The latest news about the monsters inspired by Kong and popularized by Godzilla, Gamera, and Mothra.
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| (Click to enlarge) One of many cocktails based on Pacific Rim |
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| (Click to enlarge) The Jaeger |
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| (Click to enlarge) Gipsy Danger |
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| (Click to enlarge) The Cherno Alpha |
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| (Click to enlarge) The Coyote Tango |
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| (Click to enlarge) The Crimson Typhoon |
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| (Click to enlarge) The Shatterdome |
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| (Click to enlarge) The Striker Eureka |
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| (Click to enlarge) the Drift |
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| Chan Takashi's King Ghidorah sculpt from above. |
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| Godzilla 60th anniversary logo and website at Godzilla.jp |
E= Will make jets fly over headJump to Godzilla.jp to play around this interactive site. Below is a sample video of the game play.
M = Will call Mothra
K = Will call King Ghidora
G = Well...make sure you have the sound on when you press this.
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| "Start Screen" for a fictional 8-bit Pacific Rim |
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| For the price of $2000 you can have lunch with Max Borenstein |
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| How does Godzilla's atomic breath work |
Shock: The film is said to be more grounded and “real” so how to you plausibly handle his creation, his atomic breath and other elements?
Edwards: It was important to me to make it as believable as possible and with all of those elements you’ve mentioned, they’re in the film but I tried to put them in the film where they’re not so fantastical that you don’t believe it. Hopefully, the only big buy the audience has to make – and I believe there can only be one buy – is that giant creatures can exist. Beyond that, we try to make it as realistic as possible. Throughout the franchise, there’s consistently been these elements related to Godzilla and they’re in this film, but it was about making it feel natural in our film. I can’t go into much more details. There is a nuclear element in the movie.
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| Haruo Nakajima taking a break outside the Godzilla suit |
FEAR FESTEviL is pleased to welcome legendary monster suit actor HARUO NAKAJIMA! Mr. Nakajima is known the world over for having portrayed the screen’s most famous monster, GODZILLA‐‐a role which he pioneered throughout the first 12 films of Toho’s long‐running science fiction series.
It was following the performance of a dangerous stunt as a fighter pilot in Ishiro Honda’s “Eagle of the Pacific” (1953) that Nakajima was recommended to play Godzilla in the original 1954 film, since donning the heavy costume beneath sweltering studio lights required an unusual amount of strength and endurance.
Special effects master Eiji Tsuburaya was so impressed by Nakajima’s skill as a stunt performer and choreographer that he featured the actor in nearly every science fiction, horror and fantasy film produced throughout his own illustrious career. In addition to Godzilla, Nakajima would also embody an unprecedented number of notable movie monsters including Rodan (1956), Mogera in The Mysterians (1957), Varan the Unbelievable (1958), Mothra (1960), Matango (1963), Baragon in Frankenstein Conquers the World (1965), Gaira in War of the Gargantuas (1966) and even King Kong in King Kong Escapes (1967).
His impressive body of film work also includes appearances in Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954) and The Hidden Fortress (1958). In 1966, Tsuburaya once again tapped Nakajima’s talents when the effects director first brought his monsters to television in the ground‐breaking series Ultra Q and Ultraman.
Nakajima finally retired as the reigning Champion of monster suit actors with 1972’s Godzilla vs. Gigan. Beginning in 1996, Nakajima made guest appearances at various sci‐fi & horror conventions throughout the United States, Japan, and most recently Germany, where thousands of adoring fans have flocked to meet him.
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| legendary Ultraman suit actor Satoshi “Bin” Furuya |
Joining us next on the guest list is Satoshi “Bin” Furuya! Furuya portrayed one of the world’s most enduring superheroes in the 1966 sci-fi action television series “Ultraman” from Tsuburaya Productions. In 39 half-hour episodes, audiences thrilled to the enormous red and silver alien’s battles with large monsters in the imaginative program that spawned dozens of sequels. Those sequels continue to this day on both the small and big screens.FEAR FESTEviL Is slates for Feb 6-8, 2014 at The Regency Ballroom in S.F. California. You can get all the details at the official website www.FearFestEvil.com. Plus you can watch the promotional video below.
No stranger to acting outside of a costume, Furuya had a regular role as Ultra Guard Agent Amagi in all 49 episodes of the extremely popular serie “Ultra Seven” (1967). Though he retired from acting during the 1970s, he has made appearances in several genre films as recently as 2008, when he appeared in the 2008 kaiju comedy “The Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit”.
