Monster Zero x SciFi Japan - Archive Only

^Very cool!

If the humidity in Atlanta is anything like it has been here in northern Alabama then I'm surprised you two didn't keel over dead by the end of it!

It was definitely an ordeal that required bottled water. We got there around 2:30 to wait in line, as the gates to the field were supposed to open at 4 but they didn't open until about 4:30. Once we reached our spot on the field it was another hour and a half of waiting before Volbeat started playing. Metallica didn't take the stage until after 8:30 and the sun didn't really set until their fourth or fifth song.

There was also a guy called Mix Master Mike who came out between the bands' sets to spin samples of classic rock/metal songs in the style of a club DJ with record skips, dropped beats and such. That was worse than any heat or humidity.


EDIT:
Metallica just posted a video of Battery from the show!

His intentions were good but classic rock and metal songs just don't lend themselves well to the disc-jockeying format. It works for pop and hip-hop music because electronic beats and mixed samples are intrinsic to those genres, but he was mixing portions of songs from the likes of AC/DC and Black Sabbath. Hearing the first verse of War Pigs with a hip-hop-style beat overlaid just didn't sound right.

I saw Metallica twice on this tour: Houston and Dallas and they wrre awesome both times, with Dallas being the highlight show as I got to experience some songs I'd only previously heard once (Memory Remains, which is a KILLER song live being the standout, and better sound than Houston. It was my twelfth and thirteenth times seeing them so I don't get to experience many new to me songs these days but they're always great. Also, seeing Battery in Houston was a really fun and unique experience for me now because for some reason, it's legitimately my kids' favorite song...in the world...they're 2 and 3. So while everyone was headbanging, I was laughing and thinking of my little ones, shouting "BATTERY!" Whenever they hear the song

My employer made a mistake in my favor, resulting in 4 paid days off! And not only do I get valuable extra time at home with the wife and kids, I'm also gonna get to go see Dunkirk in IMAX laser in Austin! So pumped!

^Congrats. Nothing's sweeter then those little, unsuspected victories!

As for me: I'm back from the beach with three days still before work. There's a bunch of movies out I wanna see...

Its going to probably brak my wallet, but after a somewhat "ho-hum" presentation by Hasbro at SDCC of the next line of Transformers toys, news leaked on Facebook that basically ruined Hasbro's convention reveales in September, but put a lot of smiles on collectors faces:



http://news.tfw2005.com/2017/07/24/powe ... eup-345389

After pretty much selling my entire collection in 2007, Combiner Wars in 2015 was what brought me back to collecting, Titans Return has kept the momentum, and it seems that Power of the Primes has promised to finish what the previous two lines did not get to do, in 2018. I am definitely pumped for these!

Finally figured out how to acquire the fan made HD reconstructions of the U.S. cuts of Godzilla 1985 and Ghidrah the Three Headed Monster (as well as the other Godzilla reconstructions this person has made)!

As happy as I am to have the official Return of Godzilla blu ray, and the classic media GtTHM dvd* and Japanese blu ray, my collection will feel so much more complete having the original U.S. theatrical versions alongside them! And all in HD!




*for those who don't know, the "US version" on the classic media dvd was made by re-editing the Japanese dvd master and in so doing, they made a few mistakes so that it doesn't quite recreate the actual US version of the film 100% accurately.

On a business trip today, I went for a walk outside my hotel and stumbled on a local comic shop. I found a back issue of g-fan from 2015. I know the magazine isn't what it used to be (and at $7, it was probably over priced) but finding it on the magazine rack gave me nostalgia goggles for the very few times (as in, I can count on one hand) that I actually found a magazine featuring Godzilla in any form as a kid.

Also, it has what looks like a pretty nice retrospective about Godzilla vs Gigan. Given that that was Nakajima's final appearance as Godzilla and his recent passing, it just felt wrong not to splurge and take the issue home.

To top it off, I finally finished getting the HD fan restorations of Godzilla 1985 and Ghidrah the Three Headed Monster (original U.S. dubs of each film) and loaded them up to my iPad (which is the only way I'll be able to watch them until I can find time to visit my buddy who has a BD burner). I just skimmed through each film to get a quick look at how they came out and they are just fantastic. Can't wait to make discs and packaging and put these on my shelf as companions next to my official Kraken and Toho blu rays of the Japanese versions.

I'm not aware of a different version of Ghidrah, the Three Headed Monster...

I actually don't know what exactly is wrong ( I suppose I could find out, or maybe someone else here knows). But I do know that on the classic media dvd did not use an original source for the American version of the film. Instead they took the Japanese DVD video master and re-edited it to recreate the American version and then overlaid the American audio. But in doing so they apparently made some mistakes both in the film editing and in the audio synch.

Then there's the issue of the actual video quality of the classic media release, which is very poorly interlaced. For some reason it seems much worse on the recreated American cut than the Japanese cut.

