’ Aces" earns a “B” for BLOODY BUSINESS that’s not BAD . . .

Clay

"Smokin’ Aces" gets a "C" because it's CLEVER, but not CLEARLY intended . .

John

Clay, I hope after YOU leave this world YOUR girlfriend doesn’t find out about all the indiscretions YOU’VE left behind . . .

I’m outta here.

Clay

Having a girlfriend would be an indiscretion for me, John, and whatever I leave behind will be under lock and key.

I'm outta here too.

See you at the movies, folks.

HIT CLOSING MUSIC: "AIN'T WE GOT FUN," THEN UNDER FOR:

Richelle:

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

MUSIC UP, THEN DOWN AND OUT

Copyright 2007 John DeSando & Clay Lowe

WCBE 90.5 FM: "Letters From Iwo Jima," "Miss Potter," "Sweet Land"

WCBE 90.5 FM
It's Movie Time: "Letters From Iwo Jima," "Miss Potter," "Sweet Land"
Co-hosted, produced & directed by John DeSando & Clay Lowe
Air Time: Friday, 3:01 pm and 8:01 pm, January 19, 2007
On Demand at http://www.wcbe.org

Clay

"Letters From Iwo Jima" is a Japanese language film directed by Clint Eastwood . . .

John

"Miss Potter" is an placid biography of a famous children’s author . . .

Clay

"Sweet Land" is a sweet movie about a shy homesteader and his mail order bride . . .

HIT THEME MUSIC

Richelle:

"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

I'm Clay Lowe . . .

John ("Letters From Iwo Jima")

Clay, General Tommy Franks couldn’t withstand the biographical scrutiny Clint Eastwood gives to the Japanese commander in Letters from Iwo Jima. The ill-conceived preparations for the Iraq War pale next to the care General Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe), took at Iwo.

Clay

And many of his own officers violently disagreed with his tactics.

John

I AGREE with you.

Clay

Good choice.

John (Continues)

Although the outcome of the battle was preordained because by February of 1945 the Japanese war machine was almost depleted, Eastwood suffuses the network of 5000 caves with a light that symbolizes the Japanese soldiers’ love of country and belief in its destiny.
It may not be the Oscar winner for this year, but it is another first-rate film the director has slipped in at the end of the year in an apparent strategy to get us to notice it.

He had my attention at Mystic River.

Clay ("Letters From Iwo Jima")

That river flows on, John, as do the tides of war.
 
Kudos, therefore, to Clint Eastwood for bringing into closer perspective what it was like on both sides of the bloody battle for Iwo Jima during in the closing days of WWII.

Not so much a counter-part to his "Flags of Our Fathers," which depicted how it all seemed for the invading American foot soldiers, "Letters From Iwo Jima" takes us behind the battle lines of the Japanese defending their homeland island.

"Flags," however, focuses primarily on how those events impacted the post-war memories of the U.S. soldiers.  Conversely, "Letters" takes greater interest in revealing the internal struggles taking place between the militarist Japanese officers and their more humane commanding general.

My, oh my, whatever happened to "Dirty Harry"?

John (Miss Potter)

He’s lost in Iraq.

Clay

No, that's dirty George.

John (Continues)

When Beatrix Potter (lovingly played by Renee Zellweger) says in Miss Potter, "There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story," you can anticipate a sentimental but endearing biography of the Tale of Peter Rabbit’s creator. Although we never really get to know the depths of Potter’s genius, Zellweger gives her a sunny optimism infectious in our cynical times.

Her romance with her publisher, deftly underplayed by Ewan McGregor, is about the only dramatic conflict in the story, which tends to imitate the benign world of rabbits, ducks, and frogs. The touches of magic realism reinforce the romantic aura.

This film also deserves praise for supporting a pre-feminist writer who resisted the social convenience of marriage in favor of her creative gifts.

Clay ("Sweet Land")

Well, folks, "Sweet Land" is also in gentle contrast to Eastwood's film about the yapping dogs of war.

But war was not a forgotten issue among the rural villagers whose sons and fathers had fought the Germans during the first Great War.

Featuring a shy young farmer, who invites a mail order bride from Norway to be his helpmate, he and the town are shocked when they discover she’s German and can speak only that language.

Shades of  the Hun-haters "Bad Day at Black Rock". 

So, can this lovely lady, with her good looks, and sweet music (she has brought along a phonograph player), win her way into the hearts of these people?

You bettchum.
 
"Sweet Land" is a visual delight that will, begrudgingly, charm you. 

