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The “opening” was a disaster. The creators were bitterly feuding. Half the funding pulled out with much of the rest lost in a poker game.

It was all very cinematic, but at stake was the future of a great magazine, not a movie. The opening marked the debut of The New Yorker, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this week at a moment that is not propitious for either magazines or movies.

Magazines have been folding at an alarming rate. Support for once-revered titles like Newsweek or Time or for corporate parents like Condé Nast teeters ominously. Even Donald Trump last week asked “is Time still in business?” after Elon Musk hovered on its Trump cover.

Despite layoffs, The New Yorker with its 1.23 million subscribers is itself a study in survival, as a forthcoming Netflix documentary will testify. The resilience of the magazine mirrors that of a Hollywood studio — a periodic “blockbuster” has fortified support.

Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour is a cinematic masterpiece. There’s no way to deny that fact. Its debut at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival was met with instant acclaim, and it’s since become a go-to film for both casual and academic research. However, it’s generally categorized as either a drama or romance film.

And — admittedly — neither designation is wrong. On its face, Hiroshima Mon Amour is the dictionary definition of romance. Its 90-minute runtime revolves entirely around an extramarital love affair between a Japanese man and a French actress. Similarly, its meandering and borderline abstract narrative style is packed with emotional drama. However, neither of these facts should cross this pioneering black-and-white piece off a war film buff’s must-see list.

Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour Blends Two Age-Old Genres

Iranian director Bahman Pour-Azar released an “updated” version of the film, Where or When, to reflect growing global tensions.

Anti-war films are generally harrowing experiences by their very nature. Whereas most movies draw audiences into worlds of wonder or whimsy, most anti-war pieces focus on the gritty reality of mankind’s constant conflicts. In some ways, they overlap with horror, shining light on uncomfortable truths that are often ignored. Hideo Sekigawa’s Hiroshima is no exception.

Unlike its later 1995 Canadian-Japanese counterpart, Sekigawa’s black-and-white 1953 docudrama focuses on the human toll of mankind’s most dangerous technological achievement. Its contents are fittingly horrific, often bordering on impossibly upsetting, but its message is more prescient than ever. Sekigawa never pulls punches. Hiroshima is an uncompromising, loud, and inescapable recreation of the nuclear hellscape wrought upon the then-thriving city. Its backing score, composed by Godzilla’s Akira Ifukube, only adds to the nauseating whirlwind of horrific suffering. Of course, these aspects of the film are intentional choices. It’s meant to be viscerally unsettling,...

James Camerons next movie project, Last Train from Hiroshima, already sounds a lot more tantalizing than the three Avatar sequels hes supposed to make first. Cameron is confirmed to be directing at least three more Avatar sequels, including the upcoming Avatar: Fire and Ash (and hes teased that Avatar 5 could be followed by Avatar 6 and 7 if all goes well), but hes already lining up his next directorial project for when hes finally done with the Avatar saga. This will be Camerons first non-Avatar movie since he made Titanic in 1997, so its been a long time coming.

Most of Camerons movies have been high-concept, action-packed sci-fi epics like Aliens, The Terminator, and the Avatar films, but his first post-Avatar movie will be more like Titanic: a historical drama based on a real-life tragedy. Camerons next movie, Last Train from Hiroshima, will dramatize the U.S. governments atomic bombings of Japan in World War II.

Quick Links Madhouse Studios Historical Masterpiece is the Perfect Addition to Any Grave of the Fireflies Fans Watchlist Barefoot Gen: A Chilling Glimpse into the Bombing of Hiroshima The Controversy Surrounding Animes Most Popular War Dramas

Grave of the Fireflies is Studio Ghiblis soberest story, yet it harbors a dedicated fanbase, and I have just found their watchlists newest addition: Barefoot Gen. Aside from the fantastically-captivating action, romance, and horror genres of anime, the humbling realities of war and international conflict are also tackled in Japanese media. Some series are outwardly aimed towards anti-war or pro-Japanese themes. However, others are more subtle, masking a clear agenda within a fluffy exterior.

For example, my favorite Studio Ghibli film, Howl's Moving Castle, contains inspiration and reflections from both its director and the source material's author. The films release date was in 2004, following the invasion of Iraq by the United States. The film...

Seeing is not the same thing as knowing. And certainly not the same thing as understanding.

Never before in the history of our species have humans been asked to process so much visual information all the time, often at the same time. Yet whether the endlessly multiplying screens we direct our eyeballs to are actually causing us to be smarter or wiser or more empathetic is still unclear. That’s not news to anyone familiar with terms like “cut through the noise,” or aware of the impulse toward “curation” to find what’s actually good or what anything actually means. Movies and TV, though, have always suggested “seeing” is the highest value: the cameo of a beloved star, the Easter egg, the desire to visualize anything and everything in pixel-perfect VFX, “you’ll believe a man can fly.”

Some of the most compelling visual media of 2023 went in a different direction.

