Belatedly, Here Are The First Trailers for Pacific Rim: Uprising and Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water

Posted on August 3, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Belatedly (because it dropped on July 19th but, at the time, I was busy writing about reality television for another site), here’s the first trailer for Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water.

If you’ve been reading this site for a while, you know that we’re big Del Toro fans here at the Shattered Lens. Arleigh loved Pan’s Labyrinth and Pacific Rim. I thought Crimson Peak was incredibly underrated. So, you better believe that we’re all really looking forward to seeing The Shape of Water.

Especially after watching this trailer!

And, since I mentioned Pacific Rim, here is the first teaser for the sequel to that beloved film, Pacific Rim: Uprising!

Trailer: Godzilla (Official Main)

Posted on February 25, 2014 by Arleigh

Last summer, we saw the return of the giant monster genre on Western screens with Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim. This summer we see the return of the King of the Monsters back on the big screen where he belongs.

Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla looks to bring back the King to lay massive destruction on humanity. The trailers haven’t shown whether Godzilla will be the villain of the film or back to fight other monsters. Either as protector or destroyer he will cause much collateral damage on the cities of mankind.

This latest trailer seems to intimate that Edwards’ film will actually be a sequel to the original 1954 film of the same name.

Godzilla will have a May 16. 2014 release date.

My ideas for a Pacific Rim Sequel

Posted on February 2, 2014 by Viktor VonGlum

This entry will be filled with spoilers. Please don’t read it if you haven’t watched Pacific Rim. The film ends with the destruction of the portal and the alien colonists. With the portal closed and the colonist dead, there are no more Kaijus. How can there be a sequel? I have a few ideas about how there can be Kaijus in a sequel, these ideas are based on anime and Kaiju films.

Each idea has the following elements in common:

A rogue element within the K-Science Lab creating the Kaiju
A variant of Newton “Newt” Geiszler’s Kaiju Drift (mind meld) device used to control the Kaijus
Genetically modified and mechanically enhanced brains to facilitate Drifting with human pilots
The hive mind trait of a Kaiju’s brain enable pilots to communicate with each other through a radio-telepathy frequency.

The first idea involves harvesting genetic samples of defeated Kaijus to grow clones for despots and madmen for the right price.

The second idea is derived from the millenium incarnation of Mecha-Godzilla. The rogue K-Science Lab technician would use kaiju skeletons to create the framework for bionic Kaijus. Each bionic Kaiju possesses Jaeger weaponry. A variant of this idea is to use the Mecha-Godzilla iteration from the animated series based on American Godzilla film. A Kaiju would be repaired and revived with Jaeger parts in the same vein as Deathlok (Marvel’s zombie cyborg soldier).

(Cyber-Zilla from Godzilla: The Series by Dino Master)

The another variant is based on an obscure anime called Argento Soma (where a giant monster, Frank, was created from the remains of fallen monsters). The scientist would cobble together a kaiju from the parts that remained after battle.

(Frank by ミヤマカラマ)

The third idea involves splicing creatures like reptiles, crustaceans, and arachnids with Kaiju DNA to create new biological weapons. In one extreme case, a human-Kaiju hybrid exists.

Kaiju concept art by Guy Davis

What If Lisa Marie Picked The Oscar Nominees…

Posted on January 13, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

With the Oscar nominations due to be announced this week, now is the time that the Shattered Lens indulges in a little something called, “What if Lisa had all the power.” Listed below are my personal Oscar nominations. Please note that these are not the films that I necessarily think will be nominated. The fact of the matter is that the many of them will not. Instead, these are the films that would be nominated if I was solely responsible for deciding the nominees this year. Winners are listed in bold.

You can check out my picks for 2010 by clicking here.

My picks for 2011 can be found here.

And, finally, here are my picks for 2012.

