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Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa by Steve Ryfle Ebook Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa currently available for review only, if you need complete ebook Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa please fill out registration form to access in our databases Download here >> Hardcover:::: 336 pages+++Publisher:::: Wesleyan University Press (October 3, 2017)+++Language:::: English+++ISBN-10:::: 0819570877+++ISBN-13:::: 978-0819570871+++Product Dimensions::::7.5 x 1.2 x 10.5 inches++++++ ISBN10 0819570877 ISBN13 978-0819570871 Download here >> Description: Ishiro Honda was arguably the most internationally successful Japanese director of his generation, with an unmatched succession of science fiction films that were commercial hits worldwide. From the atomic allegory of Godzilla and the beguiling charms of Mothra to the tragic mystery of Matango and the disaster and spectacle of Rodan, The Mysterians, King Kong vs. Godzilla, and many others, Honda’s films reflected postwar Japan’s real-life anxieties and incorporated fantastical special effects, a formula that appealed to audiences around the globe and created a popular culture phenomenon that spans generations. Now, in the first full account of this long overlooked director’s life and career, authors Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski shed new light on Honda’s work and the experiences that shaped it—including his days as a reluctant Japanese soldier, witnessing the aftermath of Hiroshima, and his lifelong friendship with Akira Kurosawa. Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa features close analysis of Honda’s films (including, for the first time, his rarely seen dramas, comedies, and war films) and draws on previously untapped documents and interviews to explore how creative, economic, and industrial factors impacted his career. Fans of Honda, Godzilla, and tokusatsu (special effects) film, and of Japanese film in general, will welcome this in-depth study of a highly influential director who occupies a uniquely important position in science fiction and fantasy cinema, as well as in world cinema.Together, the authors have provided audio commentary tracks and produced supplemental material for numerous home video releases, including Ishiro Honda’s Godzilla for the British Film Institute. They co-produced the documentary feature Bringing Godzilla Down to Size (2008). Anybody who is familiar with Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski know that these two men know their stuff when it comes to Godzilla and Toho science-fiction and fantasy movies. These two not only wrote seminal books about Godzilla; they also provided excellent audio commentaries on MOTHRA, BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE and several Godzilla movies and even a well-done documentary BRINGING GODZILLA DOWN TO SIZE, which can only be found on the sadly out-of-print RODAN and WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS set released by Classic Media. One can argue that it was through these audio commentaries that people in America started to take Godzilla and Ishiro Honda very seriously.Yet this book may in fact be their most crowning achievement, a culmination of their passion, knowledge, respect and enthusiasm for the movies they love and for a director they clearly respect. A labor of love that took almost a decade to create, ISHIRO HONDA: A LIFE OF FILM is also an obligation on the part of Ryfle and Godziszewski to re-evaluate and change Ishiro Honda’s stature and reputation here in the United States, from an inept director of campy, cut-rate fantasies and laughably cheap science-fiction movies to a serious artist that incorporated Japan’s real-life anxieties and political climates with wondrous special effects and larger-than-life monsters. It’s a formula that worked wonders for the Japanese box-office but were often compromised here in America due to executive meddling, painfully bad dubbing, censorship issues and the senseless rearrangement, deletion and butchering of many sequences, not just visually but through audio as well.But A LIFE OF FILM does more: it covers Honda’s background the a son of a Buddhist monk, the young kid who loved watching his movies and explaining their plots to his father, his years serving as a soldier during WWII and his return to a devastated Japan from the H-Bomb and how both periods influenced his filmmaking style, his working relationships with producer Tomoyuki Tanaka, music composer Akira Ifukube, special effect directors Eiji Tsuburaya and Teruyoshi Nakano and screenwriters Takeshi Kimura and Shinichi Sekizawa, and most intriguingly, Honda’s non-sci-fi works that he did before and after the release of GODZILLA, such as romantic comedies, family dramas and documentaries, most unpreserved in Japan and all virtually unknown in the States. It also covers Honda’s years working