EDITORIAL - Gots Me Some Monsters

It's finals week here at Century College in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, and I just completed my Intro to Mass Communication final at 7:45 AM (those who know me know that the EARLIEST I get up is 9:00 post-high school) and I'm tired and cranky because I haven't eaten anything. I'm in the school computer lab, watching me the two latest episodes of the now-canceled Joss Whedon series Dollhouse on Fancast, and purusing through some blogs since Facebook's rather dull at the moment. And what do I find? Well...

The first railer for Kadokowa Daiei's New Daimajin series. As a sorta fan of the 1966 'DaiMajin' franchise, featuring a giant stone God brought to life by pissed off villagers to frak up some evil warlords, I'm intrigued. However, this trailer makes this new series (mini-series? actual series?) just look horrible. As far as I can tell, there's witches with supernatural powers, a motorcycle chase that looks just as bad as it did in "Godzilla: Final Wars", and a man dressed in a Kamen Rider-esque outfit. The actual Daimajin smashing was kept to a unsatisfying minimum in the trailer. In fact, the majority of the trailer featured footage from Daiei's big franchises - 'Yokai Monsters', Gamera, and 'Daimajin' - as well as sporting off the new Blu-Rays for said titles (well, with the exception of 'Yokai'). And judging from the reaction at the Monster Zero message boards, others aren't exactly receptive to it either, although some are also maintaing the 'wait and see' approach. I guess I'll reserve absolute judgment until I watch a entire episode (whenever that may be), but for right now, thumbs down, Daiei; thumbs down. (Really, how do you mess up a concept of a giant stone god exacting some vengeance?)

Ray Bradbury's 'The Foghorn' gets filmed. But, of course, not in America. In 2007, Daisuke Sato and his band of SPFX teammates actually filmed the 1953 Ray Bradbury short story. And boy does it look impressive. The sad part? It probably won't get released on DVD in any format, apparently due to legal rights. Sato explains: "There is actually a problem with the copyright of the original, and so that is why we haven’t yet released it to the public. But if there is enough demand for it and a lot of people want to see it, then we’ll definitely release it. If we do, it will be as a DVD or online.” He also said English subs will be avaliable. For the uninformed, 'The Foghorn' was the basis of the Ray Harryhausen-visual effected The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, which then became one part of a vast series of inspirations to Tomoyuki Tanaka which eventually resulted in 1954's Godzilla. And yes, I dig the Godzilla series; wanna row? According to Monster Island News, fan demand might help see this flick through distribution. Well, I'm voicing my opinion now: I want it on DVD damnit, or at least avaliable online to order/watch. This is one piece of daikaiju filmmaking I definitely, really super duper wanna see. Perhaps a special screening at this year's G-FEST?