Glenn Holland would like to just take you to the motion pictures tonight. In simple fact, he’d like to make it a typical Saturday night day — and you won’t even have to go away the property to sign up for him.
Holland, a Meadville resident who retired final year following 33 several years as a professor of spiritual scientific studies at Allegheny College or university, starts a new gig tonight when he debuts as the host of WQLN’s “Saturday Night time at the Movies” at 8 p.m.
“It’s some thing I hardly ever predicted to be executing. It variety of came out of the blue,” Holland explained in an job interview this week. “I discover it pretty interesting to do. It is a obstacle of study course — in addition to seeing the films, I have to teach myself about them — but it’s extremely satisfying.”
The weekly sequence of films will premiere with “The Accidental Vacationer,” a 1988 creation starring William Hurt, Kathleen Turner and Geena Davis. In it, in accordance to Holland, a person who has shut down emotionally subsequent a family tragedy is thrust again into the environment, in which he satisfies a more youthful girl and have to appear to conditions with how he desires to stay the rest of his life.
The motion pictures in the sequence are comparable in that they’re all critically acclaimed, in accordance to Holland, but they symbolize a extensive selection of genres and models. Other showcased films incorporate the vintage 1960 western “The Impressive 7,” the 1987 Kevin Costner-Gene Hackman thriller “No Way Out,” and “Some Like it Very hot,” the 1959 Billy Wilder comedy starring Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis as musicians posing as users of an all-female band to escape the gangsters out to get rid of them.
Holland doesn’t select the motion pictures, but he is scripting his intros, delivering cultural and cinematic context, driving-the-scenes facts — whatsoever it takes to make the viewing practical experience a bit further, a bit extra pleasurable.
“Depending on what the film is, there are diverse things to say,” Holland discussed.
The technique won’t be overly professorial — Holland reported he’s a great deal much more possible to acquire a lighthearted strategy, when the subject make any difference enables for it, than to lecture. Then, as if on cue, he gave a preview of what viewers will listen to tonight in the course of his guide-in to “The Accidental Tourist.”.
“I assume I say in the introduction to that film that it’s an grownup movie in the most effective perception,” Holland joked, “because it is about grownups dealing with adult challenges in an adult way.”
All the movies in the sequence, he additional, tumble into the similar group. “They have complexity and they mirror human emotion,” he reported, “and faucet into what men and women know about the entire world. They reflect on how the entire world operates and how human everyday living is effective.”
WQLN officials be expecting viewers to love and to gain from Holland’s transform as the northwestern Pennsylvania answer to Robert Osborne and Ben Mankiewicz, the presenters identified for their perform on Turner Basic Films.
“Glenn is so educated,” stated Tom New, WQLN President and CEO. “Watching ‘Saturday Night at the Movies’ is like taking a 3-credit college course.”
For some avid WQLN supporters, tonight could be the initially time they see Holland on display, but there’s a opportunity they have listened to his sleek, prepared-for-radio baritone just before. For about a ten years, he has served as an on-air volunteer through WQLN’s NPR fundraisers. That work inevitably led him to join the board that oversees WQLN, which in flip led to his major split as Saturday night film presenter.
“Regular WQLN NPR listeners are certainly common with his smooth, soothing voice as read throughout our radio pledge drives,” explained Advertising Manager Traci Teudhope. “He’s a purely natural in front of the digital camera and genuinely wows you with his breadth of information and charming personality. And, let’s not neglect to mention that voice.”
Mike Crowley can be achieved at (814) 724-6370 or by email at mcrowley@meadvilletribune.com.