But enough of humanized enemies, anthropomorphic rabbits, and winsome beauties, John, because it's grading time . . .

HIT DRUMS, THEN UNDER FOR:

John

Holy Happy Hares, Hooray!

"Letters From Iwo Jima" earns an “A” for its depiction of heroism from an ANAMOLOUS point of view . . .

Clay

"Letters From Iwo Jima" gets a "B" because Eastwood gets BOGGED down during the ending . . .

John

"Miss Potter" earns a “B” for help BRINGING animals into kiddy lit . .

Clay

"Sweet Land" gets a "B" because it's a BEAUTIFUL film that got made outside of the system . . .

John

Clay, Potter was filmed in the England’s Lake District, where you refused to photograph a dead sheep for me. I can’t forgive you. I’m outta here.

Clay

John, when I'm worried I don't count sheep, I count my blessings; and so should you while there's still time . . .

I'm outta here too.

See you at the movies, folks.

HIT CLOSING MUSIC, THEN UNDER FOR:

Richelle:

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

MUSIC UP, THEN DOWN AND OUT

Copyright 2007 John DeSando & Clay Lowe

Central Ohio Film Critics Association Awards: Best Films, 2006

The 5th Annual Central Ohio Film Critics Association Awards, honoring the best in film for 2006, were announced on January 11, 2007.

Best Film
   1. Children of Men
   2. The Departed
   3. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
   4. Pan's Labyrinth
   5. Little Miss Sunshine
   6. Brick
   7. United 93
   8. Babel
   9. Thank You for Smoking
  10. Casino Royale

Best Director
  • Martin Scorsese - (The Departed)
  • Runner-Up: Alfonso Cuarón - (Children of Men)

Best Actor
  • Leonardo DiCaprio - (The Departed)
  • Runner-Up: Sacha Baron Cohen - (Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan)

Best Actress
  • Helen Mirren - (The Queen)
  • Runner-Up: Meryl Streep - (The Devil Wears Prada)

Best Supporting Actor
  • Eddie Murphy - (Dreamgirls)
  • Runner-Up: Alan Arkin - (Little Miss Sunshine)

Best Supporting Actress
  • Jennifer Hudson - (Dreamgirls)
  • Runner-Up: Rinko Kikuchi - (Babel)

Best Ensemble
  • The Departed
  • Runner-Up: Little Miss Sunshine

Actor of the Year (for an exemplary body of work)
  • Clive Owen - (Children of Men, Inside Man)
  • Runner-Up: Leonardo DiCaprio - (Blood Diamond, The Departed)

Breakthrough Film Artist
  • Jennifer Hudson - (Dreamgirls) - (for acting)
  • Runner-Up: Sacha Baron Cohen - (Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby) - (for acting and writing)

Best Cinematography
  • Dean Semler - (Apocalypto)
  • Runner-Up: Guillermo Navarro - (Pan's Labyrinth)

Best Screenplay - Adapted
  • William Monahan - (The Departed)
  • Runner-Up: Alfonso Cuarón, Timothy J. Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus, and Hawk Ostby - (Children of Men)

Best Screenplay - Original
  • Rian Johnson - (Brick)
  • Runner-Up: Michael Arndt - (Little Miss Sunshine)

Best Score
  • Gustavo Santaolalla - (Babel)
  • Runner-Up: Nathan Johnson - (Brick)

Best Documentary
  • An Inconvenient Truth
  • Runner-Up (tie): Wordplay
  • Runner-Up (tie): Jesus Camp

Best Foreign Language Film
  • Pan's Labyrinth
  • Runner-Up: Letters from Iwo Jima

Best Animated Film
  • Cars
  • Runner-Up: Monster House

Best Overlooked Film
  • Brick
  • Runner-Up: The Descent

See: http://www.cofca.org/awards.php

WCBE 90.5 FM: "Volver," "Freedom Writers," "Notes on a Scandal"

WCBE 90.5 FM
It's Movie Time: "Volver," "Freedom Writers," "Notes on a Scandal"
Co-hosted, produced & directed by John DeSando & Clay Lowe
Air Time: Friday, 3:01 pm and 8:01 pm, January 12, 2007
Streaming live on the web at http://www.wcbe.org .

Clay

"Volver" reminds us that Penelope Cruz is both beautiful and talented . . .

John

"Freedom Writers" is not just another educational film . . .

Clay

"Notes on a Scandal" makes it hard to love the movie's two teachers . . .

HIT THEME MUSIC

Richelle:

"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

I'm Clay Lowe . . .

