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Nine Questions with the men of Sequart A Sequel Soliloquy: Scot Eric's Top Twelve #2's of All Time The Golden Age Blog - Flash 11-20! American Comics: The Illusion of Change The Golden Age Blog - Flash 1-10! CriticalMess interviews writer Steve Bryant! Mess member Jim Beard helms new Batman TV book!! Nine Questions with Pamela Des Barres |
Godzilla was born one night in 1954 when a producer Tomoyuki Tanaka was flying home from Indonesia. He had just been forced to cancel a big film project because the government refused to grant work visas to the Japanese stars. Flying high above the dark Pacific Ocean he was thinking that he had a cast, cameras and other equipment and a schedule but now no movie. Looking out at the waves it hit him why not make a movie about a gigantic monster.
As the haunting opening strains of "Gimme Shelter" reverberate through the theater, one can't help but smile, knowing that Martin Scorsese has finally returned to the genre that earned him his place as one of the greatest living directors of our time. The last several years have felt like a never-ending plea for Academy acceptance for this fidgety fussbudget from Queens, and while his last few films may have been epic in scale and wonders of art direction - they have also essentially been hollow at their emotional core.
On its surface, "Hollywoodland" is about the death of actor George Reeves (Ben Affleck), known to millions of kids as TV's Superman back in the summer of 1959. Reeves' body was found in his bedroom, and was soon ruled a "closed case - suicide" by the LAPD. However, his grieving mother (Lois Smith) refuses to accept that finding, and hires a low rent Hollywood private dick named Louis Simo.
In January of 1947, the corpse of wannabe starlet Elizabeth Short was found in a vacant lot in Hollywood. The body was disfigured and literally cut in half, and although the LAPD ran down dozens of leads and sifted through at least as many "confessions", the "Black Dahlia" case --- as it came to be known --- was never solved. Several decades later, the acclaimed eccentric writer James Ellroy was inspired by that notorious crime and penned the tale "The Black Dahlia".
