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Shiroc posted:Did Criterion ever end up doing anything with all of the Showa Godzilla movies they got the rights to past the original? The Criterion channel went tits up so i'm not even sure if they were even aired since they never announced disk releases 
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Jan 16, 2019 18:23
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Yeah, i'd like a nice, legal way of getting all these movies with both English and original Japanese w/ subtitles. I remember years ago there was a Godzilla head dvd case.  
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Jan 16, 2019 18:25
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Vintersorg posted:Yeah, i'd like a nice, legal way of getting all these movies with both English and original Japanese w/ subtitles. I was so close to buying this but it would have cost me way too loving much and I was broke at the time. Plus it wasn’t region free so I would have needed a player for it too.
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Jan 16, 2019 18:27
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In other franchise worlds, now that Tsuburaya has won the full rights of Ultraman back I'm hoping that the many Ultra series will get legit subtitled Blu Ray releases in the States. I'm contemplating picking up the new Ultraman Leo blu ray release in Tokyo next month, but the downside is that the Japan releases don't get english subs and also cost a fuckload of money (I believe it's around $400 for Leo).
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Jan 16, 2019 18:29
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I liked Zilla's design in Rulers of Earth - usually because it's the comics and not early CGI technology
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Jan 16, 2019 18:29
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Now that I think about it, Ultra Q would be a perfect fit for a Criterion Blu Ray release.
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Jan 16, 2019 18:30
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Vintersorg posted:Yeah, i'd like a nice, legal way of getting all these movies with both English and original Japanese w/ subtitles. Saw this tweet a couple of days ago https://twitter.com/cinepocalypse/status/1084137560006447104
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Jan 16, 2019 18:52
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Vinylshadow posted:I liked Zilla's design in Rulers of Earth - usually because it's the comics and not early CGI technology Early cgi is not a good excuse when jurrasic park came out 5 years earlier and still looks good almost 30 years later
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Jan 16, 2019 19:01
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mandatory lesbian posted:Early cgi is not a good excuse when jurrasic park came out 5 years earlier and still looks good almost 30 years later It's probably my bad eyes, but the '98 Zilla itself looks a lot better - close to the Jurassic Park dinosaurs because those were popular at the time - than what they did for Final Wars, which I'm reasonably sure was intentional
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Jan 16, 2019 19:25
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GATOS Y VATOS posted:In other franchise worlds, now that Tsuburaya has won the full rights of Ultraman back I'm hoping that the many Ultra series will get legit subtitled Blu Ray releases in the States. I'm contemplating picking up the new Ultraman Leo blu ray release in Tokyo next month, but the downside is that the Japan releases don't get english subs and also cost a fuckload of money (I believe it's around $400 for Leo). Someone (Burkion maybe?) recommended Ultra Seven a while back, and I've since bought the DVD set and have been watching an episode once or twice a week. Most episodes are generally pretty solid, but every five or six episodes there'll be one that's just completely stellar.
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Jan 16, 2019 20:24
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Yeah Seven is definitely one of the absolute best of the Ultra Series for sure. Episode 8, The Targeted Town, is considered one of the best episodes of all the series.