John ("Volver")

Clay-Volver (“to return”), starring Penelope Cruz, begins with an establishing scene unlike any other this year: The tracking
camera shows scores of Spanish women scrubbing the graves of their beloved deceased. The tone is happy, almost lyrical, and appropriate to mirror the admixture of living and dead in the story, with the dead seriously influencing the living.

Clay

As they should be.

John

Writer/director Pedro Almodovar flirts with magical realism without compromising his signature love of people and eccentric lives. Typically few men intrude into this gynecentric world.

Clay
Why would they?

John

Because unlike us, they’re WUSSES.

Almodovar has not only successfully visited his past, but he has also made almost poetic the return of anyone, living or dead, to make amends and renew a love once strong but now compromised by all the mistakes of an imperfect
life.

Clay ("Volver")

Folks, in the Spanish language film Volver, Penelope Cruz returns to the screen, not as a dippy sex bomb, but as a strong independent wife-mother who's struggling to  give to her daughter the love she failed to share with her own deceased mom.

Set both in Madrid and in the small rural town of La Mancha, Volver, gives director Almodovar an opportunity to revisit the childhood he also spent in that dusty little village.

Much as Fellini revisited and revered his boyhood spent among the peasants in rural Italy, Almodovar romantically indulges the villagers strengths, superstitions, and quirky weaknesses.

And like Fellini, Almodovar, is so skillfully able to draw us into their lives, that we too begin to believe that the dead can return to lovingly haunt us.

John (“Freedom Writers”)
Freedom Writers is not clichéd;

Clay

Who said it was?

John

Paris Hilton . . .

Clay

Of course.

John

It’s based on at-risk students in early ‘90’s Long Beach, relating the essential truth about education: Most students have a voice if a teacher can find it; most students can thrive when a teacher creates a sense of family amid chaos, as Emily Gruwell (Hilary Swank) did.

The diaries her students wrote inspired students around the country to do the same. But those actors as students: They’re too old to be playing 14 and 15 year olds.

Freedom Writers reminds us why we love a profession that gives us a chance to save souls in the only way we can outside the uncertain faith of religion. This film is a front-running entry in a long history of teaching brought to its ideal form in film.

Clay ("Notes on a Scandal")

Well, John, saving souls is not exactly what's on Sheba Hart's mind when she enters a darkened art room one night and gives herself over to one of her boyishly handsome high school students. Oh, the shame of it all.

And that, of course, is why the movie's called Notes on a Scandal. Ta Da!

To make matters worse, Sheba (as played by Cate Blanchett), is both a married woman and a mom.

John

Yes, the combination is so scandalous!

Clay

Not scuzzy enough?  Blanchett's Sheba then discovers she's also the secret object of an older colleague's lonely-lust (Judith Dench).

Unfortunately, everything happens so fast in the film you never have time to either understand or care about the characters. 

So, is the movie about abusive power relationships?   Or, is it about developing self-awareness?  Who knows? 

John

You obviously don't, thereby missing the film's strengths.

Clay

Bottom line, folks, this Scandal is no Madame Bovary. 

But enough of thespians Cruz, Swank, Dench, and Blanchett, because it's grading time.

HIT DRUMS, THEN UNDER FOR:

John

Holy Harridans, Hooray

"Volver" earns a “B” for BARING Penelope Cruz’s BEAUTY . . .

Clay

"Volver" gets an "A" because ALMODOVAR'S women are ALWAYS stronger than the men . . .

John

"Freedom Writers" earns a “B” for BETTING on the promise of youth . . .

Clay

"Notes on a Scandal" gets a "C" because the real scandal is we don't CARE
what happens to the movie's main CHARACTERS . . .

John

Clay—Teachers like us in Higher Education just never had it rough in the
class room, except for your photo/cinema classes, where points were awarded
for point and shoot, or was that a porno film? I’m confused, and I'm outta
here.

Clay

Point and shoot? No way, John, at Ohio State, the Department of Photography and Cinema went down and out, just like our gridiron colleagues.

I'm outta here, too.

See you at the movies, folks.

HIT CLOSING MUSIC, THEN UNDER FOR:

Richelle:

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

MUSIC UP, THEN DOWN AND OUT

Copyright 2007 John DeSando & Clay Lowe

WCBE 90.5 FM: Films That Move Us - "McCabe & Mrs. Miller," "Casablanca"

WCBE 90.5 FM
It's Movie Time: "McCabe & Mrs. Miller," "Casablanca"
Co-hosted, produced & directed by John DeSando & Clay Lowe
Air Time: Friday, 3:01 pm and 8:01 pm, January 5, 2007
Streaming live on the web at http://www.wcbe.org .

