It's finally here!
It was just a few months back that news of a Godzilla Criterion DVD/Blu-Ray
was being developed.
There was word that a master copy (the so-called "Rosetta Stone") was found for this project, and that a bunch of extras were being developed along the way.
Now official word has come regrading all of these extra goodies!
Here's all of the info for your reading pleasure:
New high-definition digital restoration (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
• Audio commentary by David Kalat (A Critical History and Filmography of Toho’s Godzilla Series)
• New high-definition digital restoration of Godzilla, King of the Monsters, Terry Morse’s 1956 reworking of the original, starring Raymond Burr
• Audio commentary for Godzilla, King of the Monsters by Kalat
• New interviews with actor Akira Takarada (Hideto Ogata), Godzilla performer Haruo Nakajima, and effects technicians Yoshio Irie and Eizo Kaimai
• Interview with legendary Godzilla score composer Akira Ifukube
• Featurette detailing Godzilla’s photographic effects
• New interview with Japanese-film critic Tadao Sato
• The Unluckiest Dragon, an illustrated audio essay featuring historian Greg Pflugfelder describing the tragic fate of the fishing vessel Daigo fukuryu maru, a real-life event that inspired Godzilla
• Theatrical trailers
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• A booklet featuring an essay by critic J. Hoberman
And as you can see in the above picture, that will be the official front cover for the release.
While I'm extra giddy about all of the great extras, it's the cover that somehow throws me off.
Why is it only showcasing Godzilla's back?
It seems really weird compared to every single Godzilla movie cover before, and how they've always showcased Godzilla in his full glory (with the exception of the teaser posters for the Godzilla 1998 film).
While I realize most people will immediately recognize his body and shape, thus negating any need to show his face, does this have something to do with Toho?
Toho is notorious for milking anything in terms of extra licensing fees. So could they have wanted more money in order to officially display Godzilla on the front cover?
Such turnaround tactics as this cover are usually done by publishers in order to avoid further licensing/royalty fees (see any book cover having to do with sci-fi properties for further proof), so I wonder if Criterion is doing this as well.
In any case the new Godzilla: The Criterion Collection is coming to DVD/Blu-Ray on January 24, 2012, so the wait is almost over.
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