This fan recreation uses the Japanese blu ray (which I own - u should always own the source materials for fan projects if they are commercially available) as the primary video source. It also uses older, more accurate audio sources and matches the editing exactly to old VHS copies which were telecined directly from actual film prints of the American version. Finally, he meticulously recreated the original U.S. title cards and other credits.

Basically it's just a far better looking, an more accurate reconstruction than what classic media offered.



EDIT:

Here is the exact description of the project from the creator (some of my details above were slightly inaccurate) -


-The Toho transfer had its contrast and saturation boosted slightly in order to alleviate its rather flat appearance.

-While a “first draft” of the project was prepared using the Classic Media DVD recreation of the US version as a reference, it was revised using a VHS rip, meaning that the numerous errors in the CM version are corrected here.

-A sound synchronization error, present in all available versions of the dub, that affected much of the scene of Naoko and Shindo at home and extended into the What Are They Doing Now?/”Call Happiness” scene, has been corrected.

-The audio for the US version was largely sourced from a PAL DVD released by an Australian company called Siren. This DVD featured an original scan of a 16mm TV print, meaning it had higher sound quality than any other available source, all other releases being made from an old videotape master. However, the Siren version is full of splices and gaps in the audio as well as some audio distortion, so many small portions of the soundtrack had to be carefully patched using the audio from the Classic Media DVD.

-The Walter Reade Organization logo was reinstated before the title card. The version used here was in effect a collaborative effort: The icon and text were recreated by Video Collector, and placed/scaled using an actual image of the logo. The recreation made by goji1986 from Toho Kingdom for his Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster reconstruction was used as a reference for the starfield; I made the background.

-The original “The End” title card was recreated using the Siren DVD as a reference; its “stretched” appearance (similar to the opening credits) is apparently how it really would have appeared in a scope print.

I had some delicious phở for dinner and then made two (yes, two) cherry pies from scratch (I had more cherries than I thought - hence two pies).

Basically, an attempt to cheer myself up after a day of following all that damned nazi garbage.

^I'm slowly making my way through the 'wilderness episodes' of Twin Peak season two, where it goes off the rails and before it starts getting back on the rails before the finale.

^I've been stuck on episode 14 of the second season for like three days! I keep watching a few minutes of it an moving on to something else.

Funny thing is I watched a new report from 1990 basically detailing the pop culture meltdown at the end of the first season, which didn't reveal the killer and ended on a cliffhanger. People apparently flipped out, got real angry. Nowadays we're used to serialized storytelling and know that if a show has a central mystery it might not be solved until several years in, but back then they were totally unaccustomed to that and were pissed they invested all that time (a whopping 7 weeks) and still didn't know the solution. Here's the video:



Solving Laura Palmer's murder really threw the show into disarray. Without the central mystery to guide the plot all the subplots lose their anchors and go wonky. Still, there's new stuff to like after that point, like more of Lynch himself playing Gordon Cole and I like David Duchovny as the trans FBI agent (besides a few cheap jokes, surprisingly progressive for 1990). I just started fast forwarding through James' subplot. It sucks, because Donna and James were so great in first season and they go to crap in second season. Man, that first season and the first 9 episodes of the second sure are awesome, though.

James is the absolute worst. Once he leaves Twin Peaks, that is.

^James was so great in the first couple of episodes!

... but I gotta say: I moved over to Team Bobby. I thought he was a total prick in the first few episodes, but he won me over as time went on. Probably his entirely accurate telling everyone off at Laura's funeral is what did it.

Anyway, what made my day was identifying the song that's been stuck in my head:

Had a day to waste in San Francisco. So I went downtown and visited Japantown. It was nice. I found a pretty awesome hobbby store full of import model kits, toys, and collectibles. They had enough Godzilla merch scattered around to keep me hunting until I had scoured the whole store. I got to see the Marmit Monster Heaven Destroyer figure in person. That is one heck of a beastly figure!

Then I found the Kinokuniya bookstore. I've always wanted to visit one so that was neat. They even had a small section devoted to Godzilla and Ultraman. They had some of the latest books including that book of vintage Ultraman concept art. If I were a bigger Ultra fan I probably would've bought that one, but I just don't enjoy Ultraman enough to start collecting stuff from it.

I did find one book I really wanted. The Godzilla Graphic Collection.


Its a nice hardcover that has multiple pages of great pictures of every single version of Godzilla to appear in film to date. It had some really rare stuff too, like multiple pictures of the first prototype G-suit from Biollante and several pictures of the '54 style half-suit made for Tokyo SOS. It also had several new (to me) pictures of the two different suits built for the original film. A couple of these made me have second thoughts about our theory that the second suit (the one actually used for filming) only had three toes. But I'd have to get a better look at the pictures and have somebody maybe translate the captions to be sure.

Sadly, I made the tough choice to leave this book on the shelf too. They had it marked $63 when the MSRP printed on the slip cover was clearly about $40. Amazon Japan has it for about $43 plus whatever shipping costs. But it's definitely going on my wishlist to keep an eye on for the future. It was a really nice book.

This is going to be glorious.



"What a story, Mark."

^Man, have those crazy Francos really pulled it off? I might have to read the book first.