Best Picture

12 Years A Slave

American Hustle

Before Midnight

Blue Is The Warmest Color

Frances Ha

Fruitvale Station

Her

Inside Llewyn Davis

Spring Breakers

Upstream Color

Best Director

Noah Baumbach for Frances Ha

Shane Carruth for Upstream Color

Spike Jonze for Her

Harmony Korine for Spring Breakers

David O. Russell for American Hustle

Best Actor

Bruce Dern in Nebraska

Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf Of Wall Street

Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club

Joaquin Phoenix in Her

Dennis Quaid in At Any Price

Best Actress

Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine

Julie Delpy in Before Midnight

Adèle Exarchopoulos in Blue Is The Warmest Color

Greta Gerwig in Frances Ha

Amy Seimetz in Upstream Color

Best Supporting Actor

Barkhad Abdi in Captain Phillips

Kyle Chandler in The Spectacular Now

Bradley Cooper in American Hustle

James Franco in Spring Breakers

Jared Leto in Dallas Buyers Club

Best Supporting Actress

Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle

Eva Mendes in The Place Beyond The Pines

Lupita Nyong’o in 12 Years A Slave

Léa Seydoux in Blue Is The Warmest Color

Octavia Spencer in Fruitvale Station

Best Original Screenplay

American Hustle

Blue Jasmine

Her

Inside Llewyn Davis

Upstream Color

Best Adapted Screenplay

12 Years A Slave

Before Midnight

Blue Is The Warmest Color

The Spectacular Now

The Wolf of Wall Street

Best Animated Feature

The Croods

Despicable Me 2

Ernest and Celestine

Frozen

Monsters University

Best Documentary Feature

20 Feet From Stardom

The Armstrong Lie

Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer

Stories We Tell

Tim’s Vermeer

Best Foreign Language Film

(Please note that I do things differently for this category than the Academy. For this award, I am nominating the best foreign language films to be released in the United States in 2013.)

Beyond the Hills

Blue Is The Warmest Color

Renoir

White Elephant

Best Production Design

12 Years A Slave

Gravity

The Great Gatsby

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Oz: The Great and Powerful

Best Cinematography

Frances Ha

Inside Llewyn Davis

Nebraska

Spring Breakers

Upstream Color

Best Costume Design

12 Years A Slave

American Hustle

The Copperhead

The Great Gatsby

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Best Film Editing

12 Years A Slave

American Hustle

Gravity

Her

Upstream Color

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

12 Years A Slave

American Hustle

Dallas Buyers Club

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Warm Bodies

Best Original Score

Gravity

Her

Maniac

Trance

Upstream Color

Best Original Song

“Let it Go” from Frozen

“A Little Party Never Killed Nobody (All We Got)” from The Great Gatsby

“Young and Beautiful” from The Great Gatsby

“The Moon Song” from Her

“I See Fire” from The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

“Atlas” from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

“Please Mr. Kennedy” from Inside Llewyn Davis

“So You Know What It’s Like” from Short Term 12

“Becomes The Color” from Stoker

“Here It Comes” from Trance

Best Sound Editing

All Is Lost

Iron Man 3

Pacific Rim

Rush

Upstream Color

Best Sound Mixing

All Is Lost

Iron Man 3

Pacific Rim

Rush

Upstream Color

Best Visual Effects

Gravity

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Iron Man 3

Oz: The Great and Powerful

Pacific Rim

List of Films By Number of Nominations:

9 Nominations — Upstream Color

8 Nominations — American Hustle

7 Nominations — 12 Years A Slave, Her

5 Nominations — Blue Is The Warmest Color

4 Nominations — Frances Ha, Gravity, The Great Gatsby, Inside Llewyn Davis, Spring Breakers

3 Nominations — Before Midnight, Dallas Buyers Club, Iron Man 3, Pacific Rim

2 Nominations — All Is Lost, Blue Jasmine, Frozen, Fruitvale Station, Nebraska, Oz The Great and Powerful, Rush, The Spectacular Now, Trance, The Wolf of Wall Street

1 Nominations — 20 Feet From Stardom, The Armstrong Lie, At Any Price, Beyond The Hills, Captain Phillips, The Copperhead, The Counselor, The Croods, Despicable Me 2, Ernest and Celestine, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Maniac, Monsters University, No, The Place Beyond The Pines, Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, Renoir, Short Term 12, Stoker, Stories We Tell, Tim’s Vermeer, Warm Bodies, White Elephant

List of Films By Number of Oscars Won

3 Oscars — American Hustle, Upstream Color

2 Oscars — The Great Gatsby

1 Oscar — Before Midnight, Blue is The Warmest Color, Frances Ha, Frozen, Gravity, Her, Iron Man 3, Maniac, Pacific Rim, The Spectacular Now, Spring Breakers, Stories We Tell, The Wolf of Wall Street

Things I dug in 2013 (in no particular order and off the top of my head)

Posted on January 1, 2014 by Viktor VonGlum

I will start a trend of keeping positive by omitting the things that I disliked in Geekdom during 2013. At the end of the day, my negative opinions are opinions and shouldn’t be used to rain on anyone’s parade/geekery.

Battling Boy by Paul Pope is a remix and mash-up of a coming of age story and a hero’s journey that features science heroes, a variety of monsters, totem tee-shirts, and cosmic pantheon.

The Battle of the Atom covers featured epic artwork from the likes of Art Adams, Stuart Immonen, Ed McGuinness, Kris Anka, and Terry Dodson.

Despicable Me 2 is a delightful film and one of the few sequels that I thoroughly enjoyed. I love the characterization, the spy gadgets, and soundtrack.

Pacific Rim is a sheer geekasm crafted by Mr. Del Toro. It had kaiju, mechas, and cool mecha gadgets… three things that I have dug since I was a wee lad. I have watched it several times and each time my appreciation and love of it grow.

