All Things Godzilla (1 Viewer)

[Jeffrey Nelson]

It seems a bit silly to sell the film as INVASION OF ASTRO MONSTER, when neither of the two versions of the film contained in the DVD bear that onscreen title. Nobody in this country knows the film by that title. They should have put MONSTER ZERO on the box. A no-brainer.

 

[Jim_K]

Well Amazon has these up for pre-order. Hope these don't get pulled like GRA and GvM was.

Now if somebody would release subbed OSL, anamorphic OAR, uncut versions of Rodan, Mothra, War of the Gargantuas, King Kong vs. Godzilla and Destroy All Monsters I'll be one verrrrrry happy Kaiju camper.

 

[Joe Fisher]

Jim, I'm not sure but I believe that Classic media will be doing Mothra after they release the last 2 Godzilla films Terror of Mechagodzilla & Godzilla's Revenge.

And I think that Media Blasters has the rights to War of the Gargantuas.

Both have been talked about for either late this year or early in 2008.

I'll have to dig a bit into the Monster Zero archives.

 

[Ed_City]

Sorry if this has already been asked, but what about GODZILLA VS. MEGALON? Will this ever get a proper release?

 

[Jeff Robertson]

Speaking of sources of info, does anyone know what's going on with http://www.gojistomp.org and http://www.tokyomonsters.com ?

They both appear to be down.

 

[Joe Fisher]

Not sure about gojistomp, but tokyomonsters closed shop at the beginning of the year. :frowning: :frowning:

 

[AndrewR]

Tokyo Monsters discussion board is still open tho.

Just not as active.

 

[Jeffrey Nelson]

Sony/Columbia owns MOTHRA, so I doubt Classic Media will be releasing it. But I think they, and not Media Blasters, will be releasing WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS, as well as RODAN, both titles supposedly containing both versions of the films.

 

[Jim_K]

I believe for many years Columbia had the U.S. rights to the Americanized versions of many of Toho's Kaiju films, including the original Godzilla and Gvs Mothra which were released by Classic Media. Licenses change hands so anything is possible.

Also, while the americanized versions of these films where licensed out for many years, no U.S. company had the rights to any of the uncut original versions until recently when Toho loosened their grip, hence these Classic Media titles and the Media Blasters releases of the past couple of years (Atragon, Dagora, Mysterians).

 

[Joe Fisher]

You are correct about WOTG & Rodan. I dug through the Monster Zero forums and found the info. News on those 2 will come once CM is done with the Godzilla films at the end of this year.

Didn't see any news on Mothra though. I doubt that Sony/Columbia owns the rights to the original Mothra. They do own the rights to the current films such as Rebirth of Mothra 1 & 2, but only the Dubbed Americanized versions. But as Jim said, rights can change and lets hope that either Media Blasters or Classic Media can get the rights to Mothra. They both have done a fine job with there Toho releases so far.

Media Blasters will be doing [/b]Frankenstein Conquers The World[/b]. That is due for release on 06/26/2007 according to news on scifijapan.com. Here is the link.

http://www.scifijapan.com/articles/2...rld-this-june/

 

[Joseph Goodman]

They absolutely own the rights to the original "Mothra". Columbia actually put up part of the money for the film's original production. Recently, their reperatory division even made a new print of the Japanese version.

 

[Joe Fisher]

Thanks for the update Joseph. Now all we need is for them to release it to DVD.

 

[Richard_Gregory]

Yes, it already has. Just buy the excellent r4 edition from Madman. Anamorphic OAR with original Japanese track.

The r1 editions are uniformly awful, and out of print - thankfuly!

 

[Richard_Gregory]

The Madman r4 edition of Destroy All Monsters is good, much better than ADV's mediocre effort.

 

[Jeff Robertson]

Bummer.

 

[Jeff Robertson]

I'm unable to compare Godzilla vs Monster Zero since I no longer own the US release, but there sure were some differences between the two Ghidorahs. Not only are some scenes removed entirely in the US release, but the order in which scenes appeared is different as well. Weird. Seems like a lame attempt at making it more palatable for American audiences of the time.

The Japanese version of Ghidorah is much preferred in this case. At the same time, I also want to understand the dialog so I'm glad Classic Media is providing the English subs.

 

[Richard_Gregory]

This over on DVDTalk, originally in Sci-Fi Japan

"* Packaging will be identical to Classic Media’s recent DVDs of GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN and MOTHRA VS GODZILLA.

* Previous Classic Media DVD releases were distributed by Sony BMG, a division of Sony Entertainment that is separate from Sony Pictures. Sony BMG has shut down the DVD division to focus on its core music business, so the upcoming Godzilla DVDs will be distributed by Genius Products.

* In addition to the two Godzilla films, Classic Media will release GODZILLA:THE ORIGINAL ANIMATED SERIES VOLUME 3 this summer. The DVD will include Episodes 9-12 of the 1978 Hanna-Barbera Saturday morning cartoon show."

The last is very good news, I thought that maybe sales had been poor and the serie shad been dropped, I guess it was the Sony thing that screwed it all up!

 

[Jeff Robertson]

My local Best Buy broke the April 3rd street a bit for GRA & MvG. I picked them up yesterday. The transfer for the Japanese version of MvG looks nearly identical to the actual Japanese import. However, I think Classic Media goofed somewhat in the conversion to DVD. I'm seeing some faint interlacing actifacts showing up here and there. The effect is very subtle on my home theater setup but more pronounced on my PC's PowerDVD player. It also doesn't help that the two versions of the movie are crammed onto one dual-layer disc. This is a practice I thought was abandoned years ago. Remember full-frame and widescreen on the same disc (ala early New Line)? As a result, the bit rate is half what it would normally be and the overall quality suffers. Still watchable, mind you, but not as good as the import.

I know the two-movies-on-one-disc was done to reduce cost, but I would have gladly paid more to a get higher bit rate.

 

[Richard_Gregory]

Me too, I hadn't realised they'd done that. Seems a bit counter-productive if you're going to all the trouble of a specialist title like this and then cram it all onto one disc.

As a niche title, probably most of the sales would be made anyway even if the price was higher. You're appealing to collectors, and we like our quality.

Particularly given the price-point of the Columbia/Sony releases, which are all more expensive than these (except of the double features).

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Been looking for War of the Gargantuas for years.

It is my favorite of all the Japanese monster films. All I
remember is the green and brown Gargantuas fighting each
other. One was friendly -- one was not.

Glad to hear that we may finally be seeing this on DVD soon.