Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Final Wars reviews

Well, "Godzilla Final Wars" has premiered in America (the first time a G premiere happened here before Japan) and the reviews are coming in. And Ain't It Cool News has a review as well:

This past summer, I got really tired of hearing people try to defend VAN HELSING as “just fun,” because it didn’t feel to me while watching it like Stephen Sommers actually had fun making it. It just felt like he had a release date to make and thought that biggerlouderfaster was the way to cover any narrative flaws. Here, you can feel Kitamura giggling behind the camera as he piles up the insanity, and it’s infectious.
...
From the moment Godzilla wakes up to the end of the movie, Kitamura kicks out the jams and just bombards you with one fight after another. Some of them are frustratingly brief, like when he butts heads with the miserable American Godzilla in Sydney Harbor. Just about the time the real deals holds down the pale imitation and starts recreating a scene from DELIVERANCE, the sequence is over. Other fights pick up in the middle, like when we see Godzilla whup up on Hedorah, who was actually one of the toughest monsters to fight in the original series. These are minor nitpicks, though. There’s something like an hour of sustained monster action, intercut with kung-fu and spaceship dogfights and a kamikaze STAR WARS scene and did I mention that Minilla drives a car? Seriously. And he wears a seatbelt. It’s gloriously batshit, and I loved it all.

It sounds like this is a very fun movie filled with lots of references to Toho past. However, it's not a serious movie. Almost every review mentions Minya and how he just slows down the film.
Still, it all sounds immensely fun. I'm hoping it gets an American release so everybody can enjoy Godzilla's 50th in style.

Monday, November 22, 2004

Bob Eggleton on Godzilla

Fantasy and science fiction artist Bob Eggleton has written a nice summation of Godzilla's career at Locus Online. It won't be anything new for Godzilla fans, but it's a nice way to get literary science fiction fans to check kaiju films out. Eggleton is a great artist and is very active in Godzilla fandom. His most recent work is the cover of Japanese Giants, which can be seen at the Locus site.

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

Happy birthday, Gojira!

Today, Nov. 3, my favorite giant monster is 50 years old. The theatrical release of the original "Gojira" opened in Japan today. (It would be another year yet before his American sibling, "Godzilla, King of the Monsters" would premiere.) Half a century of giant irradiated reptile goodness, that's quite an achievement. Here's to another 50!

Monday, November 01, 2004

Inside the suit

Here's a nice profile of the latest man in the Godzilla suit, Tsutomu Kitagawa.