Pandemic blogging

If you're here from DIY & Dragons, welcome, and thank you!

It has been a while since I updated here, even before the pandemic hit. I've been working from home normal hours since my library closed its doors and the campus went to online teaching only. Also during that time my face-to-face gaming groups took to Zoom and Roll20, and I've joined new online games. I'm trying to sneak in more movies when I can. We finished a re-watch of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings last week. I just got the first Hobbit movie on DVD in the mail from Netflix. My re/watch of John Carpenter movies continues, the latest being PRINCE OF DARKNESS (1987).

Despite staying at home except for grocery trips, my days have been filled up. It reminds me of when retired folks say they are now busier than ever. My creativity was low before though and this medical emergency hasn't helped any, hence the lack of posts. I need to do some housekeeping here -- cleaning up old links, and maybe a new template and colors.

Put Kaijuville in your favorite feed reader and stay tuned for something to pop up. I never know when that spark will hit.

Still here, part 2

As mentioned in Part 1, I've been posting more elsewhere and I need to refresh this neglected blog.

Along with more gaming content, I want to update the Hammer horror movie list here, update links,  and provide some updates on what I've been watching.

Two months ago was Shawtember -- all Shaw Brothers kung fu movies, and following that was an October full of Hammer and Godzilla films. This month is Noirvember, a deep dive into the underbelly of crime films. Speaking of Godzilla, my look at the brand new Godzilla set from Criterion will be up soon.

At the beginning of the year I planned a John Carpenter retrospective re-watch over a few months, but I only got as far as DARK STAR. Now I'm thinking that the Christmas/New Year's break might be a good time for it.

Godzilla: The Showa Era films on Blu-ray from Criterion!

The rumored, highly-anticipated announcement finally arrived yesterday. The Criterion Collection's spine #1000 milestone has a massive subject to match: Godzilla: The Showa-Era Films, 1954–1975. The fifteen original films and extras are spread across eight Blu-rays. Nine of these movies will be on Blu-ray for the first time in Region A! The discs are packaged in a 10" x 14" hardcover book with notes on each film and new full-page illustrations from sixteen artists.

The highlight of the set might be the inclusion of the Japanese version of KING KONG VS. GODZILLA (1962) in HD. This will be the first time it has ever been on home video in America (or anywhere else outside Japan, I believe).

I'll keep my Classic Media DVDs, and Media Blasters and Kraken Releasing Blu-rays of these titles for completeness, however. The US versions of GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS (1956) and KING KONG VS. GODZILLA are here, but the only other English dubs included are for INVASION OF ASTRO-MONSTER, SON OF GODZILLA, DESTROY ALL MONSTERS, GODZILLA VS. MEGALON, GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA, AND TERROR OF MECHAGODZILA. These are the Toho International dub tracks, not the AIP or Titra dubs many of us remember from Saturday afternoon movie matinees or TV showings.

Despite not being as complete as many fans would like, this is still a monumental achievement. Every Showa-era G-film is now on Blu-ray. Seeing an entire block of Godzilla films joining a prestigious film collection like this, and with the symbolic designation of #1000, should make all kaiju fans proud.

Happy 113th Birthday, Robert E. Howard

Today marks the 113th anniversary of the birth of pulp writer Robert E. Howard. It has become a
tradition on this date for Howard fans to read a favorite story and raise a toast.

Howard wrote something for every interest: sword and sorcery, hard-boiled detectives, weird horror, historical fiction, boxing, westerns, pirates, and poetry.

Two-Gun Bob's fans who are also tabletop gamers are seeing another resurgence of products, with the Conan adventure board game (recommended), and the main rulebook and many sourcebooks for the Conan RPG out now. This month Marvel Comics released the first two issues of their new Conan comic series, with Savage Sword and other new books on the way.

One of the best brief introductions to Howard is the mostly true, somewhat fictionalized film THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD (1996), based on the writings of Novalyne Price Ellis.

