Before our feature presentation, ACME would like to start the evening with another Porky Pig Looney Tunes cartoon, the 1936 Porky the Rain-Maker, directed by Tex Avery.
The cartoon Sioux Me would be released three years later with the same story premise. Directed by Ben Hardaway and Cal Dalton, it features a Native American main cast and no appearance by Porky Pig.
Before the start of our feature presentation, the staff of The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour would like to watch our new favorite stand-up comic, Matteo Lane (no relation to Nathan Lane,) cooking one of our favorite pasta dishes, Carbonara:
Mrs. Dr. Caligari, introduced us to him a few years ago, and we can't quite figure out why he isn't more popular. Check out his very funny podcast, I Never Liked You, with his best friend, Nick Smith.
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 1975 the biographical drama Dersu Uzala (AKA Dersu Uzala: The Hunter), directed by Akira Kurosawa, and starring Maxim Munzuk, and Yury Solomin. Dersu Uzala, shot in Russia is Kurosawa's only non-Japanese-language film. the film chronicles the true story of Russian explorer Captain Vladimir Arsenyev (Yuri Solomin) and his profound friendship with Dersu Uzala (Maksim Munzuk), a nomadic Goldi hunter. As Arsenyev maps the uncharted Siberian wilderness, Dersu’s deep understanding of nature teaches him invaluable lessons about life and humanity. This visually stunning film is a heartfelt ode to the natural world and a poignant reflection on the collision between modern civilization and traditional ways of life. Dersu Uzala won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, the Golden Prize and the Prix FIPRESCI at the 9th Moscow International Film Festival, and other awards. It was also a box office hit, selling more than 21 million tickets in the Soviet Union and Europe in addition to grossing $1.2 million in the United States and Canada. So push away from the table, get settled in and join us in watching Dersu Uzala.
Dersu Uzala is based on the autobiographical writings of Russian soldier Vladimir Arsenyev, chronicling his surveying expeditions in Siberia in the early 1900s. Since childhood, Akira Kurosawa had been a devoted fan of Russian literature — a fact well known to Mosfilm when the studio invited him to suggest a literary source for a film to be shot in the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, the studio was taken aback when he proposed adapting Arsenyev’s book about Dersu Uzala. They were astonished that he had even heard of it, as the book was, at the time, little known outside the USSR. Kurosawa had hoped to make this film as early as the 1950s but struggled to adapt the story to a Japanese setting - never imagining that he would one day be able to film it on location in Russia, with Russian actors.
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