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