For more information on his life and career, start with the following sites:

• Robert E. Howard Days
• The Robert E. Howard Foundation
• Howard Works bibliographic database
• The Cimmerian (archive; no longer updated)

I highly recommend Mark Finn's Howard biography, the Locus and World Fantasy Award-nominated Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard available as an expanded edition from the REH Foundation.

Update and what's next, Part 2

Part 1 is here.

Podcast Idea
Interviews and discussion linking two of my favorite things: games and movies.

Movie-watching Projects
This year, in an effort to keep more data and as reminders to myself, I started tracking each film I watch and creating a separate to-be-watched list. Right now the lists live in a notebook. I keep forgetting to sign up for Letterboxd, where I'll eventually post these for myself. So much good stuff is out there waiting to be seen, and I'm trying my best to carve out more viewing time to fit in as much as possible, especially over the holiday break and the rest of the winter.

With that in mind, a few themes are showing up in the watch lists:

John Carpenter -- Pure Cinema Podcast's fantastic two-part Carpenter retrospective, where they examined all the films and paired each with another film as a double-feature, gave me the idea to try a back-to-back watch of the catalog myself. It's an opportunity to revisit old favorites and discover some of his films that I've haven't seen yet.

Charles Bronson -- Over the last year or so, several Bronson movies have hit Blu-ray, either singles or in affordable multi-packs. A collector's edition Blu-ray of the action/thriller/slasher 10 TO MIDNIGHT is out early next year. All this recent attention has inspired me to take a deep-dive into his catalog of films. Bronson has always been a favorite of mine, but like Carpenter there are many that I missed. I might try watching chronologically if possible, but that might depend on availability. More likely I'll just pick and choose at random.

Spaghetti Westerns -- Like the recent Bronson releases, we've had a couple of good years for Euro-Westerns. The recent Blu-ray of Corbucci's THE GREAT SILENCE, Kino Lorber's releases of Leone films, Arrow's Ringo and Django films, along with their box set of Sartana movies, just to name a few highlights. This year I also picked up Mill Creek's 44-movie DVD box for a cheap sale price. It's an economical way to see many of the popular titles (a good hit/miss ratio) and it was the only way to get Monte Hellman's CHINA 9, LIBERTY 37 on disc. Over the holidays I'd like to dig into this set and The Complete Sartana box.

Cyberpunk movies -- Continuing my research for a cyberpunk RPG by moving down the list of cyberpunk and related near-future sci-fi movies. Next on my Netflix queue is RUNAWAY (1984) with Tom Selleck.


Thanks for reading this far. I hope that this gives some idea on what to expect here at the blog in the new year -- more gaming and movie reviews, more game setting and mechanics ideas -- and an incentive for me to keep it going.

60 years of Hammer Horror

 

I missed an important anniversary yesterday -- it was on that date, May 2nd, 60 years ago, that The Curse of Frankenstein was released by Hammer Film Productions. Although the studio had been around in one form or another since the 1930s, it was the release of Curse in 1957 that ushered in the age of Hammer Horror and made the studio's name known worldwide.

The British Film Institute posted a short photographic retrospective for the occasion, highlighting one Hammer film for each year during its prime.

50 years of Star Trek

It's 1991, and I'm sitting in the crowded Shrine Auditorium in LA. My parents scheduled a trip to visit my aunt and uncle so that we'd be there for the 25th Anniversary Creation Star Trek Celebration. The only part of the con I attended was the main event -- a showing of the teaser trailer for ST VI: The Undiscovered Country, followed by the Original Series main cast members and Gene Roddenberry on stage together. It would be the last time they would all appear together in one place.

The Undiscovered Country was billed as the farewell to the original cast, one last send-off before turning the future of the franchise over to The Next Generation. If you haven't seen it or don't remember, the teaser was a series of scenes from the Original Series as if they were projected on the surface of the Enterprise. It was a powerful and special moment seeing those scenes together in the loud appreciative audience of fellow Trekkies.

Star Trek had an enormous impact on me. I literally grew up watching these characters every week, and traveled the galaxy on adventures along with them. I watched the movies, collected starship blueprints, read articles in Starlog, and made up my own fan theories. Seeing that teaser was the highlight of the trip. I thought maybe someday it might be available on VHS to watch again. I couldn't have guessed then that "in the future" it would be available anytime on YouTube on a networked pocket computer more powerful than a Starfleet communicator.

