Before our feature presentation, ACME would like to start the evening with another Looney Tunes short, the 1940 Ali-Baba Boundstarring Porky Pig , directed by Bob Clampett.
When Porky is singing "The Girlfriend of the Whirling Dervish", they neglected to speed up Mel Blanc's voice, giving us a hint at what his natural Porky voice sounds like.
The staff of The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour was discussing comedy series that don't seem to get much attention. We came upon this clip from SCTV and it sent us down a rabbit hole of watching a bunch of episode. We'd like to you to watch the clip that sent us down that road:
If you have a chance, check out some episodes on YouTube. (Also, Catherine O'Hara is sorely missed.)
We’ve selected another entry from the excellent reference book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, edited by Steven Jay Schneider. Today’s film is the 1991 Taiwanese epic drama A Brighter Summer Day directed by Edward Yang and starring Chang Chen, Lisa Yang, Chang Kuo-Chu, and Elaine Jin. The English title for the film comes from a line in Elvis Presley's song Are You Lonesome Tonight? Elvis sings the line, "Does your memory stray to a bright summer day," but the characters in the film mishear it as "a brighter summer day."
Chen Chang, who plays Xiao Si'r (or Little Four) and Kuo-Chu Chang, who plays his father, are real-life father and son. The actor's own name is also used for the full name of the character of Xiao Si'r (or Little Four).
The film features more than 100 amateur actors in different roles. The director spent a full year training and rehearsing with his largely nonprofessional cast before filming began..
Please find a very comfortable chair (the film is almost 4 hours long,) dim the lights, and join us here at the ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour as we watch this thought absorbing drama: A Brighter Summer Day.
People in the film speak various dialects, as they or their parents came to Taiwan from different provinces of Mainland China. For example, Wang, a friend of Xiao Si'r's family, speaks Shanghainese.
Demand Euphoria!