Christopher Nolan defends his decision not to show the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in Oppenheimer as he wanted to present the experience subjectively and focus on the unintended consequences of Oppenheimer's actions. The debate around Nolan's decision has divided viewers, with some finding it baffling, while others believe it was wise to avoid exploiting the horrific fate of the citizens. Ultimately, Nolan made the right choice to leave out the bombings as it stayed true to his intention of depicting the story through Oppenheimer's perspective.

Christopher defends his decision not to show the famous Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in his recent epic Oppenheimer. Starring Cillian Murphy as the titular character alongside other talented actors like Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh and Rami Malek, Nolan’s critically acclaimed movie follows the true story of the theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and his role in developing the first nuclear weapons...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Film at Lincoln Center

The Three Colors: Red restoration debuts as Three Colors: Blue and Three Colors: White continue.

Paris Theater

Prints of High and Low, The Haunting, and The World According to Garp play in a “Directors Selects” series, which also offers Coppola’s Dracula.

Film Forum

To mark the great Alain Resnias’ centennial, a massive retrospective continues with Marienbad, Hiroshima, Je t’aime, je t’aime, and some of his lesser-seen (but no less great) features—The War Is Over and Stavisky—while Dr. Strangelove plays.

Bam

Obayashi’s Anti-War Trilogy—Hanagatami, Seven Weeks, and Casting Blossoms to the Sky—has screenings this weekend.

Museum of the Moving Image

Tron and Sleeping Beauty play on 70mm this weekend, while a series of zombie films screen.

Roxy Cinema

The series “Woman as Witch” offers 35mm prints of Bitter Moon,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSWill-o'-the-Wisp.The New York Film Festival has revealed the lineup for their Currents section, dedicated to films "testing and stretching the possibilities of the medium." The program includes new films from João Pedro Rodrígues, Ashley McKenzie, Bertrand Bonello, Helena Wittmann, and more. This year's crop of Revivals was also unveiled, featuring the highly anticipated restoration of Jean Eustache's The Mother and the Whore.61 films will be preserved through funding from The National Film Preservation Foundation. Grant recipients include the 1921 mystery-western Trailin’—starring Tom Mix, considered the first on-screen cowboy—and The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy (1980), one of two feature films Kathleen Collins completed before her premature death.Cinema company Cineworld, owner of the Picturehouse chain in the UK and Regal Cinemas in the US, could be facing imminent bankruptcy, per recent reports.

The following appeared in Filmmaker‘s Spring, 2000 edition accompanying All Tomorrow’s Yesterdays, an article in which four filmmakers reflect on the work of Alain Resnais. — Editor Anatole Dauman, through his company Argos Films, produced or co-produced many of the masterworks of postwar European cinema – including Alain Resnais’s Night and Fog; Hiroshima, Mon Amour; Last Year at Marienbad; and Muriel.Following his death in 1998, his daughter, Florence Dauman (herself a producer of A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Cinema), assumed control of the company, which today houses the greatest collection of independent cinema in France. Ms. Dauman […]

The post “What Would Resnais Bring Back from Japan? I Had Not a Clue”: Producer Anatole Dauman on Alain Resnais, Night and Fog and Hiroshima Mon Amour first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The following appeared in Filmmaker‘s Spring, 2000 edition accompanying All Tomorrow’s Yesterdays, an article in which four filmmakers reflect on the work of Alain Resnais. — Editor Anatole Dauman, through his company Argos Films, produced or co-produced many of the masterworks of postwar European cinema – including Alain Resnais’s Night and Fog; Hiroshima, Mon Amour; Last Year at Marienbad; and Muriel.Following his death in 1998, his daughter, Florence Dauman (herself a producer of A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Cinema), assumed control of the company, which today houses the greatest collection of independent cinema in France. Ms. Dauman […]

The post “What Would Resnais Bring Back from Japan? I Had Not a Clue”: Producer Anatole Dauman on Alain Resnais, Night and Fog and Hiroshima Mon Amour first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

In 2000, Filmmaker, timed to a traveling retrospective, asked four directors to reflect on the work of legendary French film director Alain Resnais. We are reposting this piece now as another retrospective, Film Forum’s Alain Resnais 100, opens tomorrow. The below films, with the exception of Je T’aime, Je T’aime, are all also streaming now on the Criterion Channel. See as well this article’s original sidebar, in which producer Anatole Dauman reflects on the making of Night and Fog and Hiroshima, Mon Amour. — Editor Perhaps more than those of any other modern director, the films of Alain Resnais are […]

The post All Tomorrow’s Yesterdays: Keith Gordon, Radley Metzger, Errol Morris and Christopher Münch on the Films of Alain Resnais first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

In 2000, Filmmaker, timed to a traveling retrospective, asked four directors to reflect on the work of legendary French film director Alain Resnais. We are reposting this piece now as another retrospective, Film Forum’s Alain Resnais 100, opens tomorrow. The below films, with the exception of Je T’aime, Je T’aime, are all also streaming now on the Criterion Channel. See as well this article’s original sidebar, in which producer Anatole Dauman reflects on the making of Night and Fog and Hiroshima, Mon Amour. — Editor Perhaps more than those of any other modern director, the films of Alain Resnais are […]

The post All Tomorrow’s Yesterdays: Keith Gordon, Radley Metzger, Errol Morris and Christopher Münch on the Films of Alain Resnais first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

AMC Networks has rounded out its premiere dates for late-summer and fall including AMC’s documentary series Hip Hop: The Songs That Show America, which drops on October 13; its 23rd annual horror marathon FearFest (October 13); and new five-part true-crime series The Preppy Murder: Death in Central Park (November 13).