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Jan 16, 2019 20:30
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Paper Kaiju posted:There's a reason Godzilla 98 was panned by both critics and audiences, and it wasn't because they were salty about its depiction of Godzilla. The vast majority of film critics are terrible at their jobs and have bad taste. The vast majority of consumers do not actually have particularly strong feelings about movies one way or the other. Fans, though, are absolutely salty about the depiction of Godzilla (which I actually didn't even mention), because their uncritical devotion to a commodity is kind of what defines them. Ghost Leviathan posted:A movie can be interesting and not good. Many bad movies are interesting and the subject of much enjoyable discussion while being unenjoyable to watch. Well, right. A movie can be interesting conceptually, which G'98 definitely is. And for a certain minority of film buffs, it remains this conceptually fascinating example of late-'90s pop culture, even if their conviction is that it's exceptionally bad. What makes it good are its technical qualities and how these work in service of a narrative. Like, in a film about a giant monster that attacks New York, stuff like cinematography, production design, and special effects are all very important - and shocking nobody Emmerich is actually fairly accomplished with these formal elements. Most film critics at that time totally acknowledged this, even in their negative notices, but then proceeded to completely condescend to it based on some vague criticisms of the 'logic' of the film and its cartoonishly romantic/comic tone. Contradictorily, many critics then also decided that the film was overly serious in adapting Godzilla as a blockbuster high concept piece. Godzilla is both a brain-dead spectacle, but is also not enough of a brain-dead spectacle. This is what makes it hilarious anytime someone invokes a film being largely panned as if it represents a reliable authority, and even more so when it becomes conflated with how most people relate to cinema as a purely transactional, consumption-based aspect of their lives. Critics argue in bad faith all the time, referring to them in mass does not actually reveal a consistent narrative of how we can determine how or why something was bad. This logic just leads deleteriously to the "Everything Wrong With"/CinemaSins variety of criticism. So, yeah, something being interesting isn't the same as it being technically good. But, also, you can't just neatly cleave those aspects of a film from each other, unless you are simply trying to support a foregone conclusion. The formal execution of a work is merely the literalization of abstract concepts; and those abstract concepts are what informs that formal execution. Bad faith criticism often takes the form of simply declaring that one aspect either doesn't exist or doesn't matter: Godzilla is technically well-crafted, but it's just dumb and lacking in substance, or whatever. But then, when apologists point out that, no, the film is actually rather interesting on a conceptual level, now that doesn't matter because it doesn't pass some vague threshold of technical craftsmanship after all. That's not an interpretive model of quality, that's just making excuses for why would shouldn't acknowledge exceptional qualities of an unpopular film, things that make it entertaining in an unconventional way. And let's acknowledge the elephant in the room: G'98 is not the outlier in movies with Godzilla in the title being judged this way. They have always been judged by the exact same rubric. 'They are empty spectacles for children and brain-dead adults, they are illogical and unconvincing, the dialogue is corny and the acting is stagey.' Part of the mental disorder of fandom is that after decades of their tastes being marginalized by this sort of bad faith, reactionary cultural authority, they actually embrace it when they feel there's a product that hasn't been faithful to them. The notion that the entire rubric is intrinsically flawed as an interpretive model of quality never occurs to them. mandatory lesbian posted:Early cgi is not a good excuse when jurrasic park came out 5 years earlier and still looks good almost 30 years later Both still look good, and G'98 is clearly a step-forward from JP and the Lost World. Both the integration of the CGI character into environments without defused, even lighting, as well as just the basic textural details of the model, are significantly improved.
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Jan 16, 2019 20:42
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Well having just watched it I can say quite sincerely that 98 Godzilla doesn't look good but it's not like visual appeal is something I can objectively prove or whatever
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Jan 16, 2019 20:58
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JP and Lost World both look miles better than G'98 because few directors are as good at lighting a scene as Spielberg. G'98 is a washed out muddy blue mess that blends together too much. The actual cinematography is alright but the screen desperately needed some color contrast
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Jan 16, 2019 21:13
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Schwarzwald posted:Someone (Burkion maybe?) recommended Ultra Seven a while back, and I've since bought the DVD set and have been watching an episode once or twice a week. Most episodes are generally pretty solid, but every five or six episodes there'll be one that's just completely stellar. Was absolutely me UltraSeven is flat out my favorite super hero, period, and my favorite Ultra series. It was Tsuburaya putting their best into it as often as they could, with Old Man Tsuburaya himself over seeing the effects work on the finale and personally ensuring it was as good as it could possibly be. Tsuburaya treated Ultraman as a fun thing that they did until they got bored of it and wanted to make something with more bite and meaning. That's when they made UltraSeven, which blew past the original Ultraman's episode count and they only ended it when they did because the ratings were finally starting the slouch, so they wanted to go out on a high note. I could write a whole loving essay on how good UltraSeven is and the themes it explores. It's effectively the best of the 1960s sci-fi scene to me, beating out Star Trek and Classic Who on the basis that it manages to tell stories comparable to their best, but in 24 minutes and with far, far better looking and more ambitious effects. The Brave One is basically the best, purest Super Hero story you're ever going to find, and it's about a loving robot that eats cars.
