Mermaid Island

A piece of promotional artwork has been released for an upcoming US/China co-produced fantasy film called Mermaid Island. Although not much known about the movie at this point other than the story is about a young man who falls in love with a mermaid, it seems that there will be some peripheral giant monster content, given the huge ape and lobster creature seen in the teaser poster as well as the enormous whale thing riding the wave in the background. Apparently the director currently attached to the project is Jean-Christophe Comar (who goes by the moniker “Pitof”), a French visual effects director-turned-film director who is somewhat notorious in North American movie circles for helming the 2004 bomb Catwoman starring Halle Barry. I suppose that could be good or bad news depending on your personal tastes.

Monsters Selling Cars

Normally I refrain from embedding YouTube movies in my blog simply because videos from that site are often taken down as fast as they’re put up, and there’s nothing more annoying that clicking the play button and being treated to a blank screen with a “video is no longer available” message. However, I decided to take a chance with this amusing Argentinean Ford commercial which uses giant monsters to illustrate the passenger capacity of their vehicles:

I’ve come across at least three other commercials from this same series, but the one I’ve posted here is my favorite of the lot.

Hey kids! Free Foreign Comics!

A recent post on the Kaijuphile message forum provided a link to an online Godzilla comic from a Japanese website and I figured that I'd mention it here on the blog. It’s uncertain whether it’s a scan of a previously published manga or some sort of fan-produced work (a lot of amateur artists in Japan are often as talented as their professional counterparts), but given that the site hasn’t updated in four years, it’s safe to assume that there won’t be any new material any time soon. Still, it’s an interesting perusal all the same and Godzilla actually looks like his cinematic representation, which is more than could be said for his old Marvel comics appearance. You can skip right to the comic here (the monster-heavy content is in the third chapter called “The Struggle”:

Godzilla Manga

Hey kids! Free Comics!

For those of you who missed it in comic stores a couple of years ago (or didn’t even realize that it existed in the first place), Comic Book Resources.com has posted both issues of Steve Niles’ (best known as the creator of 30 Days of Night) horror-centric giant monster comic called- befittingly- Giant Monster. Follow the link below to check it out while it lasts:

Giant Monster

Daikaiju Ultra Battle Coliseum

A little while back, blog reader Benjamin sent me a link to a news blurb concerning a Japanese Wii title called Daikaiju Ultra Battle Coliseum; a giant monster fighting game that stars various creatures from the Ultraman television series. I did some research online and from what I could determine, it’s a port of a Japanese arcade game which apparently uses collectable cards (which I assume are acquired at game shops or possibly vending machines in the arcades) that are swiped across a reader during play and in turn determine what kind of maneuvers and attacks are performed by the monsters in the game.

The whole card thing supposedly has been dropped in the Wii version in favor of using the motion-based controls that the system is famous for in order to guide the monsters’ actions. I’m not 100% sure what the game features in the way of interactive environments, but based on the screenshots I could find, I would guess that the surrounding cityscape is merely a backdrop verses something that the player could knock down during the course of a battle.

It’s hard to say if this title will ever see a North American release, given that the Ultraman franchise is nowhere near as popular or recognized over here, but stranger things have happened.

Uchusen Daikaiju Art

The first issue of the newly revitalized Space Magazine Uchusen- a Japanese magazine covering sci-fi/fantasy in film and television (kind of a cooler and more picture-heavy version of Starlog magazine here in North America)- featured a nifty little pictorial of painted artwork concerning the monsters of Toho films, which I've scanned and posted below. As my Japanese reading skills are currently dulled to point of non-existence, I'm not quite sure what the context of the article is, but it seems to be first in a series. I'll post more as they come.