AMC’s previously announced summer and fall premiere dates include the fourth and final season of Preacher (August 4), the sophomore seasons of The Terror: Infamy and Lodge 49 (both August 12) and Season 10 of The Walking Dead (October 6).

Here is a list by network of upcoming premieres on AMC outlets, with synopses provided by AMC Networks; several already had been announced:

AMC

Hip Hop: The Songs That Shook America

Sunday, October 13 at 12 a.m. Et/9 p.m. Pt

From Executive Producers Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter, Alex Gibney and directors Erik Parker and One9, each episode of this new documentary series focuses...

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Nobuhiro Suwa's The Lion Sleeps Tonight (2017), which is receiving an exclusive global online premiere on Mubi, is showing from May 28 – June 26, 2019 in Mubi's Luminaries strand.From the charged realism of his first feature, the raw, bristling relationship drama 2/Duo (1997), to his most recent, the tender ode to lost love and bygone youth, The Lion Sleeps Tonight (2017), the sublimely understated work of Nobuhiro Suwa comprises a rich, but mostly unexposed pocket of contemporary Japanese cinema. Between the filmmaker’s formal command and his direction of beautifully organic, often improvised performances, Suwa’s films have enjoyed critical acclaim, but only of the amnesiac variety—praised and then summarily forgotten. Despite the accessibility promised by digital platforms, most of us today will find the bulk of his work is entirely unattainable through traditional means, a seemingly arbitrary punishment for an auteur well-worth discovering.

Well, this is it, folks. Time to talk about one of the most important film events of the year — the Cannes Film Festival — and which buzzy titles are up for grabs this year.

There’s a hot package starring Chris Hemsworth and Tiffany Haddish titled “Down Under Cover.” Roland Emmerich directs a sci-fi project called “Moonfall.” Newly minted Oscar winner Olivia Colman stars with Anthony Hopkins in a drama called “The Father.” And Anthony Mackie reunites with “Avengers” co-star Samuel L. Jackson in “The Banker,” while the Russo Brothers reteam with Tom Holland for “Cherry.”

This year’s lineup features everything from space odysseys to WWII dramas to rom-coms to political dramas. Some directors are heading back to the Croisette for their sixth time to compete (“Oh Mercy!” director Arnaud Desplechin), while others, like Florian Zeller, are traveling to the French Riviera town for the first time.

Also Read: Chris...

“Escape at Dannemora” is the current frontrunner to take home the Best Limited Series Emmy, which would not only be a huge coup for Ben Stiller & Co., but would be a landmark win for Showtime as the network has never won the category before.

Showtime only has a mere six nominations in the category, which through various times over the years has been merged with and split from the Best TV Movie category. For comparison, NBC and PBS have a record 10 wins each. Last year, Showtime’s bid for “Patrick Melrose” marked the network’s first nomination in the category since “Sleeper Cell” 12 years prior. Its other nominations were for “Paris Trout”, “Hiroshima” (1996), “Armistead Maupin’s More Tales of the City” (1998) and “Armistead Maupin’s Further Tales of the City” (2001).

See Readers don’t think Patricia Arquette will win 2 Emmys in a night, but ‘if anyone can, it’s Patricia...

Filming for Noah Hawley’s long-awaited FX adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle could begin as early as next year, the busy Legion and Fargo creator said Tuesday at SXSW. “Probably not airing in 2020, but filming in 2020,” he said during a panel at the Austin Convention Center, in which he also discussed the status of other percolating projects including a Dr. Doom movie in limbo at Fox.

Cat’s Cradle is Vonnegut’s 1963 satirical novel about a reporter who, while setting out to write a book about Hiroshima, ends up the dictator of a small Caribbean island. Hawley said Tuesday he has finished a first script and believes it will be a seven- or eight-hour limited series. The news about his intention to create a Cat’s Cradle series for FX, where Hawley has an overall deal, was first announced in 2015.

“You look at Vonnegut who is an...

