Our first feature was the 2013 Frank Pavic documentary Jodorowsky's Dune. Alejandro Jodorowsky is a Chilean-French director who attempted to adapt Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune in the mid-1970s. He hadn't actually read the book before he told his producer that he wanted to make a movie of Dune. Unfortunately Jodorowsky's idea of making a movie wasn't anything that people with money to make movies could understand. Frank Herbert said of the script "It was the size of a phonebook." The money people couldn't figure a way to make some cash on a 14 hour science fiction art film. Not being a commercial film, it never got made.
The documentary takes a brief look at Jodorowsky's early career in theater and film. Before Dune he'd directed Fando Y Lis, El Topo and The Holy Mountain. El Topo is credited as the first midnight movie hit but none of his movies were big money spinners. Still, he got about $10 million to make Dune. His idea was to make a movie about a prophet in a story that would be important to the citizens of the world. He got some "warriors" to help him. Chris Foss for space ship design, Moebius and H R Girger to design the settings and costumes, and Dan O'Bannion for the special effects. Those same guys would work together again on Alien. The film credits the unmade Dune as influencing some films that came later. Mostly they mention the films that those same artists had worked on. Certainly the publicity from working on Dune would have made the artists better known to Ridley Scott who hired them to work on Alien in 1979. Moebius did 3000 black and white story board drawings and they were printed, bound with his color costume illustrations, and sent around to the studios to drum up interest. Greg had just seen a copy of the book in a book store somewhere.
It's an enjoyable documentary, there are plenty interviews with Jodorowsky and he's fairly entertaining. They interview Chris Foss, Michel Seydoux, H. R. Giger, Nicolas Winding Refn, Amanda Lear and Richard Stanley. Nicholas and Richard are directors who didn't have anything to do with the Jodorowsky film but they're pretty certain that the movie would have been ground breaking and mind blowing. I'm rather more doubtful, the film makers had a grand cinematic experience in mind but they didn't have the money or the ability to make it.
Our second film is the Japanese BluRay of Godzilla 2000: Millennium. It's a bit longer than the US version and the movie has different dialog. Here's a bit about it from the Wikipedia:
There were two English dubbed versions of this film. As is standard practice for Toho, the film was originally dubbed in Hong Kong for use in Toho's international version. A few lines from the international dub can be heard in the theatrical trailer for Sony's theatrical release, although the film was entirely re-dubbed by Asian-American voice actors (Schlesinger deliberately made this choice because he did not want the characters to sound like they were "from Wisconsin."). Only one line from the international version ("As long as the beer's cold, who cares?") was used in the re-dubbed North American version. Toho apparently prefers the North American version so much that the international version has never been officially released anywhere in the world.
Tristar Pictures licensed Godzilla 2000 for theatrical distribution in North America. It would be the first and only Japanese Godzilla movie since Godzilla 1985 to be released in North American theaters. Mike Schlesinger, who supervised the North American release and adapted the script, said, "It (Godzilla 2000) was such a spectacular success in Japan, we decided it was worth taking a shot, maybe the time was right for Godzilla to come back to theaters." Sony spent approximately $1,000,000 to re-edit and dub the movie in English, and an addition $10–12 million to market.
The English dubbed version of the film runs 99 minutes - eight minutes shorter in comparison to the 107-minute Japanese version. Most of these were minor edits done to improve the pacing, and the sound design of the movie was completely re-worked. J. Peter Robinson composed some new music meant to supplement Takayuki Hattori's music. The dubbing has a somewhat humorous, tongue-in-cheek tone to it, apparently in homage to Godzilla dubs of the 60s and 70s, with lines such as "Great Caesar's Ghost!", "Bite me!" and "these missiles will go through Godzilla like crap through a goose!". Some fans have criticized the English dubbed version of Godzilla 2000 for camping up what they perceive as a "serious" movie; however, Toho and Takao Okawara approved all the changes to the film in advance, and various amusing sequences throughout the story (such as people comically surviving Godzilla's rampage early in the film) establish a light-hearted tone and make it evident that it wasn't meant to be taken seriously. In an interview in Video Watchdog #71, Schlesinger noted that people in real life tend to speak humorously; he also felt that giving audiences some intentionally funny dialogue would make them less inclined to laugh at the monster scenes, which were supposed to be taken seriously. Originally, the film ended with the words "The End?" in cartoonish lettering, but Mike Schlesinger and Toho rejected that. "The End?" was removed from later home video and television releases. The ending was mistakenly retained for the out of print Spanish-subtitled VHS of the film.
Maybe more than you might need to know about Godzilla 2000: Millennium. I've seen it several times now and it still holds up fairly well.
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