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Jan 16, 2019 21:17
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GATOS Y VATOS posted:The Criterion channel went tits up so i'm not even sure if they were even aired since they never announced disk releases
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Jan 16, 2019 21:32
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Monsterarts!   
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Jan 16, 2019 22:37
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G98, to K.Wastes point is actually pretty nice looking. A lot better looking than any of Emmrich's other films. I was actually enjoying that aspect of the film for a bit until I SAW THE loving CAMERA SHADOW LIKE THREE TIMES and the whole thing becomes sad.
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Jan 16, 2019 22:49
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I get criticizing fandoms for their weird insular and toxic nature, but calling it a 'mental disease' because they didn't like a movie you do seems kind of bad to me, and unpleasant to read as someone living with mental illness to be honest. You might need to take a step back here and realize this is a really aggressive and nasty way to defend a film.
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Jan 17, 2019 00:05
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K. Waste posted:Both still look good, and G'98 is clearly a step-forward from JP and the Lost World. Both the integration of the CGI character into environments without defused, even lighting, as well as just the basic textural details of the model, are significantly improved. I agree with you halfway. I don't think the Zilla CGI model itself was bad. I do remember thinking that he often didn't combine well into the environments. That was an underrated aspect of Jurassic Park, not just that the dinos looked real, but that they looked like they were occupying real space along with whatever was in-camera.
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Jan 17, 2019 01:51
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Mr. Funny Pants posted:I agree with you halfway. I don't think the Zilla CGI model itself was bad. I do remember thinking that he often didn't combine well into the environments. That was an underrated aspect of Jurassic Park, not just that the dinos looked real, but that they looked like they were occupying real space along with whatever was in-camera. Zilla's habit of changing size from scene to scene didn't help. Still, she's a kaiju who parkours off skyscrapers to eat helicopters and tricks submarines into torpedoing each other.
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Jan 17, 2019 01:53
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98 also just wasn't fun to watch in general.
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Jan 17, 2019 03:29
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If I was Criterion and I had plans for a big box set release of all the Showa kaiju films I had the rights to, I would do it this summer when the hype from the new movie is at a maximum. But it's also possible they have no plans for a box set at all. So.
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Jan 17, 2019 03:58
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Weird double post.
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Jan 17, 2019 04:08
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Doesn't Shout Factory have the US distribution rights to a lot of Sentai shows, both the Ultras and the pre-Saban edit versions of various Rangers shows?
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Jan 17, 2019 04:09
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The Ultra series has nothing to do with Sentai, so no, not those. But yes, they're the primary disc distributor of not only Power Rangers, but of several of the original Japanese series.
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Jan 17, 2019 04:11
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Burkion posted:Was absolutely me Well, episode 1 was ok. I'll give it a few more to grow on me.
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Jan 17, 2019 08:03
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Have some sweet Godzilla posters https://twitter.com/41Strange/status/1085770436166615040?s=19
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Jan 17, 2019 08:25
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I think grouping film critics as a monolith is often a mistake. Rather than go, "what do the film critics say?", I think it's far better, for me, to read (or watch) critics whose insight I find compelling, and treat it as sort of a discussion. Rotten Tomatoes obviously encourages that monolithic view, and it can be damaging. It's best just to look for voices that you find interesting, and disagreeing with any given take from those voices can actually be beneficial as it sharpens your opinion, and causes you to analyse your thoughts and go deeper into why you like/dislike something. I feel that appealing to the authority of critics, or declaring them uniformly as bad because the reviews of a film you like were mainly negative, are both flawed positions which misunderstand the function of criticism. I also feel dismissing the general audience as opinion-less consumers is also a mistake, as people go to the cinema to have an emotional experience, and honest responses have value and should not be discounted. As for G98, it has been a while since I've seen it, but I remember the film putting the blame for nuclear testing on France instead of America being a very cowardly choice. Anyway! Top five G films for me! 1. Godzilla 54 2. Mothra vs Godzilla 64 3. Godzilla 84 4. Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah 5. Godzilla vs. Hedorah Karloff fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Jan 17, 2019 |
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Jan 17, 2019 20:53
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What's the official pronunciation of "Ghidorah"? Ghee-Door-Ah? Ghee-dra?
