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…the van is back, and it’s gonna cause some trouble! hey now, hey now, the van is back!

Borrowed the Screaming for Vengeance 30th anniversary CD from the library, and there was a surprise in there – a second disc, a DVD with JP’s set from the 1983 US Festival in California.

For those of you not older than dirt, the US Festival was put on by Steve Wozinak as a ‘feel good’ massive music festival for two years in a row. It lost tons of money both years, the second year had a ‘metal day’ – added because may have been the only moneymaker, IMHO (and from reading articles about it back then) – and JP was one of the main acts, so watching this DVD was definitely a trip down memory lane (I was a sophmore in high school at the time).

So they start their set and the two guitarists come out – JP’s constantly changing drummer and bassist had to have been the source of the Spinal Tap joke about the exploding drummer – Glenn Tipton is shown chugging a Heineken just before he comes out, and KK Downing is wearing what look like female biker go-go boots – of course.

Then, as the strains of ‘The Hellion’ finish and they launch into Electric Eye, Rob Halford is heard, but not seen, quite yet. Then he marches onstage to massive cheers, and he’s wearing his ‘Goth King of the Village People’ outfit – mirrored aviators, leather and spikes ‘everything’, bullwhip, massive skull belt buckle and boots of his own. Next to these two, Glenn Tipton looks pretty tame, with only red stretch pants, open shirt and classic 80s “feathered rocker hair”.

And away they rock. Pretty good set, if what seems to be largely a set of hits only, but still pretty good, they play tight, and try to rile up the crowd, although it’s obvious that crowd is WAY too big to communicate with very much, and the stage is set back considerably from the crowd with massive security and camerapeople anyway.

Then of course near the end of the set, Rob Halford bursts through the center Marshall stack and ‘rides’ their Harley slowly onstage, revving the crap out of it. I never saw JP back in the day, only just a few years ago at White River locally, and I don’t remember them bothering with the Harley – at our show Rob Halford was too busy with costume changes anyway. 🙂 So then RH lays out on the front chopper wheel, and away they go with Hell Bent for Leather 🙂

It’s probably the perspective of time (or just getting old) but despite obvious musical talent, this is still pretty cheesy. Although the actual music video (embedded below) for ‘Breaking the Law’ is the epitome of cheese, especially when Beavis and Butthead were making fun of it (couldn’t find that sadly). But in fairness to the band, something i just read seemed to indicate they made the video somewhat tongue in cheek anyway 🙂

…to the Metal Gods!

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So, in response to the big success of Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla film (discussed earlier here) – the original Godzilla film company – Toho – decided to do yet another Gz film of their own. The result: Shin Godzilla, which just came out on DVD and Blu-Ray this month.

Funimation, god love ’em, actually did a limited release of this movie in theaters last year(?) – and I went, but like an old loser, fell asleep midway through the movie so missed most of it – doh! So I’ve been waiting for it to come out on DVD so I can actually watch the whole thing through.

My take: mixed feelings. So on the one hand, the special effects are definitely in the top tier of any of the Toho Godzilla films – especially when the earlier mutant version of Gz is waddling through down (there is no other way to describe it) and crushing boats, rivers, trains and buildings – very, very realistic looking, even if Gz doesn’t look very dangerous at that point – yet.

But then on his second run of destruction through town, the battle is a bit too drawn out (timewise) even if a bit too abbreviated (battle-wise). You see, the filmmakers are obviously putting in a lot of human commentary on Japan’s current political situation – the first half hour of the movie if not a bit more is spent spoofing meeting, after meeting, after meeting, at the govt level and how they are ‘paralyzed by process’, even when faced with a giant mutant nuclear-fired monster is about to stomp their country into oblivion.

While this setup is funny at parts, it drags on a bit too much – bring on the monster!

My other minor/major gripes are two – Godzilla himself looks like he’s wearing a weird chest-jutting haltertop underneath his skin when he finally assumes the role he was born to do – his upper body is just weird looking. His skin looks much closer to General Tsao’s Chicken than the usual scaly, rubbery mutant we know and love, and most egregious – his roar is severely muted, if you hear it at all.

This last was largely my big gripe for the Gareth Edwards film, likely because he probably couldn’t license the sound, but Toho OWNS that roar – hel-lo?

Also, as you see in many Gz movies, they play up the ‘sympathy’ angle more than a bit – especially when the military is (literally) dropping buildings on him left and right. In the older movies when this happens, he really gets pissed off – and to some degree that happens here, but we never really see the big ‘rage moment’ that happens at least once or twice in the older movies. Disappointing – I wanted to see more destruction!

The actors are good otherwise, although the ‘americans’ mostly appear off camera with pretty stilted dialogue. And the notion of a Japanese-American woman becoming President by her 40th bday is fine by me, bring it!

So I think in the end the movie is definitely worth watching but a bit too long and not enough Godzilla. I think on balance still my fave movie is Godzilla 2000 – easily the scariest looking Gz in any of the movies, definitely among the most badass, especially at the end.

Other voices:
Rotten Tomatoes
Metacritic

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At 40, Voyager spacecrafts still zooming toward galactic achievement

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