Godzilla Heisei and Millenium Era Double Features DVDs to be Released

Original theatrical poster for GODZILLA VS. KING GHIDORAH (1991)

August Ragone, author of the must-have book "Eiji Tsuburaya: Master of Monsters" (available on Amazon) has some great news. On his blog, "The Good, The Bad, and Godzilla," Mr. Ragone confirmed the release of double feature DVD sets coming May 6th 2014.

The titles have already been listed on Amazon.com by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Below is the list of the four double features with links to Amazon.

GODZILLA VS. KING GHIDORAH (1991) & GODZILLA VS. MOTHRA (1992)

GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA II (1993) & GODZILLA VS. SPACE GODZILLA (1994)

GODZILLA VS. DESTOROYAH (1995) & GODZILLA VS. MEGAGUIRUS (2000)

GODZILLA FINAL WARS (2004) & GODZILLA: TOKYO SOS (2003)

August Ragone notes, "Conspicuously missing are GODZILLA 2000 (1999), GIANT MONSTERS ALL-OUT ATTACK (2001), and GODZILLA AGAINST MECHAGODZILLA (2002). It's unknown at this time if these will follow — I'll keep checking on sources..."

Thanks for the heads-up August Ragone!

MORE ABOUT AUGUST RAGONE

August Ragone was born in San Francisco and is the Rondo Award winning author of the highly regarded "Eiji Tsuburaya: Master of Monsters" (Chronicle Books, 2007). August has commented on Japanese film and popular culture on radio, television, in print, online, and at events for more than three decades. While still a teen, he served as "Japanese Film" & "Godzilla Expert" for legendary horror host Bob Wilkins at KTVU TV-2.

From his experience living in Tokyo and meeting Japanese filmmakers, August has written liner notes for numerous DVD releases, edited and authored over 100 subtitle scripts (so far), and has also contributed to periodicals such as the Japanese Fantasy Film Journal, Filmfax, Video Watchdog, Asian Cult Cinema, Henshin! Online, Oriental Cinema, G-Fan, Super7, Otaku USA, Monster Attack Team, and Famous Monsters of Filmland.

The Baghdad-by-the-Bay native has also been an event promoter, starting with the "Japanese Fantasy Film Faire" (1979), the first Anime event held outside of Japan, as well as producing live music and multi-media events including The Sleazefest, Incredibly Strange Wrestling, The Greaseball, Godzillafest, and Shock It To Me!.

Godzilla 2014 Confirmed to be the Biggest Yet

Godzilla 2014 Director, Gareth Edwards confirms 350ft Godzilla

Yesterday we revealed that Gareth Edwards has confirmed that Godzilla will be 350ft tall in the new Legendary release of Godzilla 2014. Read the quote from "Empire Magazine" below.

He also revealed that it's the biggest Godzilla to hit the big screen. "Technically he's 350ft in our film."

He also noted that they experimented with different sizes, making him small, huge, and dinosaur size. But then they realized that 350ft made him the biggest of all the Godzillas "So we said, 'let's do that.'"

Full version of the Godzilla Size Chart

The larger Godzilla actually follows a 30-year trend among the 27+ Godzilla movies. In fact, "Wired Magazine" actually figured out what the mathematical formula is for this trend.

Graph Plotting Godzilla's Height Over Time

Read an excerpt from this "Wired Magazine" article:

These are mostly guesses for the years.  I could have looked up the actual movie dates, but I’m too lazy.  So, this is just an approximation of Godzilla’s size not the size of the actual and REAL Godzilla.

Actually, I plotted the natural log of height as a function of time. Why? Well, this is a more generic plot that I can then add a linear function to. Otherwise, I am assuming that Godzilla grows linearly with time. Why would anyone think that? And yes, I cheated. You can’t take the natural log of “50 meters”. Really this is the natural log of the height per meter (so that the stuff inside has no units).

Now, when I fit a linear function to this data I get the following (where a and b are the fit parameters from plotly).

That’s it. I have a, I have b so I get use this function to get the Godzilla height for any year. Now, let’s just plug in the year of t = 2025 (yes, t is in years). This gives:

That is 121.6 meters but I left off the meters because of my mathematical cheat above. Yes, that’s not so big. The reason is that although the 2014 Godzilla is 140 meters, this is bigger than the other trend. Really, it’s too big. A better value would be around 100 meters (this is based on the fit that includes the 140 m height though).

SRC: Wired Magazine, "Godzilla Gets Bigger Each Year"

Total Film Sees Extended Footage of Godzilla 2014 and Shares Spoilers

What kind of horror does a tsunami caused by Godzilla make? 

On the morning of Friday February 28th, Total Film was among a select few that were able to see 20 minutes of extended footage. They share a few spoilers and finished with a few quotes from godzilla 2014 director Gareth Edwards. Read the Gareth part followed by one of the more a harmless spoilers.

Thematically, he wanted to explore: "Man vs nature, the fact that if you mess with nature you're going  to lose."

In the film, "Man is no longer the alpha predator on this planet."

But nature wasn't the only influence on the flick. Edwards said that anime and manga played a part during the storyboard process: "When we got stuck, we'd say 'What would Akira do?'". Which, obviously, was incredibly exciting to hear.

He also revealed that it's the biggest Godzilla to hit the big screen. "Technically he's 350ft in our film."

He also noted that they experimented with different sizes, making him small, huge, and dinosaur size. But then they realized that 350ft made him the biggest of all the Godzillas "So we said, 'let's do that.'"

But there were other reasons: "We wanted him to be big, but also we wanted to be able to hide him, because that's more fun."

You will have to go to TOTAL FILM and read "Godzilla (2014) Extended Footage Reaction" in order to read all the spoilers. We share one of the more harmless spoilers below. It describes a graphic tsunami scene and a description of Godzilla. No plot spoilers here though.

!!! SPOILER !!!
A huge tidal wave starts to build, and we follow a crowd as they flee through the city. This sequence is pretty powerful - almost resonant of news footage, reminding us all of the natural disasters we've been forced to to witness in the real world in recent years.

In one incredible shot, we see bodies caught in the water pass by a glass door, shot from the viewpoint of people safe inside. It's sickening to see the bodies tumble past, caught in the current.

Then we cut to the big guy. Godzilla himself. We see his hands - they look fantastic, ridiculously canon - then his broad midriff, then onto his huge tail as it sweeps through the city. Soldiers shoot, but to no avail.
!! END SPOILER