What I find most compelling about the Original Series besides the great storytelling and action, even more so than the later series, is a vision that the future can be better. We can work together to make it so, like the crew of the Enterprise -- not in spite of our differences, but because of them.

Happy 50th to Star Trek, and to all of us who kept it alive. Live Long and Prosper.

Three film articles

For the last blog post of the year I wanted to highlight three web posts that I have read recently on the history and current state of two distinct branches of home video releases: Hammer Horror films and Shaw Brothers kung-fu films.

DVD Savant’s Guide to the New Wave of Classic Hammer Blu-rays -- Glenn Erickson, DVD Savant, hosted an guest article in October by an anonymous film industry transfer expert and Hammer fan about Region B (UK,  Europe, Australia) Blu-ray releases and how they compare to each other and US discs. Many of these titles are not yet available on Blu-ray in the US.

How The North American Release of the Shaw Brothers Movies Was Botched -- An in-depth article from January 2015 detailing the history of how the Shaw Brothers kung-fu films were released in the US, from the first theatrical release in 1973, the bootleg VHS copies in the 80s, the Celestial Pictures DVDs of recent years, to the current TV broadcasts on the El Rey Network.

I'm not sure of the identity of this anonymous author. While this person does seem to know insider information about the home video industry and appears to match what I have read elsewhere, sources are not cited, and Celestial Pictures has said the article contains "a ton of inaccuracies." I might also quibble with the author's opinion of certain films and their importance to collectors, but that could be a matter of my own incomplete knowledge.

Diggin' Kung Fu with Johnnyray Gasca -- This interview from 2013 details the other side of the previous article and as a counterpoint, being a first-person account of 42nd Street grindhouse movie theaters and the origin of SB Video, which supplied the VHS boots found in stores all over New York City and elsewhere in the 1980s, contributing to the legendary status of Shaw Brothers films in the US. A fascinating look at an otherwise hidden world.

Happy 100th Birthday, Leigh Brackett

Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Leigh Brackett, one of the great authors of fantasy and sci-fi's Golden Age. I haven't read as much of Brackett's work as I should, but I'm working to correct that. And maybe later this week I'll watch Rio Bravo as a tribute.

October means Halloween

It's already October. September just disappeared. One day you're coming back from Gen Con, the next day the leaves start turning and Fall's chill is in the air.

My attention has been on research and writing on a gaming project that I'm pretty excited about. More details soon, I just need to get it wrangled and done before the deadline at the end of this month.

Secret Santicore is on track again this year with only a slight delay. The call for volunteers will go out soon, then for requests shortly after.

Today is the US street date for Warner's first set of four Hammer Horror blu-rays, and their 30s/40s/50s monster film collection is available on the 27th. Each title is also sold separately. It's my understanding that each has received restoration and new masters, for an improvement over the DVDs. I plan to get the Hammer singles over time, with Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed on the way as I type this. Not so sure about The Mummy yet -- I might go with the UK edition.

I am utterly stunned by the number of deep catalog and cult film releases on blu-ray this year. Kino, Twilight Time, Warner Archive, Shout Factory, and others have all been busy. I've had trouble keeping track. A roundup highlighting this work would make a great end-of-the-year series of posts.

My Gen Con 2015 haul

I didn't spend as much time browsing through the Exhibit Hall this year as I would have liked, but I did get to my top priorities -- and a few unexpected pieces.

Blowing Up the Movies by Robin Laws was a stretch goal for the Feng Shui 2 Kickstarter, and although I had the ebook version I wanted the print copy on my shelf.

Sigh Co. offers a ton of Lovecraft-related shirts, and their 1930s Prairie-style Miskatonic University T-Shirt stood out.

Green Ronin had several boxes of older material for $2 each, so I grabbed the Revised Edition True20 rulebook along with the Warrior's and Adept's Handbooks. Fantasy AGE and Titansgrave had already sold out -- I flipped through their display copy of Fantasy AGE and it looks good.