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| 3 More M.U.T.O. Videos, unfortunately they look like the above. |
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| The completed sculpture of the Godzilla 2014 reboot |
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| The final Godzilla 2014 sculpt is amazingly close to the preliminary sketch |
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| The initial sketch for the Godzilla 2014 sculpture |
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| Chan Takashi's first Godzilla Sculpt from November |
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| Chan Takashi actually uses disposable chopsticks as scaffolding |
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| Japan released slightly different versions of the new Godzilla reboot |
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| Ken Watanabe from the Godzilla 2014 Official Teaser Trailer |
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| The HALO jump into the heart of destruction is the first scene in the Godzilla 2014 trailer |
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| Ouch! (Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures) |
It's Godzilla's name on the marquee, yet Edwards didn't want to humanize him or give him too much personality.
"To me, he's like a force of nature, like the wrath of God or vengeance for the way we've behaved," Edwards says. "If this really happened, it would be like Sept. 11.
"I want it to be epic. I want to get the hairs on the back of your neck up."
Coming from Monsters, in which he designed — as cost-efficiently as possible — a quasi-futuristic setting of alien creatures taking over Mexico, Edwards is reveling in the big-budget filmmaking that Godzilla offers him.
"It's the closest thing to being a god as I think there is in terms of a job you could have," he says. "You picture something one day and draw it, and the next day, it's physical and there in front of you no matter how insane."
In addition to the original movie, the Monsterland conceit of the 1968 Godzilla flick Destroy All Monsters also plays into Edwards' film, with its exploration of mankind having to deal with a reality full of huge, deadly behemoths — the director teases that there is more than just Godzilla smashing around.
"I've just got a secret fantasy — well, it's not very secret anymore — about living in a world where there's fantastical things like giant creatures and what it would really be like and trying to take it seriously," he says.
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| Screenshot of MUTOresearch.net |
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| I got caught "hacking" into the MUTOresearch.net |
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| Hack into MUTOresearch.net (click to enlarge). |
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| Godzilla is on call for the crew of the Calico in the original Animated series. |
"The Time Dragons" (December 2, 1978): The team and Godzilla are, strangely, teleported back to prehistoric times. They must find their way back to the present time without disrupting the past.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godzilla_(animated_series))
The Calico faces certain destruction when it gets warped in time all the way back to prehistory. They meet a tribe of cavemen but are confronted with a T-Rex and they have to scramble to figure out what to do. A little bit of luck gets them back to the present. Can Godzilla save the day? (http://www.tv.com/shows/godzilla-the-original-animated-series/the-time-dragons-2364130/)
Stalking the forests of his tropical home, the massive dinosaur soon came across the Calico crew while they tried to return to the ship. The monster intercepted them and crushed the Godzilla signaler, but luckily Godzooky was there to call him manually. The nuclear leviathan rose from the sea to fight again, and as the two battled, their massive feet unearthed a pool of glowing uranium ore.
Not knowing of the substance's properties, Godzilla picked up the mud-like substance and was instantly transported back to his own age, leaving the Calico to defend for themselves. Once again, however, the group was saved, but this time by the native cave tribe. Dr. Quinn shouted out, telling the group to use the gray mud on them and the dinosaur.
When the Time Dragon was hit, he, the Calico, and its crew were transported back to the modern age, but now the same satellite that had initially sent them back was about to hit Godzilla again. Knowing of what happened, Godzilla took a deep breath and blew as hard as he could. The hurricane-like wind blast sent the satellite into the hands of the dinosaur, in turn sending him back to his own prehistoric world. (http://godzilla.wikia.com/wiki/Time_Dragon)
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| CNN Tokyo Reports on the death of Godzilla |
Godzilla breathes his lastSRC: CNN:Godzilla breathes his last fiery breath... for now
fiery breath... for now
December 1, 1995
Web posted at: 8:50 p.m. EST
From Correspondent May Lee
TOKYO (CNN) -- He needs no introduction
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His glaring eyes and gnashing teeth, not to mention his habit of destroying everything in sight, has made the overgrown lizard a superstar. However, in his 22nd film, "Godzilla vs. The Destroyer," to be released December 9 in Japan, the 42-year-old monster will finally meet his end -- Godzilla will die.
Destroyer
The film's directors promise the final scene will be unforgettable. "Godzilla died once before in the first movie in 1954," said the new film's special effects director, Kouichi Kawakita. "So this last film incorporates the image of the first death."
What was the cause of Godzilla's first demise four decades ago? The Destroyer, a weapon that zaps oxygen (remember, Godzilla is a nuclear monster)
Now, in this final installment, the Destroyer will be to blame again, but this time it will come to life in the form of an indestructible monster.
Kawakita painstakingly guided his team of designers and technicians to create the sci-fi world of Godzilla. Although technological advances such as computers and robots have given the Godzilla films more realism over the years, the simple monster suit hasn't been outgrown.
All it takes are the right moves and a few visual and audio enhancements and -- presto -- Godzilla is out flattening entire cities once again. With just a few giant steps, Hong Kong and Tokyo fall victim to his violent temper in the latest film.
Bringing the Godzilla series full circle involved using the same human characters as well as the sometimes more famous creatures.