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Jan 17, 2019 21:29
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Davros1 posted:What's the official pronunciation of "Ghidorah"? Listen to Japanese audio and go by what they say.
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Jan 17, 2019 21:32
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Davros1 posted:What's the official pronunciation of "Ghidorah"? Yes.
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Jan 17, 2019 21:57
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apparently Toho stipulates the American pronunciation is Gih-door-ah, not gee-door-ah
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Jan 17, 2019 22:02
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Davros1 posted:What's the official pronunciation of "Ghidorah"? It is whatever you want it to be I have a friend who consistently says it one way and always gets me saying it that way when I'm talking to him
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Jan 17, 2019 22:03
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This. Or you could say Geedorrrra with a rolled R like my gf.... and also randomly start singing the Mothra song at least once a day. I have created a monster!
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Jan 17, 2019 22:04
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Davros1 posted:What's the official pronunciation of "Ghidorah"? James Rolfe did a video series about them and said it both ways.
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Jan 17, 2019 22:05
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in vs mechagodzilla 2 I think they call Rodan Radon and it fucks me up
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Jan 17, 2019 22:56
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Karloff posted:As for G98, it has been a while since I've seen it, but I remember the film putting the blame for nuclear testing on France instead of America being a very cowardly choice. Then again, nukes are bad. You don't need to make America responsible for a giant monster to either critique nuclear proliferation or to even critique America's unique ideological and political crises. G'98 implicitly critiques nuclear proliferation by depicting it being directly responsible for the manifestation of a force that threatens to destroy all humanity. That the stock footage that the film uses is all cobbled together from the testing of thermonuclear weapons carried about by Americans should also not be neglected here. Now, obviously, there are already American movies that have depicted nuclear proliferation leading to the creation of giant monsters, but the conclusion of these narratives is almost always that the conventional sources of political and military authority can deal with them. Following from that, G'98 depicts the U.S. military as manifestly incompetent when dealing with an asymmetrical threat, which is obviously very prescient for a number of reasons. We've already had posters note the peculiar, even dreadful cognitive dissonance when viewing all this wonton, slapstick destruction in a post-9/11 context. Moreover, the politicians of the film are depicted as fat, self-aggrandizing cowards, and our primary identification with the mainstream media is a guy who routinely sexually harasses one of his employees, and then takes credit for her own investigative journalism. And, sure, Godzilla is dispatched by the military at the end, but the resolution of the film is not that centralized, conventional authority has won. The film ends with a revelation that another Godzilla is just on the horizon, with a tracking-in shot on the egg which directly mirrors the similar one in the film's opening credits. The irony of this is that G'98, while doing away with a lot of the superficial content of G'54 or modifying it, actually parallels that film's overarching themes. There is even the destruction of a Japanese fishing vessel to parallel the Daigo Fukuryū Maru scandal, just like in the original film. We heard this same accusation of 'cowardice' when G'14 came out. And once again we have to deal with the question of why there is such an exclusivist fetishism for superficial content, but which is not consistently applied to any other films. Like, obviously godzilla fans don't care about that entire stretch of the character's history where he was no longer strictly a manifestation of nuclear proliferation precipitated by Western imperialism, but was, in fact, a righteous superhero fighting on the behalf of not just the Japanese but all of humanity. And when other monsters did arise or were created, they were never the product of villains coded as Western. They were almost always either obscure generic fascists (the Red Bamboo Army in Ebirah) or they were an abstract foreign threat from space. The same critics who remark upon the apparent cowardice of G'98 and '14 never remark upon the queer scenario in which a character who previously served