Before our feature presentation, ACME would like to start the evening with another Daffy Duck Merrie Melodies cartoon, the 1950 His Bitter Half, directed by Friz Freleng.
Daffy has been depicted as married in at least six cartoon shorts, though his wife usually is nameless. This is his first characterization as a stepfather.
Before the start of our feature presentation, the staff of ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour would like to lower your blood pressure - watch baby goats in pajamas gallivanting about:
Can't tell you why they're in pajamas, they just are.
We've picked another entry from the excellent reference book, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die by Steven Jay Schneider. Today's film is the 1964 drama, The Red Desert (Il Deserto Rosso), directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, starring Monica Vitti, Richard Harris, and Carlo Chionetti. Antonioni's first color film was a critical success from it's premiere. Akira Kurosawa cited Red Desert as one of his favorite films. Critics found the film Antonioni's most intense and virtuosic depiction of the horrors and monstrosities that pass for ordinary life.
Antonioni made a paintly use of color in the film, from the boldness of plastic objects in primary hues to subtle shades covered in mist and fog to paint the world his people inhabit. Where the actual locations didn't render the tone he was seeking, according to the film's initial publicity, he had his art director, Piero Poletto apply paint to the landscape itself and to such selected objects as fruit in a vendor's cart. Some have claimed that he even had smoke tinted yellow to reinforce a sense of death and desolation. So please join us here at The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour and sit back, get comfortable and enjoy watching this classic master work, The Red Desert.
It has been reported that Richard Harris was kicked off the film (or quit) after he punched Michelangelo Antonioni, and that the scenes that were still to be completed, were done with another actor who was photographed from behind. Richard Harris got into an argument with Antonioni, who had told him to walk diagonally across a yard. Harris asked why, to which Antonioni answered, "You don't ask me why, you're an actor. You just do it." The film was behind schedule at this stage, and Harris was due to start work soon on the film Major Dundee. Harris soon left the production after this incident.
Demand Euphoria!
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