for TV, his role as an assistant director for several Kurosawa films, his death in 1993 and the reappraisal of his work that followed.Naturally, the main meat of this book is the sci-fi and fantasy movies Honda made from 1954-1975, all which are brilliantly documented by Ryfle and Godziszewski, both in how the movies were made and how they stand out today. This period is what defined Honda as a director, but it also became his curse. The success of GODZILLA caused Honda to be typecast into making sci-fi and fantasy movies from the late fifties to even his final film, TERROR OF MECHAGODZILLA. Honda remained a loyal company man a la Michael Curtiz and that loyalty resulted in many memorable movies such as RODAN, THE H-MAN, MOTHRA, ATRAGON, GORATH, MATANGO, WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS and most of the excellent GODZILLA sequels, from MOTHRA vs. GODZILLA to DESTROY ALL MONSTERS, but Honda’s reservations and discomfort in these genres are apparent, particularly in the chapters depicting the mid-to-late sixties when GODZILLA was slowly metamorphizing from an allegory of the nuclear bomb to a defender of justice. Its also to Ryfle and Godziszewskis credit that, for all their professed love for these movies, they never romanticize them to the point of exclaiming each a masterpiece, pointing out both virtues and flaws of even Hondas worst movies. Their opinions are astute, informative and always fair.Perhaps the greatest source of discord is the fact that these movies came at the expense of the films Honda truly wanted to make, most particularly straightforward human dramas akin to THE RED SHOES or LA STRADA. There are moments when Honda expresses hope that he could finally make the movies he desired, only to be denied due to either his own doing or circumstances beyond his control. Ryfle and Godziszewski excellently captures Honda’s conflicted feelings towards these movies, as well as providing insight on how Honda and the GODZILLA franchise especially were hit hard by the rise in popularity of television and the disastrous state of the Japanese cinema in the seventies. The period resulted in viciously slashed budgets, studios going under, many actors and filmmakers out of work and disarrayed works like SPACE AMOEBA and LATITUDE ZERO. In fact, when Honda’s swan song TERROR OF MECHAGODZILLA became the lowest-attended Godzilla movie of all time, it seemed that Japanese science-fiction and Honda’s career would go under, along with the rest of the industry.But unlike most directors, Honda’s career had a happy ending. Honda entered a new phase in his career when he worked as an assistant director with the great Akira Kurosawa on the master’s last five movies, from KAGEMUSHA to MADADAYO. It’s a wonderful irony that at the time Kurosawa was widely regarded as one of the greatest directors of all time while Honda was disparaged for those sci-fi and fantasy movies, yet it’s clear, from this book, that it was Honda who was the unsung hero in helping his friend achieve his vision without burning bridges and ruffling feathers from the studios. But the relationship was not always bell and whistles; Honda’s atypical reaction to Kurosawa’s ill-fated suicide attempt in the early seventies, which I won’t give away, is worth the price of admission alone. Darkly funny moments like this, however, are mainly offset by many more touching moments, most particularly when Martin Scorsese, who played Van Gogh in the crow sequence of Kurosawa’s DREAMS and even writes a preface for this book, took a photo with Honda and told him he was the reason he worked on DREAMS.In truth, Honda’s career was a success: a loyal studio director who, despite his misgivings, left behind an extraordinary body of work that continues to inspire directors and moviegoers alike, a man who helped his dear friend make some of the greatest movies of the eighties and someone genuinely respected and loved by the people who worked with him. Hopefully, the success of this book will encourage studios to restore and distribute many of Hondas most beloved and intriguing movies and even bring Japanese versions of films like GORATH, THE HUMAN VAPOR and KING KONG VS. GODZILLA to America. And with the eagerly anticipated US remake of KING KONG VS. GODZILLA coming out within a couple of years, the ripe for rediscovery and restoration is perfect.There is so much fascinating detail and information about this unheralded director that it would shock contemporary readers as to why this man was not appreciated, let alone understood, here in America. This book may have taken years to make, but it was worth the wait. Impeccably researched, beautifully written and consistently engaging from beginning to end, Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski’s ISHIRO HONDA: A LIFE OF FILM belongs in every movie lover’s collection, especially lovers of science-fiction, fantasy and Japanese cinema in general.

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