dimfuture.net

Review

Wait, guys! I think I see a quarter down there!

It is tempting to think of Ghidorah as the point at which the Godzilla series got weird. Certainly, this film is an archetype of the kind of gonzo fun for which the Showa films are rightly known. But it’s hardly the beginning of the bizarre; King Kong vs. Godzilla was just as silly, albeit for satirical reasons (in part). And though Mothra vs. Godzilla was more straight-faced, it is important to remember that it was a movie about a giant, radiation-spewing sea dinosaur and his fight with two gargantuan caterpillars. Godzilla movies exist along a continuum of weird. And Ghidorah does weird right.

(continue reading…)

From Dark Horizons:

Michael Cerenzie and Christine Peters’ CP Prods. have optioned Midway Games 1982 arcade game “Joust” reports Variety.

Though “Joust” has had several sequels, the original game, in which one or two players control a knight on a flying ostrich who combats flying buzzards, is best known.

The company is also developing Midway Games 2005 release “Area 51″ as a feature film.

I would love to wax sarcastic about this, but I simply don’t have the words.

Sci Fi Wire reports that yet another Dune movie may be in the works, following in the footsteps of the 1984 David Lynch film and the 2000 Sci-Fi Channel miniseries.

C.H.U.D. reported a rumor that a new movie version of Frank Herbert’s classic SF novel Dune may be in the works. The site cites Byron Merritt, who runs the official Dune novel forums and is a member of the Herbert family.

“We’re getting VERY close to a deal. Heard that news today,” Merritt reportedly posted on Aug. 24. “Although only rumor, I’ve heard that ‘someone’ at the studio wants Dune reallllly bad and has been a fan of the novel for years. They’re not saying who this is (and it might just be hype), but I’m holding out hope that whoever this might be is a big enough fan that he/she will do the book justice. Supposedly it’s some director.”

Well, the number of extraneous l‘s in reallllly certainly has me convinced it’s a lock! Granted, it’s too early to tell whether anything will come of this, but with hoary sci-fi franchises being “rebooted” left and right, it’s probably a safe bet.

Personally, I’m of two minds about this: On one hand, Dune has never really been done well — I have a fondness for the loony verve of Lynch’s version, and the Sci-Fi Channel version, while barely passable, tried too hard to be cute, with its rapping Baron Harkonnen and unnecessarily oblique takes on pronunciation. Will a third take cure what ailed the first two attempts at bringing Dune to the big screen? Well, probably not. But one can hope.

Synopsis

Godzilla decided to get fancy with his breath ray, forming it into Japanese characters, but Rodan was unimpressed!

The film begins as these things usually do: with the introduction of the main characters. We start with Naoko (Yuriko Hoshi), a reporter putting together a series called “Mystery in the 20th Century.” She is interviewing some UFO enthusiasts with telescopes, who blame her nonbeliever brainwaves for the fact that the UFOs aren’t showing up right then. (A remarkably accurate portrayal of the thought processes of the more New Age UFOlogists, by the way.) Meanwhile, her brother, Shindo (Yosuke Natsuki), is assigned by his boss, Okita (Akihiko Hirata), to guard Princess Salno (Akihiko Hirata) of Selgina. The Princess is to be arriving incognito, as there is fear of a plot to assassinate her. We then see her on her plane; she sees a flashing light out of the window, and hears a voice suggesting that she “Stand up. You must stand up. You must leave here. Run. Run.” Apparently not one to argue, she steps calmly out of her airborne plane, with that stiff sort of walk that says “I’m hypnotized.” The plane then blows right on up. Finally, we meet Dr. Murai (Hiroshi Koizumi), a geologist, who is studying a strange, almost egg-shaped meteorite with odd magnetic qualities; it has recently come down in the mountainous Kurobe region.

(continue reading…)