There must be thousands of old TV movies that would reward viewing if they were being screened anywhere... although the odds of finding anything good at random are even more slight than when you go trawling through old cinema releases without a guide. The much-discredited auteur theory can come to the rescue: a show with a director known for other interesting work has a far higher chance of rewarding attention.TV was Joseph Sargent's bread and butter, from relatively highbrow stuff to The Man from Uncle, but he also made several decent cinema films, including at least one masterpiece, The Taking of Pelham 123. When I found a DVD entitled Hiroshima with his name spelled incorrectly on the back, I decided to take a chance on it, and indeed the film, originally it seems a mini-series from 1989 called Day One, has a lot going for it. What immediately cheered me,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSClaude Lanzmann, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Satre, 1967. Photo via Rithy Panh.Shoah director and singular cinematic chronicler of the Holocaust, Claude Lanzmann has sadly left us. Daniel Lewis provides a comprehensive remembrance for The New York Times. Last year, we wrote on his last five films films, Napalm and The Four Sisters, a quartet of documentaries.Recommended VIEWINGEven through his perhaps more artistically compromised mainland blockbusters, we remain dedicated fans of Tsui Hark's daring, punk cinematic vision. We especially highly regard his Detective Dee films, and thus are very excited for the forthcoming Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings, which has received this ecstatic new trailer.An oddly modern trailer showcasing the new gorgeous restoration of Jacques Rivette's first masterpiece (starring Anna Karina!), The Nun (1966). In a qualitative sense, Yorgos Lanthimos' films...

Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday.

Last weekend saw the release of “Rampage,” which may be the highest-rated video game movie on Rotten Tomatoes, but probably won’t go down in history as the king of monster movies.

This week’s question: What monster movie should people watch instead of “Rampage?”

Matt Zoller Seitz (@MattZollerSeitz), RogerEbert.com

The 2014 “Godzilla,” directed by Gareth Edwards. Try to watch it on the biggest screen you can find, in a dark room. It’s the most aesthetically daring monster movie, and one of the most daring big budget Sf films, released in the last decade, owing as much to “Close Encounters” as it does to anything Toho made. I was shocked by how much money it made. It was basically a Terrence Malick Godzilla movie, right down to the cutaways to other...

Stars: Hiroki Hasegawa, Yutaka Takenouchi, Satomi Ishihara, Ren Ôsugi, Akira Emoto, Kengo Kôra, Mikako Ichikawa, Jun Kunimura, Pierre Taki, Kyûsaku Shimada, Ken Mitsuishi, Shingo Tsurumi, Kimiko Yo | Written by Hideaki Anno | Directed by Hideaki Anno, Shinji Higuchi

Godzilla, officially The King of the Monsters, returns to his Japanese roots following the 2014 Gareth Edwards directed Us film in Shin Godzilla. Set in present-day Japan, the film sees an unexplained seismic event occur off the coast of Shinagawa, causing ripple effects all the way to the capital. Ministers scramble to figure out what’s going on but only cabinet secretary Rando Yaguchi knows what the audience already does. That Godzilla has majestically returned and has his fire-breathing, stomping sights on Tokyo once more…

It’s hard to belive that Godzilla, such a symbol of the nuclear fallout of the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and (to a lesser extent) the Daigo...

Ryan Lambie Mar 7, 2017

Producer Alex Garcia talks to us about Kong: Skull Island, Godzilla and Legendary's growing kaiju movie universe...

Alex Garcia knows a thing or two about giant monsters. He was the executive producer on Bryan Singer's 2013 fantasy Jack The Giant Slayer and 2014's Godzilla, and now he's the producer of this year's Kong: Skull Island. The movie not only represents the giant ape's return to cinema screens for the first time since 2005's King Kong remake, directed by Peter Jackson, but also the next step in a larger series of giant monster flicks from Legendary Entertainment.

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After Skull Island, Godzilla's set to rise again in 2019's King Of Monsters, due to start filming this summer, while further ahead, there's Godzilla Vs Kong - which will, as its title implies,...

Stars: Hiroki Hasegawa, Yutaka Takenouchi, Satomi Ishihara, Ren Ôsugi, Akira Emoto, Kengo Kôra, Mikako Ichikawa, Jun Kunimura, Pierre Taki, Kyûsaku Shimada, Ken Mitsuishi, Shingo Tsurumi, Kimiko Yo | Written by Hideaki Anno | Directed by Hideaki Anno, Shinji Higuchi

Godzilla, officially The King of the Monsters, returns to his Japanese roots following the 2014 Gareth Edwards directed Us film in Shin Godzilla. Set in present-day Japan, the film sees an unexplained seismic event occur off the coast of Shinagawa, causing ripple effects all the way to the capital. Ministers scramble to figure out what’s going on but only cabinet secretary Rando Yaguchi knows what the audience already does. That Godzilla has majestically returned and has his fire-breathing, stomping sights on Tokyo once more…

It’s hard to belive that Godzilla, such a symbol of the nuclear fallout of the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and (to a lesser extent) the Daigo...

