A Broadcast Summer News (Patreon)

This month, Criterion's announcement on the 15th (with which I remind myself to conduct the random drawing) happened to coincide with the weekly poll, so I'm just gonna announce both at once. As I predicted, patience paid off for someone—in this case, for Tyler Atkinson, who held onto A Brighter Summer Day for 16 polls (actually more, if you include weeks in which it had to be bumped for space) before finally seeing it emerge triumphant (in a somewhat close race against this week's sole new suggestion, Santa Sangre). My vague memory from 2000 is that I didn't love this one—A Confucian Confusion is the only Yang I've ever flipped for—but I wrote nothing down at the time and really have barely any idea what to expect. Not sure how quickly I'll be able to find a four-hour window, but it won't be as long as y'all waited for me to tackle Out 1. 

As for the random selection, it's another Criterion title that's been kicking around the poll for a while, though it got "retired" some time ago. Broadcast News was a key film for me at age 19, and while I have a lot of it all but memorized from my days working at a video store, I haven't sat down and watched it start to finish since right around then, which is to say since sometime in the early '90s. Let's see whether I still identify with Aaron to an alarming degree.

As ever, let me take this opportunity to thank each of you for supporting this Patreon and thereby affording me the time to write about older films that aren't necessarily click-friendly. I try not to think about it too much lest I get all weepy, but know that it means a lot.