as a metaphor for nuclear proliferation suddenly becomes a useful tool for protecting the status quo. This also relates to the problem of not wanting to lump people together, to want to treat everyone as an individual. Sure, there are always particular viewpoints and feelings, but clearly there are not only individuals, but rather individuals who all, in non-exclusive ways, assert values that become part of an observable ideological pattern. In the case of Godzilla fandom, this ideology is asserted through the uncritical devotion to a vague idea that Gojira is not just a monster movie but stating something important about nuclear proliferation and the role of Western imperialism in perpetuating it, but then this complete absence of a consistent critical framework when G'98 and G'14 don't exactly replicate this framework, as if this framework is the only one possible for stating something important, and as if all these other movies that they like don't also significantly deviate from and modify that framework. Like, yes, people go to movies to have an emotional experience - but what does that mean in a material sense, when the primary means through which we get that emotional experience is heavily structured by commodity and transaction. Yes, critics may come to their own individual conclusions, but what does that mean when they stop being 'individuals,' and instead become part of a professional class that is taken as an inconsistent basis of cultural authority? We can not hide behind the ideological fantasy of individualism.
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Jan 17, 2019 22:57
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K. Waste posted:Then again, nukes are bad. I mean, you don’t need to. But you should. The decision to wash America’s hands, and portray them as an innocent party is akin to the same decision to remove pointed references to the nuclear attacks in G54 when it was recut into Godzilla: King of the Monsters. In the case of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, the reason for the transformation was because it was part of a political and capitalist agenda to not villianise America, similar to how the New World Picture re-edit of Godzilla 1985 specifically villianised Russia (they edited a scene where a Russian sailor bravely tries to cancel a nuclear launch so it depicted the opposite). Godzilla 1998 is a part of this legacy, this erasure of America’s dominant role in nuclear proliferation. It’s an insulting change. An American film choosing to remake a film specifically made in response to both attacks and testing committed by America, absolutely removing any mention of these crimes, and pinning the blame entirely on another country. It’s bollocks. It’s shameful. Had the filmmakers elected to pin the blame on global political situation than that would be one thing, but they don’t, they remove America’s culpability and dump it all on France and the use of American nuclear test footage actually twists the knife, because that means they are showing US nuclear tests with the French national anthem over the top! K. Waste posted:Following from that, G'98 depicts the U.S. military as manifestly incompetent when dealing with an asymmetrical threat, which is obviously very prescient for a number of reasons. We've already had posters note the peculiar, even dreadful cognitive dissonance when viewing all this wonton, slapstick destruction in a post-9/11 context. Moreover, the politicians of the film are depicted as fat, self-aggrandizing cowards, and our primary identification with the mainstream media is a guy who routinely sexually harasses one of his employees, and then takes credit for her own investigative journalism. And, sure, Godzilla is dispatched by the military at the end, but the resolution of the film is not that centralized, conventional authority has won. The film ends with a revelation that another Godzilla is just on the horizon, with a tracking-in shot on the egg which directly mirrors the similar one in the film's opening credits. I mean, I have a different take. The film depicts Godzilla trapped within a bridge, a man-made structure, and then absolutely destroyed by American Military might, The majority of its children are also wiped out (bar one, of course). There’s a somewhat famous quote from Shusuke Kaneko "It is interesting [that] the US version of Godzilla runs about trying to escape missiles... Americans seem unable to accept a creature that cannot be put down by their arms.", and on this I would have to agree. The military is depicted as foolish in some regards, but characters such as Hicks and O’Neill are depicted as noble and correct, especially in comparison to the politicians above them, and Godzilla is depicted consistently throughout the film as being inferior to the power of the US military. As for the final tease, I disagree. It seems like your comparing it to the end of G54, which ends with Dr. Yamane’s solemn prediction that if humanity continues