Next year’s SXSW may still be months away, but the annual multi-pronged festival and conference gathering has already started rolling out a slew of impressive announcements. Next up, their third wave of Keynotes and Featured Speakers, plus 700 planned sessions for the 2017 event. Conference Keynotes now include filmmaker Gareth Edwards (“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” “Godzilla” and “Monsters”); Adam Grant, author of “Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World”; Creative Director and L.A. Anchor for Beats 1, Zane Lowe; and Mt. Everest photographer Cory Richards. They join previously announced Keynotes, including Lee Daniels, Jennifer Doudna and Jill Soloway.

Featured Speakers now include “Transparent” actor Kathryn Hahn and global design icon Marc Jacobs, along with business and tech influencers Whitney Wolfe and Padmasree Warrior, covering subjects that range from user privacy to next-generation entertainment options.

Read More: SXSW and White House To Throw Special One-Day Festival For Creators and Innovators

“The...

Ironically, the best Godzilla movies focus more on the humans than the giant, radioactive nuclear sea monster destroying Japan (or, occasionally, various cities in the U.S.). The original 1954 classic, as it is well known, is a social commentary on the state of the island country (and, in some cases, the world) post-Hiroshima. It was a literal monster to make sense of daily monstrosities. Gareth Edwards’ recent 2014 film didn’t quite have the same political backbone, but it succeeded in retaining the humanitarian approach that was slowly fading when Godzilla’s frenemies like Mothra, King Kong, and King Ghidorah shared the posters and titles.

Continue reading ‘Shin Godzilla’ Is An Unexpectedly Winning Monster Movie [Review] at The Playlist.

Godzilla, as both a film franchise and a prehistoric fire-breathing sea monster, has always been defined by its ability to evolve. Originally conceived for the 1954 Ishirō Honda classic that bore his name and first introduced him to the world, Godzilla is the king of the kaiju and the most durable of all movie monsters because — by feeding on nuclear energy — it essentially feeds on human folly, itself. If there’s a more renewable resource, scientists have yet to discover it.

It would be 300-foot-tall understatement to say that some of the Godzilla movies have failed to capitalize on their star’s unique allegorical power (or was Mechagodzilla a poignant metaphor for the perils of worshipping false idols?), but the roaring reptile has never lost its power as a symbol of divine retribution, ready to be reborn for whatever new crisis we’ve managed to engineer for ourselves. It’s been...

For a character who is, essentially, a big lizard, Godzilla has had remarkable staying power, going from the Hiroshima metaphor of the 1950s classic original to Gareth Edwards’ rather remarkable 2014 blockbuster reboot. The U.S. version of the character has both a sequel and a match-up with King Kong in the near future, but the […]

The post Your Favorite Giant Lizard Returns In U.S. Trailer For Japanese Reboot ‘Shin Godzilla’ appeared first on The Playlist.

'The Beginning or the End' 1947 with Robert Walker and Tom Drake. Hiroshima bombing 70th anniversary: Six movies dealing with the A-bomb terror Seventy years ago, on Aug. 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb over the city of Hiroshima. Ultimately, anywhere between 70,000 and 140,000 people died – in addition to dogs, cats, horses, chickens, and most other living beings in that part of the world. Three days later, America dropped a second atomic bomb, this time over Nagasaki. Human deaths in this other city totaled anywhere between 40,000-80,000. For obvious reasons, the evisceration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been a quasi-taboo in American films. After all, in the last 75 years Hollywood's World War II movies, from John Farrow's Wake Island (1942) and Mervyn LeRoy's Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944) to Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998) and Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor (2001), almost invariably have presented a clear-cut vision...

In order to convince David Straithairn’s Admiral Stenz not to use nuclear power to annihilate the giant behemoths quickly approaching American soil, Ken Watanabe’s Dr. Serizawa brandishes a deceivingly quotidian object: a stopped pocket watch. It was Dr. Serizawa’s father’s during the bombing of Hiroshima, an instructive moment in history now literally frozen in time as a cautionary token. Though Ken Watanabe looks nowhere near 70, my (I thought, reasonable) assumption during this scene of Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla was that Dr. Serizawa’s father had immediately perished alongside tens of thousands of others during the infamous 1945 atomic bombing. But regardless of this emblem’s status as a memento of death on a massive scale, that Dr. Serizawa’s father survived Hiroshima and Dr. Serizawa is a healthy mid-50s man now seems far more likely considering this film’s view of tragedy. Despite its keeping with the summer movie tradition of mass destruction, despite...

“May we live without destruction

May we look to tomorrow with hope

May peace and light return to us”

Thus is the prayer the Japanese around the country sing in harmony to befell a giant lizard.

Before the giant, reptillian explanation for seven mysteriously vanished ships lumbers over Odo Island in 1954′s Godzilla, the mysterious, legendary origins of such a monster are whispered by the natives. Like Kong before him, women were sacrificed to the king of the monsters to spare the community another day. The first scientists to speak on the threat sound more like cryptozoologists, likening its existence to that of a Yeti. As it turns out, they’re all half-right.