Director Takao Okawara starred in the first film and plays the same character in "Godzilla vs. The Destroyer." There is a serious and very real side to this final chapter, he says: "That is, the nuclear threat that still plagues the modern world. In this last movie I want people to look at the death of Godzilla knowing that he was created by nuclear power and the most selfish existence in the world -- mankind."
With the strong anti-nuclear message, Godzilla will bid farewell to the silver screen in Japan, but don't be surprised if he shows up in the Western world sometime soon. Tri-Star, a U.S. film company, has bought the rights to make one Godzilla movie, which is expected to come out some time in 1997.
Okawara
Japanese creators have no qualms about the deal. "Personally, I am looking forward to seeing Godzilla in the U.S.," Okawara said. "I'm a Godzilla fan so I want to see the American Godzilla movie."
And why not? It's about time that the ferocious fire-breathing monster picked on someone else for a while.
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| Elizabeth Olsen plays nurse Elle Brody in Godzilla 2014 |
Capone: I hear a lot about his rehearsal process and how so much changes and gets locked in that period. Have you ever been though a process like that in terms of rehearsal?Besides Godzilla 2014, Elizabeth Olsen also talks about her role in Spike Lee's Old Boy and her role as Scarlet Witch in the upcoming Avengers movie. Read the rest of the interview at Aint It Cool News.
EO: I hadn’t, and it was an amazing two weeks. Actually, we had a little bit of that for GODZILLA. Gareth, Aaron [Taylor-Johnson, who plays Olsen's husband] and I, just for dialogue reasons, character development, and things like that, we did do that for GODZILLA. But before OLDBOY, I hadn’t had that experience where someone was like, “Hey, let's do this movie, but you're allowed to re-write anything that you don't feel comfortable with. What do you think isn’t working, and let’s figure out how to make it work. What lines do you like saying, what lines do you not like saying?" It was amazing.
Capone: Ok, you brought up GODZILLA, and I gotta ask: In my mind, I look at that cast and that’s one of the best casts of any film in recent memory. [It includes Bryan Cranston, Juliette Binoche, Sally Hawkins, Ken Watanabe, David Strathairn and Victor Rasuk.]
EO: It’s ridiculous!
Capone: And I’m just thinking, are we just going to see these amazing actors running away and pointing at something in the sky for two hours? What is going on?
EO: Absolutely will not. [laughs]
Capone: I’m dying to know.
EO: I do that once. It’s Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s film, but the ensemble, we all are somehow connected to Aaron’s character. He’s the root, and I play his wife and I'm the person who holds down the San Francisco prospective of it all. I’m a nurse and I work trying take care of this chaos. GODZILLA is just so deserving of a good American remake, and I really hope we did it and I really feel like we did.
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"In fact, the central emotional story of the film turns out not to belong to Raleigh, but rather Mako. An orphan of the Kaiju War, Mako wishes desperately to become a pilot in order to avenge her family, but is deemed too angry and emotionally volatile to make a good pilot. As it turns out, it’s Mako, not Raleigh, whose grief and rage endanger their connection, and it’s Raleigh’s job to emotionally balance her out and soothe the tempers around him.
This is what I mean when I say that Raleigh is a “strong female character.” Raleigh’s role in the film is that of friend, counselor, and emotional support–commonly the role given to a girlfriend or wife in a movie like this. He’s the Peggy to Mako’s Captain America, the Jane to her Thor, the Katara to her Aang. Raleigh is the supportive, emotionally intuitive counterpart to his impulsive, rash, and angry best friend. His journey is over in the first 20 minutes of the movie. Hers has just begun."
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| Concept art for the kaiju skull city |
In terms of world-building, Pacific Rim is arguably the most expansive movie del Toro’s yet created. Set in a near future torn apart by giant beasts which have, for reasons initially unclear, emerged from our oceans to wreck havoc on our cities, it sees a dwindling defense force gather together a handful of skyscraper-sized, human-driven robots to repel the incursion.
Proudly inspired by Japanese giant monster movies and anime, Pacific Rim creates its own realm of fantasy logic. We come to accept the strange, majestic movements of these towering robots, whose limbs move in time with the pilots’ own. Like all of del Toro’s films, it communicates so much through images rather than words; Pacific Rim’s designers draw from the symbolism of World War II tanks and submarines to give the machines a rusted, battered, lived-in sense of history, while the screeching kaiju have their own unique markings and individual videogame-like killer moves.
Like Mimic, Pacific Rim isn’t at all ashamed of its own inherent goofiness, and del Toro pulls off an impressive high-wire act of giving the movie both a sense of violent impact and also a childlike, playful sense of awe.
