Destroy All Monsters - 50th Anniversary Special Edition (1969) Review

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(More customer reviews)This is one of the greatest Godzilla movies ever produced, but this DVD version is far from perfect. Unfortunately, this is just a re-issue of the same DVD released a few years ago. The film transfer is exactly the same as the one previously released by ADV films, which has a recently re-dubbed mono soundtrack. The ADV soundtrack is much inferior to the one originally produced for American International Pictures in 1968, which featured an excellent voice-cast and a different script. Apparently the AIP version can't be published because the ownership rights are in limbo. Based on the cover notes, I bought this DVD believing it had the original AIP voice-tracks. No such luck. The folks at ADV deliberately stretch the truth. The cover art claims it's the "50th Anniversary Special Edition", but Destroy All Monsters was made in 1968, which makes this DVD issue the 36th anniversary for the film (in 2004). The 50th year, is a reference to the first Godzilla movie "Gojira" made in 1954, but the text makes no mention of Gojira or Godzilla. It also claims to contain "The original motion picture and soundtrack", which is misrepresentation. The original film was Japanese language, and this DVD isn't even the original English version. I would've been a lot less disappointed if they had at least given this version some chapter stops and stereo audio (which there isn't). There's not even a menu for this low budget version. If you try to hit the chapter advance button, the movie starts over from the beginning. There's no menus, no extras, no subtitles, no secondary audio tracks, no trailer, no nothing. The only thing that's different from ADV's first issue of this movie, is the cover art and the addition of a music CD. The CD contains 30 mono-audio music tracks from the movie soundtrack. The music score is wonderful, but the audio is not stereo and the fidelity is only fair. My point of contention is that ADV is trying to fool us into believing this movie has the original audio soundtrack, but instead gives you fine-print on the back mentioning an extra music CD. Buyer beware, if you already own the original release of this DVD, don't be fooled into thinking this is a different version.

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Across the Universe (2007) Review

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(More customer reviews)Julie Taymor once again uses her considerable innovative magic to create a film that not only is mesmerizingly beautiful to watch, but also a 'semi-documentary' about the world changes that occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s as young people for the first time spoke out against the war in Vietnam, the death of Martin Luther King, and the senseless mayhem that extended from the battlefields of Vietnam to the streets of America, all set to the significant, timely music of the Beatles. It sounds like an impossible juxtaposition of themes and ideas, but in Taymor's hands it succeeds.
Opening in Liverpool, England (where the Beatles began their impact on music and thought) we met Jude (Jim Sturgess), a working class boy with the gifts of an artist who decides to set off on a sea journey to meet the father he has never known. Once in New York he meets Max (Joe Anderson) and Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood) who represent the wealthy class, but who both show roots of rebellion against the comfortable norm and an objection to the war that is festering like an abscess in the rice paddies of Vietnam. Jude meets his janitor father in a union that is anticlimactic, and in disappointment he falls in with Max, living the artists' life in the Village with free-wheeling singer Sadie (Dana Fuchs), her beau/guitarist JoJo (Martin Luther) and their newest tenant Prudence (T.V. Carpio), an Asian girl trying to find her place in a confusing world. The group eventually bond with music and rebellion mixed with free love and the passion that they can make a difference, while around them racial crises are at a peak and the draft tags many of the young men (including Max) for the war they cannot condone. From all of this turmoil the story builds to a climax leading to some very touching scenes that convey the spirit of the times and the overriding importance of love and understanding in a world torn apart by political and racial crises.
The cast is strong with each of the actors singing their own versions of various Beatle songs very well (the division between singing and spoken dialect favors the former). But the real magic comes from Julie Taymor's mixture of hallucinogenic visuals, wonderfully choreographed crowd scenes, and ingenious movement from reality scenes displayed on the television to the reactive scenes of the world as viewed through the eyes of the youths and the lyrics of the songs. It is at once touching in its ability to recreate a particular period of history and wholly entertaining in the inventive use of music/dance/visual effects/drama. This film is important now and will only increase in stature as a document of that troubled but exciting time in the history of the world. We can only wonder why the youth of today are not responding to the Iraq War in a like manner, or, more uncomfortable to consider, why we, now as adults, can't muster the same degree of distress about the myriad traumas that are still happening 'Across the Universe'. Grady Harp, April 08

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Across the Universe, from director Julie Taymor, is a revolutionary rock musical that re-imagines America in the turbulent late-1960s, a time when battle lines were being drawn at home and abroad. When young dockworker Jude (Jim Sturgess) leaves Liverpool to find his estranged father in America, he is swept up by the waves of change that are re-shaping the nation. Jude falls in love with Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood), a rich but sheltered American girl who joins the growing anti-war movement in New York's Greenwich Village. As the body count in Vietnam rises, political tensions at home spiral out of control and the star-crossed lovers find themselves in a psychedelic world gone mad. With a cameo by Bono, Across the Universe is "the kind of movie you watch again, like listening to a favorite album." (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times)

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