JordanGLC

Filming will start later this month on a film featuring everyone's favorite giant turtle, to be released Spring '06. The movie will commemorate Gamera's 40th anniversary, and will take him back to his roots as a "friend to all children", as opposed to the darker tone of Kaneko's trilogy of the 90's. You can read about it at Henshin!Online.

With Toho giving Japan's alpha-kaiju at least a 5 year break (more likely 10), the new Gamera movie will gives fans of the genre something to look forward to (the little project Peter Jackson is finishing up doesn't hurt either).

buckee1

Good news about The new flick. Not sure I'd like to see him all cuddly though.

mndtrp

From the link above:


Gamera is cool. I always enjoyed the episodes, and have a couple on dvd. It's kind of nice that not many people think he's cool, because I can pick up the dvd's cheap.

Giantrobo

Huge Gamera fan here. I'm really digging his latest design too. But I must be honest, I HATE Japan's "friend of kids" storylines in Kaiju flicks. As I said in another thread, although I'm also a big Godzilla fan the latest Gamera movies have been much better than most of the latest Godzilla flicks.

cultshock

I'm not surprised about Daiei taking advantage of Godzilla's moritorium. (Just like in '95 when they started a new Gammy series when Toho announced the upcoming "death" of Godzilla in GODZILLA VS. DESTROYER)

I'm not sure that taking him back to being the "friend to all children" is a path I like though. But then again, considering that kaiju films haven't been very financially successful in Japan recently, maybe this switch in gears will be a sound financial decision.

At any rate, I think MST3K says it best: "Gamera is really neat! Gamera is full of meat!"

nightmaster

Gamera is cool! I'm no supporter of a kinder gentler cuddletoy Gamera either though......

Giantrobo

I agree. That's what made the 90's Gamera films cool. He was hardcore in going after the monsters he was fighting. They still had that silly link to the girl and the children of Earth(Manna) but it still worked. I say this after just having purchased 2 or 3 "Classic" Gamera movies from the 60's. They were cool from a nastlalgia point of view but the storylines sucked.

dhmac

They finally got Gamera right with the '90s trilogy, with the 3rd one ending on a great "give me more!" high. Making a new one that throws all of that out and returns to the "Friend of All Children" phase would be a huge mistake.

buckee1

Wasn't there a fan made fourth film that picked up at the end of Iris? I remember hearing it was pretty well done and had received participation from the actors as well. Anyone else heard about this one

chente

Are these 90's Gamera movies available with english subs anywhere? I know that there is a mondo cool Japanese set that is probably long out of print but I don't think it had english subs.

JordanGLC

Ive never seen the movie (Gamera 4) myself. It was written & directed by Shinpei Hayashiya, who from what I've read is a comedian in Japan. Yukijiro Hotaru from Kaneko's trilogy is in it, but I'm not sure that there are any other cast members from it.

Hayashiya's latest is apparently a legitimate feature length film. Reigo tai Yamato is a period kuju film set in World War II. The Japanese battleship Yamato goes up against a sea creature. Imdb has it listed here. You can see a poster for the movie here (note Hotaru in the bottom left corner).

ADV has had the trilogy available for quite some time. You can get in a boxed set for a pretty good price these days.

thunnus

Another Gamera fan here. Although I wasn't too impressed with the first two installments of the 90's trilogy, I thought Gamera 3 to be the best kaiju film ever made. By far. Comparatively, Kaneko's Godzilla flick wasn't nearly as impressive. I think that kaiju special effects work best in night/dark settings and Gamera 3 took full advantage of that. If this new Gamera is going to be geared toward children, I expect it to have a lot of day time monster shots and, therefore, less than convincing special effects. But it's probably wise to reserve judgements until we start seeing some screenshots or trailers.

Anyone see that documentary on Animal Planet about Godzilla? It was called "Animal Icons: It Came from Japan" or something to that effect. Pretty interesting. I was surprised at the amount of original language footage they had. One big disappointment was leaving out any mention of Akira Ifukube's iconic musical score.

buckee1

JordanGLC, thanks for the info on this new kaiju flick! If I'm not mistaken, the man immediately above Hotaru in the poster is the same actor who played Hiata in the original Ultraman yes? In any event, the Kaiju looks pretty cool and all I have to hear is "Giant Japanese Monster attacking" anything and I'm there in a heartbeat!

buckee1

Chente The Ultimate Gamera Box (90's) is anamorphically enhanced and features English subs on all the movies. There is a gang of supplemental material that accompanies this set but unfortunately for those of us not fluent in Japanese, there are no English subs. They are long out of print however, you can still find some knocking around smaller comic shops and retailers/etailers. I paid $250 for mine a couple of years ago and it was well worth the investment.

chente

Another quick question, are they in OAR and do they have anamorphic transfers?

Thanks in advance.

Ky-Fi

The ADV releases are in OAR, and Gamera 2 and 3 are anamorphic, although Gamera 1 is not (despite the fact that it is listed as 16:9 on the packaging.)

Another big fan here. I defnitely enjoyed the trilogy, but I would probably say the first one was my favorite--I always seem to go back to that one a lot.

And on the subject, I have to say the Millenium Godzilla series has become my favorite. Although I loved G Vs. Biollante, most of the 90's G movies left me kind of cold, and with a number of them I felt the miniature work did not look as good as the 60's stuff. With the Millenium series, it just feels to me like the production values improved a lot, and most of the CGI additions were positive, IMO.

Oh, and wasn't War of the Gargantuas going to be releases on DVD soon? Any word on that?

JordanGLC

I pretty much agree, except for the "by far" part.

I think Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack was plenty impressive. If he were given the chance to make it exactly as he had envisioned, it would have definitely been more so. Toho's tight timelines don't allow for the post-production time Kaneko was afforded at Daiei either. That also makes a big difference.

Overall, I was very impressed. You could quibble about a slight point here or there, but that's just being nitpicky. I agree about no Ikufube mention being a mistake. This documentary shows again Saturday morning 10e/7p for anyone who missed it.

Susumu Kurobe is his name.

Classic Media is supposedly going to release it. Nothing official has been announced. Latest I've read about them is that they've pushed back the release dates for the re-release of the Godzilla titles that were in their "Ultimate" box set (plus Monster Zero).

Matthew Chmiel

Gamera is really neat.
Gamera is full of meat.
We all believe in Gamera.

Orbi-Wan Techno

I have the 3-disc 90s set, and am a huge Gamera fan. I just wish I had better copies of the older stuff. They're horrible.

Breakfast with Girls

The older movies are, yes. The 1990s Gamera trilogy is really the only one that I'll bother with. It's good, for what it is. If a fourth one comes out that goes back to the "friend of all children" goofiness then I won't bother. I thought they were really pushing their luck towards the end of ...the third one? The scene where all the kids gathered together.

ViewAskewbian

We've been eating Gamera.

Dark_Sithlord

"Byeeeee! We love you, Gamerra!"

Jason

Oh, yeah! I'm a sucker for a japanese dude in a rubber suit.

Wait, let me rephrase that.

SunMonkey

Cool.

JordanGLC

Well then you are all just going LOVE this graphic from the Gamera website:

My own opinion about this is that as long as it's well done, I have no problem with it. Movies geared towards families can still be smart and entertaining. Daiei (now Kadakowa) pretty much showed how to do kaiju eiga more seriously and outclassed Toho's Heisei era Godzilla movies in the process. It took Toho until the Millennium era G-Movies to catch up (you gotta love the power of competition). Who says they can't do the same going in this direction (and in doing so outclassing, say, Toho's Rebirth of Mothra series?