Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidora (2001) Review

Giant Monsters All-Out Attack aka Godzilla: GMK

A darker take than usual in the Godzilla series of movies that adds a spiritual aspect to Japan’s battles with the giant lizard. While highly flawed, this is my second favorite Godzilla movie and only eclipsed by the original Gojira. It is the only other Godzilla movie in my collection other than the original and I purchased it from Hong Kong it was unavailable in the US at the time . That has since changed.  It also can be watched online at Crackle.com. UPDATED: April 2012. UPDATED again September 2014 with Blu-ray details and HD screen captures.

Toho Studios gave Shusuke Kaneko, the director of the competing rebooted Gamera trilogy, a shot at reinterpreting Godzilla and this production hit Japanese theaters in late 2001.  Domestically it was the most successful of the Millennium series of Godzilla movies. Yes, there have been so many films of the big ‘G’ that they are actually broken into subsets by era. GMK is a direct sequel to the 1954 movie and ignores all the others.

The movie begins with the most boring of settings, a classroom. This one is filled with Japanese naval officers being lectured by Admiral Tachibana (Ryudo Uzaki) about the only battle fought by the Japanese Self Defense Force.  That battle was in 1954 against the giant monster Godzilla and was a great victory for the JSDF.  Huh?  Wasn’t the radioactive menace killed by the Oxygen Destroyer? Something’s fishy here.

As the lecture goes on, mention of a giant monster attacking New York and possibly being identified as Godzilla occurs. This leads to a humorous slam against the 1998 American Godzilla movie during a discussion by two junior officers. One asks if it really was Godzilla. The other replies: “Experts in America say it was, but Japanese ones disagree.”

Working on Posts and Getting Old

The last couple of weeks have been difficult, so none of the reviews I’m working on have progressed very far. Dad simply isn’t showing any signs of getting better or a willingness to work at it, so I’m trying to push him to do things. That’s been difficult, not to mention time consuming.

As I’m typing, U2’s new album, Songs of Innocence, is playing in the background. A free download until the middle of October, it is proof that the music industry is in trouble. CD sales have dwindled to nearly nothing and now digital download sales are in free fall. Streaming from Pandora and Spotify are being blamed, however the quality of product is more to blame in my opinion.

Songs of Innocence illustrates this well -- for you get what you paid for it. It isn’t even mediocre. Only The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone) is interesting at all, the rest is banal. In fact, the album sounds like a band trying to sound like U2.

Experimenting with Ads

Though I have too little traffic to ever make money off of ads run on the blog, I’m doing a test run to see if they negatively impact my organic traffic from Google. There will only be one on the sidebar since I’m looking to see if all the animal named algorithms G likes to unleash penalize the site.

Purely mad scientist stuff inspired by the fact that as time goes by there is less and less traffic from organic searches. In other words, I’ve got nothing to lose and curiosity about what destroyed my blog’s rise in late 2012 really was has taken over. Like before, I’ll be using Google’s own AdSense service, though I might toy with other services later on if nothing happens.

Guardians of the Galaxy In Theater Review

While not quite the perfect popcorn movie, Guardians is still a fun romp through Marvel Comics’ space settings. Featuring excellent special effects and an even better cast, heartfelt emotions are not neglected in favor of the many, many explosions. After all, how can one not like a movie with space pirates, deadly alien babes, rocket boots, and a talking raccoon who likes to shoot everything in sight?

Growing up in the 1970s, I was always attracted to the science fiction side of comic books, whether it be Green Lantern, Iron Man, or the lesser known Guardians of the Galaxy. So when I first heard a big budget movie was being made, I couldn’t wait. Then the other shoe dropped when the characters were announced as being from a more modern reboot.

With only one I liked, Rocket Raccoon, and two others I knew, Drax the Destroyer and Gamora, my expectations plummeted and interest waned. The original Starlord and Yondu were replaced with posers along with the addition of a scaled down ent. Yeah, that looked like a sure fire winner to me.

Once positive word of mouth reached me, I decided I’d see the flick after all. I’m glad I did.

Battle of Britain (1969) Review

An all-star cast fills in-between beautiful scenes of aerial combat in this recounting of the famous World War II battle over Great Britain’s skies. While the fictional characters are nothing to write home about, the real drama comes from the unfolding nightmare that really did happen. Glorious cinematography will make you want to see it on a big screen – the bigger the better. UPDATED August 2014 for a full rewrite, Blu-ray details, and HD screen captures.

From August 12 to October of 1940, a fierce bombing campaign by Germany took place in preparation for an eventual amphibious invasion of Great Britain. Badly outnumbered and riven by arguments over strategy, the British very nearly lost this critical battle during the early stages of the Second World War. Any attempt to portray this complicated history was bound to be flawed in one way or another, so it was perhaps too big a story to tell in one movie.

Three main focuses are interweaved throughout: the factual RAF Fighter Command struggle to form an effective strategy (based on book The Narrow Margin), depictions of the air war itself, and drama around fictional fighter pilots.  Most of the focus is on the second and features the best aerial footage I’ve seen in any movie not named The Blue Max. With the noted James Bond film series director Guy Hamilton helming the movie, great action was guaranteed.

Laboring Along

It’s been a week or so since I last posted, nearly two weeks now that I look at it. Things have been tiring with not as much drama as July. Currently suffering from a cold or the ilk, so the post will not be terribly lengthy.

Dad has been losing weight rather than gaining or stabilizing, which led to two appointments this week. One was an expected follow up to see how his gastric decompression tube was doing – no problems there. The second was with a dietician to review the weight loss issue.

Waiting for…

At the moment, my father is not in the hospital and not looking like he has to head for the emergency room soon. I’m not sure how to handle that after the events of last month. Currently, all we can do is try to get him stronger and see what happens.

Wednesday we had a round of appointments to go to as follow ups to the cancer treatment and the surgery. The first looks good so far and it will be several months until his next round of testing. It was the meeting with the surgeon that was most interesting.