I’ve noted in the past that I’m a huge Godzilla fan. I’m also trying to make some room on the video shelf and replacing VHS with DVDs is the best way to do it. It doesn’t hurt that finding a VHS player will someday be near impossible, although I have yet to switch to Blu-Ray. (No HD TV anyway.) So when I found Godzilla Vs. Biollante at K-Mart for $5 I grabbed it. And paid for it, with the lady cashier even saying it was a classic and she didn’t sound like she was joking. Actually, I don’t care if she was because I happen to think it is.
Construction companies must be the richest businesses in Tokyo. Right after cleaning services.
I didn’t have time to clean again this week. Well, actually I did. But what I cleaned was stuff I cleaned already, like getting clothes off of the couch piece. Again. Sometimes it seems like new clutter appears just as soon as you got rid of the old stuff, and that’s only if you’re lucky. Sometimes the clutter builds before you can knock it down. So once again I find myself asking why. (Or perhaps “why does this keep happening to me God, why?” on a bad day.) I’m not sure of all my solutions yet, which is one of the reasons I started this blog but I’m darn good at identifying my foes! Like the G.I. Joe TV show used to say, knowing is half the battle. Sadly Flint was always silent on the other half. Thanks for nothing.
Anybody who knows me knows of my love for Godzilla, the reigning king of the monsters. So when I found out that a Criterion Collection copy of both movies was coming out in a box set, I immediately ordered it. The “Criterion Collection” edition is reserved for some of the best movies in cinematic history, putting out a high-quality release. That Godzilla was given a spot is high praise indeed. Last week it arrived although I didn’t have time to watch it until yesterday thanks to scheduling.
I’m not going to review the movie for this report. When an earlier version of both movies were posted to the website Joost (and later moved to Hulu), I posted a two-part comparison of both the original Japanese movie and the American retooling. I said everything I need to about the movies there. Instead, I’m just going to take a look at the presentation.
Don’t confuse this with the infamously bad Joel Schumacher film from 1997. This serial was produced in 1949. You may recall I recently reviewed the previous serial from 6 years previous. Now it’s time to see how the sequel holds up. Except it’s not really a sequel. None of the original actors return, and much has changed from the original. If anything, it’s closer to the comics now.
Batman and Robin: The Complete 1949 Movie Serial Collection
Another messy corner. I’ve got to stop throwing junk in the corner. This particular mess is making it harder for me to get to certain videos, games, and other software. Time to reorganize again.
I’ve mentioned before my love of movie serials, when I reviewed The Adventures of Captain Marvel. I’ve been trying to build up my serial library, and of course that would include other superheroes. Batman’s first appearance on the big screen was in the 1940’s, in a 15-part movie serial that also doubled as war propaganda. This lead to a number of changes, but that’s no surprise these days, when plenty of adaptations change things for their own needs. The question is how well the end product is.
{click for full size}
BATMAN: The Complete 1943 Movie Serial Collection
FORMAT: DVD
PRODUCER: Columbia Pictures
DISTRIBUTOR: Sony Home Entertainment
STARRING: Lewis Wilson (Bruce Wayne/Batman), Douglas Croft (Dick Grayson/Robin), J. Carrol Nash (Dr. Tito Daka), Shirley Patterson (Linda Page), and William Austin (Alfred)
SCREENPLAY: Victor McLeod, Leslie Swabacker, and Harry Fraser
PRODUCER: Rudolf C. Flothow
DIRECTOR: Lambert Hillyer
I have a lot of collections, and I thought it would be easier to go through them for a proper review if I made a list. Now the Transformers and other action figures aren’t my concern. The Transformers especially have too many to bother with, a problem also faced by my comics. The video games and movie videos, however, I want a proper listing of.
