Father John Pungente, SJ writes:

What makes Scanning the Movies different from other shows?  Scanning the Movies is not a show about reviewing movies.  What I try to do is to help people find ways to get into a movie, to see how movies can reflect or impact their lives.  I try to offer them a media literacy take on movies – to help them have an informed and critical understanding of the movie. More simply, I try to help them watch carefully and think critically, while enjoying the movie. Scanning the Movies is about giving audiences new ways of looking. It's about discovery, appreciation and critical understanding of movies.

When I sat down in October 1997 with Jonathan Taylor Thomas to do my first interview with a movie star for the first episode – Wild America – I never dreamed that it would be the first of hundreds of interviews I would do with movie stars and directors.

There have been good interviews and there have been great interviews. I still remember listening with awe as James Cromwell professionally, intelligently and succinctly (in four minutes) explained how he prepared for his role in The Green Mile. And he started with the simple phrase – “It all began with the word.”

And in truth Scanning the Movies began – and continues to be – about the many ways the word is transferred from script to screen and what that word can mean in our own lives.  Scanning the Movies opens doors for those who go to the movies. These are doors that will allow the moviegoer entry into a film in ways which they might never have considered. Doors that let them glimpse just how important movies are in our mass mediated world.

In this the 10th season of Scanning the Movies, I want to keep opening doors that will allow people to gain so much more out of the wonderful experience that is watching a movie.