Clay

"McCabe & Mrs. Miller" from 1971 is Robert Altman's moodiest and most haunting film . . .

John

The 1942 "Casablanca" has the best dialogue of any movie ever made . . .

HIT MUSIC, THEN UP THEN UNDER FOR:

Richelle"

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

MUSIC UP THEN DOWN AND OUT

John

I'm John DeSando . . .

Clay (Intro: Films That Move the Heart - 258 words)

And I’m Clay Lowe.

HIT CD: LEORNARD COHEN: CUT 2 (THE SISTERS OF MERCY), ESTABLISH THEN UNDER FOR:

Folks, not only is a new year upon us, so is the arrival of our 300th show. So to celebrate the occasion John and I are going to finally respond to one of our most frequently asked questions: What is your favorite film? And, of course, the inevitable follow through: Why?

Fair enough, that's easy, for of all the films I've seen, Robert Altman's "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" is the film that has most deeply touched my heart. And isn't that what we expect from our movies?

Featuring the visually seductive cinematography of Vilmos Zsigmond (who most recently lensed "The Black Dahlia"), and the brooding music of Canadian folk balladeer, Leonard Cohen, Altman gets everything just right.  The turn of the century mining town in the Pacific Northwest.  The smoky interiors of the local pubs and whorehouse, with all of the oddball drifters, opportunists, and ladies of ill repute this new little town can support.

Warren Beatty, as McCabe, first comes mumbling his way into town from out the midst of a snow storm. Then he meets Julie Christie, as Mrs. Miller, a fetchingly beautiful and soulfully wise business woman who offers to help set up the town's most thriving enterprise, next to the mines.

So, while the snow continues to fall and Cohen's melancholy music quietly drones on, McCabe continues to find himself sinking his way deeper and deeper into the tragedy of his own making.

Loners and dreamers and losers, John, "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" is the film that's been cut most closely to my size. (258)

CROSSFADE MUSIC TO "ROMANTIC MOVIE THEMES FOR THE LOVER IN YOU" (CUT 8: "AS TIME GOES BY"), THEN UNDER FOR:

John ("McCabe" response then leads into “Casablanca”)

I can’t believe you HEAR any of that mumbling, crisscrossing dialogue. Fortunately Altman didn’t use that technique in Prairie Home Companion, so I enjoyed its conversations and music.

Clay

John, when you get as old as I am, you'll begin to treasure more dearly the visual and non-verbal clues that are concealed within the text of a film.

John

It’s true true, you visual, me verbal.

Now here’s a favorite of mine where dialogue is never lost; in fact, I bet it's the American film with the most memorable lines.

When I recently read about the discovery of a homoerotic sub theme in Michael Curtiz’ Casablanca, I knew it was a classic that could hold up under the most bizarre interpretations from our slightly-crazed fellow critics.

Clay

Such as Kristin, Hope, and Johnny?

John

They’ll qualify.

The American Film Institute declared Casablanca, with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, the best romantic film of all time, so I offer it as a film that moves my heart.

The love is self sacrificing, not typically American; it requires the two lovers to support the resistance to Nazi Germany in WW II at the cost of their romance.

And its award-winning script has the most memorable lines, for example, “Here’s looking at you, Kid”; “Round up the usual suspects”; “I stick my neck out for nobody”; but, as students of trivia know, not “Play it again, Sam.”

Clay

Blame that on Woody Allen . . .

“Casablanca" IS a lovely, touching film, John, completely worthy of someone who is more adept than Karl Rove in coming up with good lines.

John (Wrap up)

Clay, I have to admit, Altman is a man for all our seasons, studying the changes in whole nations through characters little by comparison to their cultures, but big on a screen, magnifying our human nature.

McCabe and Casablanca let the dialogue carry the characters. Both films are centered on human beings, making these gifted directors true artists of the humanities-- and film the most influential modern art.

In the end, for me it’s words more than images. You and I are lovers of words, if only second to women, but that may be the point: Wherever the women go, there go our tongues.

I'm outta here.

Clay

Somehow I see your statement as being more strikingly visual than literal - and that is just another way we differ.
Three hundred shows and still counting, John, I'm outta here too.

See you at the movies, folks.

HIT MUSIC (FRENCH NATIONAL ANTHEM), THEN UNDER FOR

Richelle:

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

MUSIC UP, THEN DOWN AND OUT

Copyright 2007 John DeSando and Clay Lowe