Happy Halloween

I blew through most of the Criterions that I ordered, so I will be primed for Godzilla and 12 Angry Men.


On the kaiju front, the Nineties era Gamera films are all on Blu-Ray now, and despite being released by the odious Mill Creek at an insanely cheap price they look quite good. Highly recommended for fans of those three films. (Gamera III: Revenge of Iris is one of my all-time favorite giant monster movies.) And Destroy All Monsters (as well as the unfortunate Godzilla vs. Megalon) is hitting Blu as well.

Having never seen these films, I'm asking this sincerely: How is the acting and storyline? What makes these films?

The Nineties era Gamera movies are much darker and more violent than not just the older Gamera films, but than most of the Godzilla series as well. The tone is closer to the original Godzilla. The stories in the Nineties trilogy get better as they go, as do the effects. The acting is not bad, either.

Hmmm.

Stop being a kaiju snob. You owe it to SeaJunior.

When you put it like that!

You can piss on Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny all that you want, but it is unacceptable to deny a child his right to giant monsters, dinosaurs and sharks. All growing boys need them.

I guess I came from some different time or place because I didn't enjoy or long for any ot those things when I was a kid. I didn't even enjoy the mummy movies that were popular at the time.

I was born in the middle of the original run of Godzilla movies, so I was in the prime audience, at least for the later ones. But sharks and dinosaurs should be mandatory for all growing boys -- and a lot of the girls, too!

I see no need to deny any of the fun stuff (tooth fairy or dinosaurs, or anything in-between).

I did have the advantage of being the perfect age in 1975 when Jaws came out: seven years old. I was aready a shark nut, but that cemented it.

At what age did you go back into the water?

I was far too sophisticated as a child. "Bruce" did not fool me.

Bruce didn't fool me either. The cello, on the other hand . . . .

Well, there was that! In my case, I already knew so much about how movies were made that they rarely scared me, and being able to point out the anatomical errors of the mechanical shark did not help.

The mechanical shark that didn't work half the time!

Which was a blessing in disguise -- in the long run, it helped the film more than it hindered the film. The same was true of the movement problems with the suit in Ridley Scott's Alien -- the film has more power due to what it does NOT show than due to what it does. But in the case of Jaws, really the problems only crop up toward the end of the film, when they felt the obligation to show Bruce more than they should have. Prior to that, he is used quite effectively. The top-down shot of Bruce closing in on the leg of the hapless boater who tries to give the kids advice on how to tie the knots for their sailboat was perfect, and some of the underwater shots earlier in the film look almost as good as the footage of real sharks shot by Ron and Valerie Taylor.

I thought the plan with Jaws was to always limit how much the audience saw the shark. I was not aware that the mechanical mishaps had anything to do with that decision. In fact, I thought Spielberg refused to direct unless the studio agreed that the shark would not be shown during the first half of the movie.

There would have been more footage of the shark if it had worked. Like Alien, the problems were a blessing.

Indeed. Bruce gets more than enough screen time as is. Incidentally, when is Jaws being released on Blu? For some reason, I thought it was set to be released earlier this year.

2012, I hear. E.T. is also planned for 2012, as is the Indiana Jones trilogy. Incidentally, Steven Spielberg was at a convention recently where he made it clear that he intends to only have the original version of E.T. on the Blu-Ray. I suspect that Universal might try to force him to put both versions on the disc, but at least Spielberg has made it clear that the so-called "Director's Cut" was a mistake.

That would be nice. It has been years since I've seen E.T. I'd like to pick that one up. Ditto for Indiana. You must be itching to add the trilogy to your copy of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Interestingly, George Lucas has already quietly tinkered with Raiders. The DVD version contained an altered version of the Nazi jeep driving off a cliff:



I wonder if he even told Spielberg. I am a-fearin' that he may tinker with some of the other effects for Blu-Ray.

I see no point in that tinker. What was he trying to achieve?

Why does someone climb Everest?