Before our feature presentation, ACME would like to start the evening with another Looney Tunes Bugs Bunny cartoon (featuring The Tasmanian Devil,) the 1954 Devil May Hare, directed by Robert McKimson.
While Robert McKimson and his team were discussing new adversaries for Bugs Bunny, animator Sid Marcus suggested offhandedly that they have used everything except a Tasmanian devil. They looked the animal up in the encyclopedia and decided he would make a good foil for Bugs.
We've picked another entry from the excellent reference book, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die by Steven Jay Schneider for today's feature. Today's choice is Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film Rashomon, starring Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyo and Takashi Shimura. The film famously burst Akira Kurosawa onto the international scene. The film famously takes the shape of an existential puzzle without an answer, employing unreliable narrators and flashbacks through which memory and truth become suspect. Rashomon has a special relevance today, suggesting that no objective truth exists in the real world. So we would like you to relax (quick, find the most comfortable seat on the sofa,) get a snack (perhaps, some sushi,) and a beverage (sake,) and join The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour in watching this remarkable film, Rashomon.
The title "Rashomon" (or main city gate) has become a part of popular culture in the context of the "rashomon effect", which refers to when different people have very different perspectives of the same thing or event, much like as is seen in the proverbial tale of a group of blind men describing an elephant by touch - as a rope, a tree, etc. The actual story related in the film comes from a tale by Ryûnosuke Akutagawa, "In a Grove".
Demand Euphoria!
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