Unlike the lead of 1998′s much-maligned U.S. remake, Godzilla is not a monster borne of radiation, but instead drawn out by it. The missing link between the Jurassic and Cretaceous period, Godzilla has been living in...

The British director Gareth Edwards dares to aim high and doesn't disappoint

Back in 2005, the British Film Institute issued a handsomely restored version of Gojira/Godzilla, giving many UK cinemagoers their first chance to see Ishiro Honda's groundbreaking creature-feature as it originally appeared in Japan in 1954. Shorn of the post-hoc Hollywood scenes that gave Raymond Burr a starring role in the redubbed Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, the intact Toho Studio's production exhibited a depth and poignancy missing from international release versions a sense of apocalyptic melancholia fired by the legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and rekindled by the fallout of nuclear testing in the Pacific. A 1954 documentary short, The Japanese Fishermen, which appended the subsequent BFI DVD release, tied the fantasy of Gojira back to the harsh reality of life in nuclear age, with the fate of the crew of the ironically named Lucky Dragon 5 providing irradiated background...

The most iconic of monsters returns to the big screen in Gareth Edwards’ larger than life “Godzilla”. Edwards, director of the unexpected, though satisfying “Monsters”, pays proper homage to the legendary Gojira, once he finally makes an appearance. Focusing more than past incarnations have on character development, Edwards’ rendition may not be consistently packed with action, but once the “king of the monsters” tramples front and center, it’s something impressive to behold.

Godzilla is a secret to the world, hidden in history under nuclear testing done by the U.S. in the Pacific Ocean that was actually an attack on the monster. The film introduces two scientists, Dr. Seriwaza (Ken Watanabe) and Vivienne Graham (Sally Hawkins), who are investigating a massive mine in the Philippines where two large insect-like pods have been discovered. In Tokyo, Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) and his wife Sandra (Juliette Binoche) are working in a...

Chicago – I did not like Godzilla. That sentence alone might make my review interesting enough to attract some initial attention. But despite that, and despite the fact that I’m a sucker for pretty much giant anything if it stomps a city, I’m holding fast to this judgment.

Rating: 2.0/5.0

I love the redesign of Godzilla himself. In fact the special effects and creature design in the film are impeccable, and is available in 3D. Ironically I’m writing this on the day that I find out noted surrealist artist and designer of the xenomorph in Alien (1979) – H.R. Giger – has died. It’s ironic to think that the man who nailed the aesthetic of Cthulean dread for modern cinema should die just as Godzilla, an ultimate force of cinematic apocalypse, should be successfully redesigned and let loose on the cinematic landscape once again.

But this brings up my main point.

Godzilla is one of the movies' most famous monsters, but his filmography is spotty. He debuted strong, with the shell-shocked 1954 Japanese film Gojira, but since then he's had to battle goofy adversaries (Mothra, Gigan, Mechagodzilla) in countless campy Japanese sequels and get shot to pieces on the Brooklyn Bridge in Roland Emmerich's 1998 American version, a big-budget disappointment. So eyebrows shot up when Legendary and Warner Bros. Pictures – the studios behind the retooling of the Batman series with director Christopher Nolan – decided to resurrect the franchise and hand the reins...

For a creature who's been asleep for hundreds of millions of years, Godzilla is surprisingly adept at changing with the times.

Across 60 years and 30 movies, from his first appearance in 1954's "Godzilla" to the second American reboot "Godzilla" opening this week, the Lizard King has reflected the anxieties of his times, from World War II to the War on Terror, from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima to the atomic reactor disaster of Fukushima., and from Japan to the rest of the world.

Even in that first film, the linkage of the radioactive-breath monster with the atomic anxieties of the only nation ever attacked by nuclear weapons was explicit. "First Nagasaki, now this!" cries a woman in anticipation of Godzilla's imminent arrival. Less then a decade after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki forced Japan's surrender in World War II, and just months after U.S. hydrogen bomb testing...

For a creature who's been asleep for hundreds of millions of years, Godzilla is surprisingly adept at changing with the times.

Across 60 years and 30 movies, from his first appearance in 1954's "Godzilla" to the second American reboot "Godzilla" opening this week, the Lizard King has reflected the anxieties of his times, from World War II to the War on Terror, from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima to the atomic reactor disaster of Fukushima., and from Japan to the rest of the world.

Even in that first film, the linkage of the radioactive-breath monster with the atomic anxieties of the only nation ever attacked by nuclear weapons was explicit. "First Nagasaki, now this!" cries a woman in anticipation of Godzilla's imminent arrival. Less then a decade after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki forced Japan's surrender in World War II, and just months after U.S. hydrogen bomb testing...

Forget 1998's ridiculous Roland Emmerich reboot. Forget the Godzooky-marred Hanna Barbera cartoon. Forget even 1968's ultimate creature feature Destroy All Monsters, great though it is. The real yardstick against which Gareth Edwards's forthcoming Godzilla movie should be judged is the 60-year-old original.

