Multiplex - a comic strip about life at the movies
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Archive for September, 2010

 

Review: Godzilla (1954) and Stray Dog

Godzilla

Directed by Ishiro Honda.
Starring Akira Takarada, Momoko Kochi, Akihiko Hirata, Takashi Shimura and Fuyuki Murakami.

Stray Dog

Directed by Akira Kurosawa.
Starring Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Awaji and Eiko Miyoshi.

Although Godzilla creator and producer Tomoyuki Tanaka lifted monster-sized elements from King Kong (1933) and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), an early film featuring effects by Ray Harryhausen (Clash of the Titans), the immediate inspiration for Godzilla was a 1954 incident in which a fishing boat called the Lucky Dragon was scorched by an American H-bomb test, seriously burning several of the crew and causing the eventual death of its radio operator from radiation poisoning — clearly the reference point for the opening scene of the original 1954 Japanese Godzilla in which Godzilla’s attack on a small boat appears only as a flash of light.

Science fiction writer Shigeru Kayama, along with screenwriters Ishiro Honda (who also directed) and Takeo Murata, extended the metaphor a bit by paralleling many scenes of death and destruction in Godzilla’s wake with the aftermath of the H-bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, using images of a flattened, burning town and hospitals overflowing with people. These images vividly recall what little documentary footage I’ve seen of the Hiroshima aftermath (to be specifc, the stock footage used in the first 20 minutes of Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour), but pretending that the film’s deeper meaning is much more complicated than “H-bomb testing is bad” is giving the filmmakers a little more credit than they deserve.

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Win one of five free copies of Multiplex: Enjoy Your Show at Goodreads!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Multiplex: Enjoy Your Show (Book 1) by Gordon McAlpin

Multiplex

by Gordon McAlpin

Giveaway ends September 22, 2010.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

The giveaway is valid for Goodreads users in the US and Canada only (sorry). See the Goodreads giveaway page for more details.

Also, if you’re in the Chicago area, please be sure to come to the Multiplex: Enjoy Your Show book release party at Third Coast Comics on September 18th, from 4pm – 7pm. I’ll be selling and signing copies of the book (a full four days before they’re officially on sale!), and fun will be had by all.

Afterwards, at 7pm, there will be the monthly meeting of the Chicago Comic Book Meetup group, and I’ll be a special guest, so you can hear me ramble incoherently about my comics.

P.S. Thursday’s strip is running late, but rather than crap something out at the last minute, I’d rather just take my time and do it right. Sorry!

Review: Yasujiro Ozu, Part Two (The Story of Floating Weeds and Early Summer)

Yasujiro Ozu’s oeuvre continues to grace screens at the Gene Siskel Film Center for the next few weeks. Among the upcoming films are The Story of Floating Weeds and Early Summer, which are also available in terrific Criterion Collection releases. Other upcoming highlights include Late Autumn (starring Ozu mainstay Setsuko Hara) and An Autumn Afternoon, Ozu’s final film.

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