It’s this child’s eye perspective, perhaps, that is also key to the director’s world-building. Not all of his films are literally seen through a child’s eyes (though several of his best are), but they are all invested with the same childlike fascination for minute details and exotic, surreal images. Take, for example, a location somewhere in China, where an ad-hoc city has been arranged around the gargantuan bones of a fallen kaiju.
It’s a detail that is largely incidental to the plot, but it’s an idea that tells us so much about the history of this world without anyone uttering a word: the corpses of the kaiju are so utterly enormous that they’ve simply been assimilated into the landscape, and formed the part of a new and strangely beautiful place.
Things like this abound in Pacific Rim, and if you take the time to see them, they add depth to a story that is constantly thundering along like an untethered beast. Look how the little blue highlight in heroine Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) precisely matches the color of the coat she was wearing when she was almost killed by a kaiju as a child - a little bit of her traumatic past still clings to her as an adult.
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| The above image has been used as evidence of a giant tortoise discovery. But, it's a screenshot from a movie. (Credit: Cinemotions, screenshot) |
Sites that have run the tortoise story include Topekas News, News-hound, and the Tottenham News. None of the three have About Us pages explaining what the sites are.
So, who are these sites that got fooled? Here's what we found:
1. Topekas News story about the tortoise was headlined "Giant Fukushima Mutant Turtle Finally Captured By Japanese Military."
The Topekas News spun up a tall tale even saying that the tortoise had been nicknamed "The Great Demon King Koopa (Bowser)" and that the U.S. military was instrumental in catching the monster creature using drugs and explosives in its food. TopekasNews wrote that a U.S. soldier said the beast was "running a good 20 miles per hour."
Making the Topekas News article even more over-the-top, it claimed the tortoise demolished Noto, Japan and has earned legendary status:
"Some residents claimed at night its eyes would glow red as it emerged from the waters, usually hungry for small children or cattle, but its appetite knowing no true limit. Other residents say the great demon turtle could be heard wailing in the distance, bellowing out toward the heavens and speaking ancient Japanese, the words they say were a call toward the dark gods of ancient."
The absurd Topekas News article went on to claim nuclear power was responsible for the tortoise and that the "mutant" ate a bunch of animals. "Unfortunately, the giant mutant attacked the town of Noto, Japan," Topekas News wrote. "It literally tore through dozens of houses, ate 3 grown tigers and several goats at the local zoo, leaving a brave injured bull elephant to die, and then tried to eat a butcher’s van that is used to haul meat. "
2. News-Hound posted a story Nov. 21 titled, "World’s Largest Tortoise found in Amazon Basin – 800lb."
Unlike Topekas News, which is a site filled with satire, News-hound apparently publishes viral news stories with clickworthy headlines. It also doesn't have an "About Us" explaining the site's purpose, but judging from headlines, the content appears to be sensationalized news stories, not satire.
3. The Tottenham News was also a victim of the turtle hoax story, according to the International Business Times. The Tottenham News story is headlined "World's Largest Tortoise Found in Amazon."
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| Playstation 4 video game console as a Jaeger |
"In a distant empire ruled by consoles, an apocalyptic war unfolds. The fate of the world lies in a single battle between the XB-01 and the PX-04: the ultimate technological monstrosities of the console era.... or are they?"The Nerdist reports there are allusions to rumors about the consoles in the video:
"This short makes allusions to various console war developments, such as the rumor of the Xbox One “not being ready” for its launch day, and we even get to see what happens when Nintendo’s Wii U sticks it’s nose into the battle."Watch the video and enjoy the show.
Last year, it was announced that director Andre Ovredal (Troll Hunter) and producer Adrian Askarieh were gearing up to make a franchise out of the Enormous, the comic book from Tim Daniel and Mehdi Cheggour. Those plans included a web series, tv show and feature film. A year later, it appears that the first leg of those ambitious plans is kicking off as Variety reports that Machinima is moving forward with plans to make a web series from the comic. Enormous follows a futuristic setting where humanity is poised on the brink of extinction in the wake of gigantic monsters produced from a vast ecological cataclysm. That premise brings to mind another Image comic book series, The Walking Dead but this time, it's giant monsters instead of zombies. BenDavid Grabinski (Cost of Living) will direct the pilot from a script he wrote with Ovredal. Casting is underway and December is the target date for cameras to begin rolling.An excerpt from the Variety article Mark Julian references is below.
After scoring with live action web series based on the “Halo” and “Mortal Kombat” video game franchises, Machinima is turning to comicbooks for new programming.
The online entertainment player, whose audience is made up mostly of young males age 18-35, has paired with producer Adrian Askarieh to produce a 10-minute pilot based on “Enormous,” a graphic novel that revolves around a cataclysmic ecological event that creates massive beasts that overrun human civilization and puts mankind at the bottom of the food chain.
Askarieh’s Prime Universe Productions will produce the pilot for Machinima before turning it into a full-fledged series that can play on various digital platforms the company appears on, including the new Xbox One.