Even then, it's worth noting that there are really two incarnations of Ishirō Honda's 1954 film. For years, the better-known version was the Hollywood re-edit, Godzilla, King Of The Monsters! which added new scenes starring Raymond Burr to cater for American audiences. But today the unaltered Japanese version, Gojira, finds greater support.

Whichever version you favour, the star of the show is the oversized lizard unleashed by a nuclear explosion. The monster's native name, Gojira, is a portmanteau of two Japanese words, gorira and kujira which, when combined, mean 'gorilla whale.' That description freed the imagination of art director Akira Watanabe, who also threw in elements of...

Legendary's take on the iconic movie monster Godzilla is due out in a little over a week, but you can get your hands on the film's prequel story with the new graphic novel, "Godzilla: Awakening."  Co-written by Max and Greg Borenstein, with artwork from Eric Battle, Yvel Guichet, Alan Quah and Lee Loughridge, and cover art by Arthur Adams, the boldly illustrated novel tells the story of humanity's first clash with the gigantic monsters dubbed MUTOs in the wake of the Hiroshima bombing.  While it pays homage to the original creation of the title monster, "Godzilla: Awakening" also sets up the Gareth Edwards film by centering on Serizawa, a military scientist who deduces the secret of the MUTOs, and just so happens to be the father of Ken Watanabe's character, Ichiro Serizawa.  Hit the jump for my review of the Godzilla graphic novel. Legendary has taken an interesting approach to building their extra-cinematic universes.

You might recall last summer how Legendary Pictures found a way to further plumb the vast depths of Guillermo Del Toro's "Pacific Rim" with a handsome, hardcover prequel graphic novel: "Pacific Rim: Tales from Year Zero." With cover art from celebrated artist Alex Ross and an "additive as opposed to adaptive" approach from writer Travis Beacham, the book filled in shades of information only alluded in the blockbuster film. This year, the production company has again commissioned the screenwriter of one of their big-budget extravaganzas to expand on its further-reaching details as "Godzilla: Awakening" hits shelves Wednesday ahead of the May 16 release of Gareth Edwards' "Godzilla." Much like "Tales from Year Zero," the 80-page "Awakening" stretches back to the beginnings of the plight evident in the feature. Screenwriter Max Borenstein jumped at the opportunity to work up the graphic novel with his cousin Greg as the two had...

By May 1945, Nazi Germany had surrendered the Second World War in Europe leaving only the fighting in the Pacific remaining. After threats from the USA, the UK and China to the Japanese of ‘utter destruction’, the Americans finally dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The combined death toll has been estimated up to a 250,000 people.

On March 1st 1954, a Japanese fishing boat called Daigo Fukuryu Maru (Lucky Dragon 5) was searching for tuna near the shores of a small ring of coral reef called Bikini Atoll near the Marshall Islands. After their haul, they returned to the port in Yaizu, Japan all suffering from headaches, nausea and bleeding from their gums and eyes. It was immediately clear what had happened to them – they all had radiation poisoning from the fallout of American atomic bomb testing.

The memories of these two tragic events led to the creation of one of...

A new Godzilla featurette has been released online, in which director Gareth Edwards discusses the approach he took to the material, and his desire to treat it "seriously". Edwards refers to the original film's allegorical references to Hiroshima and Nagasaki as touching points for how a monster movie can be both hugely entertaining, but also have a serious point to make. With that in mind, for all the new film's mayhem and carnage, Edwards was determined to shoot it in as realistic a style as possible, so as to make the set-up more...

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The original, 1954 version of Gojira was a none-too-subtle allegory for a people that was only nine years out from being the only nation ever attacked with atomic weaponry. When its bleak, brutal imagery called up nightmares of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the resemblance was purely intentional.

Director Gareth Edwards (Monsters) has stated that he wants to return the Godzilla franchise back to that mindset, using his upcoming film as a dark mirror for modern fears. Thus, it will come as no surprise that a new, extended preview of the movie features images of tsunamis, the destruction of a Japanese nuclear power plant, and modern militaries powerless in the face of natural disaster.

This new trailer also expands considerably on the backstory of its main protagonists, the Brody family. While previous looks at Godzilla certainly hinted at brutal tragedy, we ...

Click to continue reading ‘Godzilla’ Extended Trailer: Tremble Before the King of...

"It's amazing how many people are closet Godzilla fans," director Gareth Edwards mused during the Q&A session that followed a footage screening of his monster remake last Friday. He's naturally hoping for a coming-out party come the film's release in May, but the in-built fandom brings with it a daunting level of pressure for a director with only one previous feature to his name - 2010's acclaimed micro-budget sci-fi Monsters.

Godzilla, aside from being a remake of a beloved property, will be the final film to come out of the long, fruitful partnership between Warner Bros and Legendary Pictures, which birthed Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy among other projects. The stakes are high.