My thought is that I could keep track of what I’ve reviewed for the Video Game Clutter show and the DVD/VHS report articles. (Although the videos I’ll be going through alphabetically.) Luckily I found an old Steno Book that I had originally purchased all those years ago to keep track of high scores. Since the games didn’t keep track of the top score once the game was shut off (except for some computer games), I could track my progress.
Years later I found it during my game organizing, and it was mostly empty. The spaces were marked off, but no scores were recorded. And since there was plenty of extra pages left (most of the book), this week’s plan was to list every game I own to keep track of which ones I’ve gone through.
Remember when I said I can crosspost media reviews between this site and BW Media Spotlight? Well, this is one of those reviews. I’m a fan of the old movie serials, which convinced me to pick up this video on VHS, seeing as I didn’t have a DVD player at the time. I’ve seen been trying to “trade” my cassettes for disks to help clear up my shelves. (I have four shelves of videos and more sitting on the floor.)
The following is from an article series called “Scanning My Collection”, where I usually review the comics and other media that has a story that inspires me in my goals or just really interest me. I’m curious to see how well the formatting works between the themes for the different sites. I’m sure there will be more, but that means the approach isn’t whether or not I’ll hold on to it but a review from a storytelling perspective. I post it to show that cleaning up the clutter doesn’t mean giving up the stuff you like.
The Adventures of Captain Marvel is my favorite movie serial, so much so that even though I already owned the VHS I wanted to get this on DVD. Not just because I’m trying to clean some space on my movie shelves by replacing the tapes with the less-room-taking DVDs, because I’m planning to keep this tape, but because I wanted to make sure I had a way to watch this.
For the uniformed who didn’t click the Wikipedia link up there, movie serials come from the days where there were no televisions. Comics were still around, and you could listen to your favorite characters on audio dramas, but every Saturday kids could head down to their local theater to catch their favorite characters, and a few originals, in multi-part stories of good versus evil. It’s an experience that my generation never really had, since unless you went over your friend’s house to do something other than play Atari 2600 or get kicked outside by your friend’s parents so they could watch their own shows or get at that Donkey Kong you could “enjoy the fresh air and sunlight”, you never came close to knowing.
Nowadays you can watch something like Lost and discuss what happened over the water cooler the next day, or just wait and ruin the experience by watching all the DVD’s in a big marathon. Or you can wait until the internet is hosting them somewhere because you can’t fathom waiting a week for the next chapter. Because you’re a bunch of wussies. (I changed a letter to fit the usual BW protocols. Guess which one.) I used to catch Matinee at the Bijou on PBS and that (plus some airing on my local Cable Access channel) is how I fell in love with them. My favorite animated series, Filmation’s Flash Gordon was also done in this style
Someday I’ll get into serials as a whole and why I like them, but for this SMC, let’s take a look at this one specifically, and see why I like it so much.
My video collection is so big that I have videos on three racks and still need an additional shelf and the floor to hold it all. Even switching video tapes with DVD versions won’t clear up all the mess (especially the video tapes that may NEVER have a DVD release) so I should go through them as well. Already I can think of a few I’m willing to let go of. So is Action Man: Space Wars one of those videos?
Since media reviews can be crossed over with the “Scanning My Collection” article series over at BW Media Spotlight, my other blog, these reviews will be done in that format instead of the style I’ve used in the toy reviews.
Action Man: Space Wars
FORMAT: DVD/animated series
RUNNING TIME: 68 minutes
PRODUCER: DIC Entertainment, released by Sterling Entertainment
STARRING: Mark Griffin, Rolf Leenders, Joley Collins, Gary Chalk, Dale Wilson, and Richard Cox
STYLE: 4 collected episodes
RELEASE DATE: Unknown, only the copyright date for the show, 1995, is given.
Action Man was a syndicated animated series, at least here in the states, based on a toyline done in the style of the original G.I. Joe line. I never collected the toy but as a…well, kid wouldn’t be accurate…I enjoyed the show, so when I saw the video for $5 at Family Dollar, I decided to get it.
The Clutter Reports 