on the path it’s on, then more Godzillas will emerge, all underneath Ifukube’s haunting score. But the framing is very different in G98. In 54 the point is that the global military technological paradigm will create more existential threat, in G98 the threat already exists but not as a result of nucleur proliferation, but because the Military’s largely successful bombing campaign missed one creature. If there’s a message it’s “Next time, bomb harder” No haunting choral music though, the rousing and exciting Puff Daddy/Led Zeppelin mix instead. So, I do disagree with the it paralleling G54’s themes, a film crafted by a pacifist, that unflinchingly displays horror and death. Emmerich’s film is about a rogue monster created by France, that needs to get shut down righteously by the US. There is a sympathy for the monster in G98, but no real question that it needs to be destroyed, or opposition, like Yamane’s pleas in G54. K. Waste posted:We heard this same accusation of 'cowardice' when G'14 came out. And once again we have to deal with the question of why there is such an exclusivist fetishism for superficial content, but which is not consistently applied to any other films. Like, obviously godzilla fans don't care about that entire stretch of the character's history where he was no longer strictly a manifestation of nuclear proliferation precipitated by Western imperialism, but was, in fact, a righteous superhero fighting on the behalf of not just the Japanese but all of humanity. And when other monsters did arise or were created, they were never the product of villains coded as Western. They were almost always either obscure generic fascists (the Red Bamboo Army in Ebirah) or they were an abstract foreign threat from space. The same critics who remark upon the apparent cowardice of G'98 and '14 never remark upon the queer scenario in which a character who previously served as a metaphor for nuclear proliferation suddenly becomes a useful tool for protecting the status quo. Those critics do remark on that. I’d actually argue Godzilla’s changing nature is one of the most discussed aspects of his character. I know this especially as it was the entire crux of my dissertation way back when (it wasn’t a good dissertation, I was doing a lot of drugs at the time). Steve Ryfle and David Kalat discuss it extensively in both their books. To go fully in depth why the heroic Godzilla isn’t criticised as harshly (though, trust me, he is very much criticised by many), would take a long time, as there are many films to go over. But in short, I’d say with the Showa films there is a decent arc, where he goes from villain in his first four films, explains his own villiany in the fifth film before undergoing a change of heart, spends a decent amount of the sixties as a reluctant anti-hero figure before Destroy All Monsters completes his arc into superhero and then spends the remainder of the showa era as said hero. It’s an odd arc which doesn’t quite work (technically Destroy All Monsters is set after all the films but none of them are exactly strict on continuity anyway), but there is a flow to his transformation from one to the other. In the original, Godzilla is a victim as well as a villain, he is tragic in his own way, the sequels just expound on this sympathy we have for him until he takes a face turn. This, I wager, could be one reason why Hero Godzilla is not disliked in the same way, because the films are crafted in a way that they don’t deny the previous Godzilla. There is no erasure, just evolution. K. Waste posted:
I think you are using the shadow of broad structures such as “film critics” and “fandom” to dismiss any opinions regardless of their agency. The reality of these groupings is that within themselves they rarely agree. Do you honestly think that film critics are all on some side and agree harmoniously? Have a peek at Film Twitter to see these supposedly monolithic critics at each other’s throats with disagreements. Individualism is absolutely an ideological fantasy when it comes to societal structures, but not I’m afraid, when it comes to one’s opinions on art. Although people, of course, can be influenced by others, reaction to art is often intensely personal and there’s no more potent proof of this then that you watched G98 and found it to be an interesting alternative method of critiquing nuclear proliferation, and I watched it and found it a jingoistic celebration of US military might.
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Jan 18, 2019 00:37
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Karloff posted:As for G98, it has been a while since I've seen it, but I remember the film putting the blame for nuclear testing on France instead of America being a very cowardly choice. Nah, the reason they did that was France had just recently tested a nuke, and it had been in the news. Topical!!
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Jan 18, 2019 00:44
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