Steve Dempsey generously chatted with us for a bit about Night's Black Agents and Trail of Cthulhu at the Pelgrane Press booth. Shortly after that, I picked up the Trail rulebook in anticipation of a future ongoing Gen Con campaign (along with a 13th Age Escalation Die).

The Goodman Games booth is where I spent most of my dealers' hall time this year, with two separate visits. On the first round I picked up a print copy of Black Sun Deathcrawl, along with  Sailors on the Starless Sea, Crawl #1 and Crawljammer Issue 1. The second time I got a great combo deal on the Wizard Van t-shirt and one of the last skull logo shirts, and the adventures Against the Atomic Overlord and The Rock Awakens. This gave me the chance to roll the giant d20 twice, for which I was rewarded with the 2013 Gen Con Program Book and...

my choice from a stack of foamboard-backed promotional posters, in which I found this poster of the Frozen in Time sketch cover. I had it signed by Joseph Goodman and artist Doug Kovacs, but I missed Michael Curtis (next year!). Also pictured are issues 2 and 5 of The Gongfarmer's Almanac, an in-house zine produced for Gen Con. The picture is missing the swag bag of free Dungeon Crawl Classics goodies, including a pad of blank 0-level character sheets.

Already thinking about next year!

Google Doodle for Eiji Tsuburaya’s 114th Birthday

It's fantastic to see Google honor the special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya on what would have been his 114th birthday today with a very involved Google Doodle game on their home page. Create a movie alongside the master!

Read about the making of the doodle here.

The Return of Reptilicus

Next Tuesday sees a release that I would not have expected -- Reptilicus on Blu-ray. It's a double-feature disc along with American-International Pictures' Tentacles, their star-filled 1977 copy of Jaws.

If you're unfamiliar with Reptilicus, have a look at my film and DVD review, including the condensed 10 minute version.

Happy 60th Birthday, Godzilla

60 years of the King of Monsters!

 

 

My Gen Con 2014 loot

From left to right, top to bottom:

• Gen Con Program Guide (filled with articles, maps, mini-modules, etc.) from Goodman Games
• Caroline Munro, First Lady of Fantasy and Peter Cushing, The Gentle Man of Horror and His 91 Films, both from McFarland Publishing (35% off two or more books on Sunday!)
• Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad zines #1 and 2, and Wayne Snyder's Dark Ruins art-zines #1 and 2
• From Chimera Hobby Shop's "Buy One, Get Three Free" deal: Thieves of Fortress Badabaskor, Fantastic Treasures (still in shrink-wrap), The Valdorian Age sword-and-sorcery sourcebook for Hero System, and Planet Stories' The Outlaws of Mars by Otis Kline.
• Shadowrun 5e quick-start booklet from Free RPG Day (Battletech on the flip-side)
• 13th Age module "Make Your Own Luck" from Free RPG Day (for running Timewatch for Pelgrane Press)
• Unframed: The Art of Improvisation for Game Masters by various authors for Engine Publishing

Not pictured: Pelgrane Press t-shirt, Gen Con 2014 die from Crystal Caste, and Friday's blue d6 from Scotty's Brewhouse.


Now to carve out time to read all these books...

Happy Birthday, Vincent Price and Christopher Lee

Taking a chess break on the set of The Oblong Box (1968)

Happy Birthday, Peter Cushing

Today marks the 101st anniversary of Peter Cushing's birth. In his honor, enjoy this short film of Sir Peter painting model soldiers and using H.G. Wells' Little Wars wargaming rules.

British Pathé posts 85,000 historical newsreels to YouTube

Last week, the newsreel producer and archive British Pathé announced the release of their entire collection of newsreels and historical film footage on YouTube. It's a monumental collection of historic moments, from the most important events of the century to the most absurd. You don't have to be a history buff to get some use from these clips -- there is sure to be something of interest to gamers of all types.








(full list of helicopter footage: http://britishpathe.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/the-history-of-the-helicopter-early-helicopter-footage/ )

New Godzilla Blu-rays/DVDs, part 2

Following from the previous post, here is the second part of my long-delayed look (hardly breaking news anymore) at upcoming Godzilla- and related kaiju DVDs and Blu-ray discs for the 60th anniversary.