"Every day for the last year, someone has said to me, 'I love Godzilla, don't f**k it up!'" Edwards admitted, with a grimace. Judging by the footage - which combines an emotional opening...

I typically don’t like to speak for anyone but myself, but I think it’s pretty safe for me to assume that you, like me, are totally excited about the impending arrival of Warner Bros./Legendary Pictures’ Godzilla reboot, set to stomp its way into theaters on May 16th. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that you’re feeling the same way I’m feeling, right about now.

But alas, we must wait.

While we all patiently await the arrival of the ‘King of the Monsters,’ now is a better time than any to take in the sights and sounds of giant monster movies past. Sure, waiting sucks, but we hope this list will help make the countdown a little less painful, and whole lot more fun.

Here are 10 recent giant monster movies to hold you over, and get you in the proper mood for Godzilla 2014!

Monsters

The...

Top 10 Ryan Lambie 4 Mar 2014 - 05:53

Last week, director Gareth Edwards spoke about his forthcoming Godzilla movie in a lengthy Q&A. Here's what we've learned...

Nb: While the below is spoiler-free, do avoid reading further if you’d prefer to see the final film absolutely cold.

Showing off 20 minutes of your forthcoming summer movie before it's even finished could, in theory, be a risky move. Yet Warner Bros and Legendary clearly have confidence in director Gareth Edwards' forthcoming Godzilla, and when we'd finished seeing some snippets of footage from his monster movie reboot, we were also confident that the full film will be worthy of the creature's status as cinema's King of the Monsters.

With our excitement suitably piqued by the footage (and you can read our spoiler-free thoughts on that here), Edwards took to the stage with presenter Edith Bowman to talk about Godzilla in an illuminating Q&A.

It's been more than a decade since Roland Emmerich's grisly stab at Godzilla, and yet the wounds are still fresh enough that when news came that Warner Bros and Legendary Pictures were mounting another remake, reaction was muted at best.

But then Gareth Edwards, known only for micro-budget gem Monsters, was hired to direct, and that stunning concept footage debuted at Comic-Con, and people like Bryan Cranston and Elizabeth Olsen and Juliette Binoche were cast. Try though people did, it became harder and harder not to be optimistic.

Digital Spy was among the first people in the world to see extended footage from Edwards' remake today (February 28), and we can say with some confidence that fans will not be disappointed. Below are eight nuggets to whet your appetites...

Warning: The following teasers contain mild spoilers.

1) Max Borenstein's script takes as its emotional anchor a father and son -...

Every year, we here at Sound On Sight celebrate the month of October with 31 Days of Horror; and every year, I update the list of my favourite horror films ever made. Last year, I released a list that included 150 picks. This year, I’ll be upgrading the list, making minor alterations, changing the rankings, adding new entries, and possibly removing a few titles. I’ve also decided to publish each post backwards this time for one reason: the new additions appear lower on my list, whereas my top 50 haven’t changed much, except for maybe in ranking. Enjoy!

****

Special Mention:

Shock Corridor

Written and directed by Samuel Fuller

USA, 1963

Shock Corridor stars Peter Breck as Johnny Barrett, an ambitious reporter who wants to expose the killer at the local insane asylum. To solve the case, he must pretend to be insane so they have him committed. Once in the asylum,...

*Update: Regrettably, Warner Bros. has asked that we remove the above video due to piracy concerns. You'll have to wait to see the "Godzilla" remake teaser's chilling bleakness when it's nice and legal. Instead, we offer you this heart-pounding video of Godzilla attacking a Golden Retriever. Enjoy!

So, you think you got your fill of giant monsters destroying large buildings (and other giant monsters) with this summer's profoundly awesome "Pacific Rim?" Well, think again. Because next summer, one of the most legendary creatures every to grace the silver screen returns in... "Godzilla." And based on the teaser trailer (via io9), it's going to be totally cool.

The teaser is mostly comprised of shots of large scale destruction (including, what appears to be another giant monster, only this one is very dead). Hauntingly, there is narration that's provided by an archival audio recording of J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was a participant...

Eleanor Parker today: Beautiful as ever in Scaramouche, Interrupted Melody Eleanor Parker, who turns 91 in ten days (June 26, 2013), can be seen at her most radiantly beautiful in several films Turner Classic Movies is showing this evening and tomorrow morning as part of their Star of the Month Eleanor Parker "tribute." Among them are the classic Scaramouche, the politically delicate Above and Beyond, and the biopic Interrupted Melody, which earned Parker her third and final Best Actress Academy Award nomination. (Photo: publicity shot of Eleanor Parker in Scaramouche.) The best of the lot is probably George Sidney’s balletic Scaramouche (1952), in which Eleanor Parker plays one of Stewart Granger’s love interests — the other one is Janet Leigh. A loose remake of Rex Ingram’s 1923 blockbuster, the George Sidney version features plenty of humor, romance, and adventure; vibrant colors (cinematography by Charles Rosher); an elaborately staged climactic swordfight; and tough dudes...