"Pacific Rim" Resurrects The Kaiju Film

Above, a movie theater with the King of the Monsters on the marquee in 1956.

JapanToday picked up an AP article, "Pacific Rim Resurrects The Kaiju Film."

 In it, the article states:

NEW YORK —The appeal of “Pacific Rim” isn’t complicated. 

Like the kind of boyhood fantasy that delights in flying men and relishes dreams of dinosaurs, “Pacific Rim,” the latest film from director Guillermo Del Toro, is predicated on the simple, childlike thrill of seeing big ol’ robots and big ol’ monsters slug it out. 

But while summer spectacles have grown ever larger in recent years, the monster movie - the original city-smashing genre - has mostly ceded the multiplexes to superheroes and more apocalyptic disaster films. But 14 years after Roland Emmerich’s forgettable “Godzilla” remake, Del Toro’s “Pacific Rim” constitutes a large-scale attempt to bring Japan’s beloved Kaiju movies - their monster films, of which Ishiro Honda’s 1954 “Godzilla” is the most famous - to American shores. 

“Monsters have always spoken to a part of me that is really, really essential,” Del Toro, the Mexican director of the Oscar-nominated “Pan’s Labyrinth,” said in a recent interview. “All of my life, I felt out of place. The tragedy of every monster in every movie is that they are out of place. That’s the essential plight of monsters.”

To read the article, go here. 

"Japan Today" Interview On Monster Japan Travel Guide

My interview with Japan Today on The Monster Movie Fan's Guide To Japan that was started last week while I was in Tokyo, Japan, and finished up a few nights ago, has been posted.



The interview begins with these introductory paragraphs:

TOKYO — Written by American Armand Vaquer, “The Monster Movie Fan’s Guide To Japan” is the world’s first and only Japan travel guide especially tailored to tourists who are also fans of Japanese science-fiction and fantasy movies. Most of the locations covered in the book are primarily from Toho’s Godzilla series of movies, but other studios’ monster movies are also covered.

Toho started the giant monster movie genre in 1954 with “Godzilla.” Locations used include the Wako Department Store in Ginza, Kachidoki Bridge on the Sumida River and the Diet building. These and other Tokyo locations are covered in the guide. Also included are Ultraman-related places of interest.

The guide starts north with Hokkaido and makes its way down the main island of Honshu and finishes off in Kyushu.

Japan Today catches up with Vaquer to hear more.

To read the interview, go here.