Mill Creek has an licensing agreement with Sony Pictures to release some of Sony's films on DVD and Blu-ray. In February, Mill Creek released the Sci-Fi Creature Classics 4-movie DVD set, with The Giant Claw, two Ray Harryhausen films (It Came from Beneath the Sea and 20 Million Miles to Earth), and the original 1961 Mothra. Unfortunately, all four movies are on one DVD, with the compression issues one might expect and no extras. Each of these films can be found on other sets or individual discs with better presentations.  I haven't seen this yet, so I'll let others judge the quality. If you have only a passing interest in these movies, it might be worth it if found at a discount price.


Perhaps the biggest disc news for the year (so far) is the re-release of Sony's collection of Heisei-series Godzilla films on May 6th. These are titles for which Sony continues to retain home video rights. Eight of the films are headed to Blu-ray for the first time in a series of four double-feature discs: Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991) and Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle for Earth (1992), Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II (1993) and Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla (1994), Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995) and Godzilla vs. Megaguirus (2000), and Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. (2003) and Godzilla: Final Wars (2004). Each are remastered in high-definition, with Japanese or English soundtracks in 5.1 DTS. Original Japanese trailers are the only extras on the majority of the discs, with making-of featurettes for both Tokyo S.O.S. and Final Wars.

Media Blasters broke the news on their Facebook page that licensing with Toho has been worked out for a re-release of Destroy All Monsters (May 1st) and Godzilla vs. Megalon (July 22nd) on both DVD and Blu-ray. Both had been released previously: DAM on DVD and Blu-ray, and Megalon only on DVD.

If you have the previous release of DAM with the commentary and other special features, or one of the lucky few who found a wealth of undocumented special features on your Megalon DVD, hang on to them. Toho's licensing agreement only allows extras that they provide, so there might only be trailers on the re-issued discs.

I'll do my best to be more timely with any other forthcoming announcements...

New Godzilla, King Kong, Gamera Blu-rays and DVDs on the way

I'm a big fan of giant monsters -- if you couldn't tell already. It's very exciting to read about all the great kaiju stuff on the way this year in the wake of the US Godzilla movie out in May. I had hoped we would see a few new DVDs and Blu-rays to coincide with the film, and it seems that wish has been granted in some big ways.

A bit of this is old news from January (I've been sitting on way too long), some just leaked this past weekend.

Kraken Releasing picked up the rights to at least three of the Showa-era Godzilla films previously released on DVD by Sony. Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster/Godzilla vs. Hedorah, Godzilla on Monster Island/Godzilla vs. Gigan, and Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster/Ebirah, Horror of the Deep are all due on both DVD and Blu-ray on May 6th, just before Legendary/WB's Godzilla hits the theaters. Elements are being provided by Toho, including the original Japanese audio and Toho's International English dubs. It's unclear if these are the same transfers that were used for Toho's R2 discs. No extras planned aside from the original Japanese trailers. I had really hoped that Smog Monster's theatrical AIP English dub would be included, but that seems very unlikely. Kraken/Section23 Films are some of the same people who were involved with ADV.

Universal first released their Toho King Kong films on DVD timed with Peter Jackson's King Kong. To coincide with the new Godzilla film, King Kong vs. Godzilla and King Kong Escapes! get Blu-ray upgrades that hit the street on April 1st. Apparently new HD masters were made for the DVDs, so even if those masters are used, these films should look even better now on Blu. Just as with the previous DVDs, no extra features are planned.

Not to be forgotten, Daiei's Gamera series sees its first Blu-ray release from Mill Creek. The eight Showa Gamera films previously released by Shout! Factory are out on April 29th in two four-pack sets, and a DVD collection of the eight films plus the three Heisei Gamera films from the 90s that were released on Blu-ray last year. Mill Creek was responsible for last year's great Daimajin Blu-ray set, so I'm sure these will be worth the Blu-ray upgrade.

Next post: Mothra, Heisei Godzilla, and Megalon!