Ishiro Honda Bio By Peter H. Brothers In Negotiations

[Flame of Udin]

[armandv]

[ebirahsmeg1]

[king_ghidorah]

[ebirahsmeg1]

Um...any updates on Ed G's/Steve Ryfle's Honda book? What's the timeline for it's release? Now this is the REAL Honda book I am looking forward...

[edgodzi]

[EDIT] I am withdrawing this post. While I just thought to answer someone's question, I realize now that it takes away from what this thread is about, which is Peter's book. I should have just PM'd my answer. My apologies.

Ed G.

[ebirahsmeg1]

[Tyler E. Martin]

[mr.negativity]

[ebirahsmeg1]

Review:

http://www.dvdtalk.com/features/book_talk_twili.html

This just re-enforces my decision to take a pass on this one...

[MouthForWar]

[william newell]

Well, I just finished this book myself, and while not being a bad read overall, I do have 2 complaints with the book. The first(and to me, the most annoying)is the over use of adjectives in describing each films soundtrack. "Shimmering strings", "trembling percussion", and "fluttering violins" are but 3 examples of this. Really, it got to the point after about 4 films where whenever the subject of the soundtrack came up, I would skip ahead to where the discussion of the movie itself re-commenced. The other complaint was with the structure of the book itself which first gives an overview of Honda's life and career then jumps back to cover each film individually. This gave me the feeling of reading the same info twice. Personaly, I would have preferred the book to be in a straight chronological order with no backtracking. And I do agree, more discussion of Honda's non-genre work would have been appreciated. These complaints aside, the book does contain some nuggets of information that I was not aware of, most significantly was Honda's involvement with Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster. I had no idea he had anything to do with this film.
So, to sum up, not a bad book, but it could have been better. I would still recommend it, even with it's flaws

[ebirahsmeg1]

[MouthForWar]

[MouthForWar]

I'm learning some new things from this book, but the writing and editing are getting more irritating every time I pick it up. There are really a lot of typos (most notable and hilarious one was "eye pooping" instead of "eye popping). He also calls Honda's films "documentaries" or "semi-documentaries" all the time, which I don't understand at all.

Another thing is he doesn't use quotes in some places where it would make the info way more interesting. He talks about Honda's alleged involvement in GvsHedorah, but doesn't provide any quotes. He claims "Gorath" was Honda's favorite of his films, but every interview I've seen, Honda has said Gojira and Matango were his favorites and Brothers doesn't give us a quote regarding "Gorath." He says what Honda thought about GvsBiollante and GvsKing Ghidorah, but he doesn't give us SHOW us what he said. Its very frustrating, as this is all new information that hasn't been printed in English and having the direct source would be nice.

I've also spotted a couple factual errors (for example, he says Akira Kubo "rips out his sister's earrings" in DAM- it was Kubo's girlfriend). And he has nary a complaint about the effects or the use of stock footage in Godzilla's Revenge, but he says Tsuburaya's work on Dogora is nothing special (I personally think Doroga and the method of how Tsuburaya created him by putting the puppet in an underwater fish tank are fascinating).

And just when I thought Brothers was doing a decent job of keeping his prudish values out of the book, they creep up in full force when he complains about how "violent" Dr. Huu's death in King Kong Escapes is. He calls it "gory" and "unnecesarily violent"- this is literally only a 2 second shot of Huu coughing up blood. THAT'S gory?! He acts like it ruins the whole film. AAAH! Then again, this is also the guy that said Final Wars was an "exercise in gore" or whatever crazy talk.

Anyway, the adventure continues. I'm enthusiastic about learning more about my favorite director, but sine info in English is so scarce, I have to take the good with the bad, I guess. The info is valuable, but it reads like something a high schooler wrote. One thing is for sure, words can't describe how badly I want Ed and Steve's book to come out.

[Xenorama]

[MouthForWar]

[Xenorama]

[MouthForWar]

[kiryugoji04]

[Hybrid Gojira]

[MouthForWar]

[Hybrid Gojira]

[armandv]

[Hybrid Gojira]