Here Are The Ten Semi-Finalists For The Best Visual Effects Oscar

Posted on December 7, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yesterday, the Academy’s Visual Effects Branch Executive Committee announced the ten semi-finalists for the Best Visual Effects Oscar.

And here they are:

Elysium

Gravity

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Iron Man 3

The Lone Ranger

Oblivion

Pacific Rim

Star Trek: Into Darkness

Thor: The Dark World

World War Z

Five of the films listed above will receive actual Oscar nominations and then one will win the Oscar. And that one will probably be Gravity.

It’s interesting to note that Man Of Steel, a film that basically was just 143 minutes of visual effects, failed to make the cut.

Song of the Day: Mako (by Ramin Djawadi)

Posted on August 6, 2013 by Arleigh

Finishing off my Pacific Rim soundtrack trifecta is the Mako Mori theme by Ramin Djawadi.

The first two parts of this trio were the theme to Pacific Rim and the theme to Gipsy Danger. Both were composed by Ramin Djawadi (the film’s composer) and featured lead guitar work by Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine. My third choice and latest “Song of the Day” was simply titled “Mako”. This part of the soundtrack occurs primarily during a Drift sequence in the film that becomes the unifying thread to the relationship between Rinko Kikuchi’s Mako Mori character and IDris Elba’s Stacker Pentecost role. Ramin Djawadi has singer and songwriter PRiscilla Ahn join him in this song as we see an important backstory play out within the Drift. It’s Mako’s past history with the kaiju and Stacker and why she’s so determined to become a jaeger pilot despite her adopted father’s reservations.

With this track we see that Djawadi can handle emotional musical pieces as well as the more hard rock and chest-thumping sections of the film’s score. It helps to have Priscilla Ahn’s melodic harmonizing backing up Djawadi’s composition which starts off gradually and dream-like before it transitions into a soaring string movement that Djawadi’s mentor, Hans Zimmer, wished he could pull off.

To say that the Pacific Rim soundtrack was just as awesome as the film it was composed for would be an understatement. These three choices were just my personal favorites. There were more throughout the 25-track soundtrack and each and everyone of them fits the film perfectly.

Song of the Day: Gipsy Danger (by Ramin Djawadi)

Posted on July 23, 2013 by Arleigh

This latest “Song of the Day” will be the second of what will be a trifecta of my favorite tracks from the Pacific Rim soundtrack by composer Ramin Djawadi. The first one was the main theme from the film and featured Rage Against the Machine lead guitarist Tom Morello providing lead guitar work. This second track I’ve chosen is siply titled “Gipsy Danger”.

Where the main theme has been everyone’s favorite in the entire soundtrack it’s difficult not to enjoy the motif for the main character of the film. Let’s be honest and just admit to ourselves that the main character in Pacific Rim is the jaeger christened Gipsy Danger. The track which introduces her theme in the film actually precedes the main theme. We actually hear the “Gipsy Danger” theme right from the start of the film. It combines some of the hard rock melodies and chords from the film’s main theme, but also expanding on the deep bass tone (sounding like a fog horn blowing) that punctuates throughout this theme more than it did in the main theme. This deep sound I always thought of as the “monster arriving” musical cue. It appears not just when Gipsy Danger makes her initial appearance but also whenever a kaiju emerges from the ocean and makes landfall to cause destruction. It’s a sound cue similar to classic giant monster flicks from Japan that announces either Godzilla or one of his kaiju brethren which was followed-up by the iconic monster scream.

We get both the rock and roll and heroic sound from the main theme combined with the more ominous musical cue in this chosen track. It pretty much focuses on one of the film’s taglines about creating monsters to fight monsters. The Gipsy Danger jaeger is a monster in her own right. But then she’s our monster and we always have a fondness for monsters as long as it’s our own.

AMV of the Day: Let Them Eat Rei (Neon Genesis Evangelion)

Posted on July 17, 2013 by Arleigh

In honor of GLaDOS’s cameo in Pacific Rim as the A.I. voice of the American Jaeger, Gipsy Danger, I’ve chosen an oldie, but goodie AMV from 2008 as the next “AMV of the Day”.

This has to be the very first AMV I’ve ever seen and it was in the spring of 2008 when I attended my very first anime convention with Anime Boston 2008. The video had won Best In Show and Best Drama. It used scenes from the very popular mecha anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, but more important to the convention attendees was the song used for the video: Jonathan Coulton’s “Still Alive” featuring the voice of GLaDOS herself, Ellen McClain.

“Let Them Eat Rei” was the name of the video and it does a great job in combining some of the dark humor from both the song and the anime, but also it’s more darker dramatic aspects. When I think about it I’m not even sure if this video had won Best Drama or Best Comedy, it could’ve won either in addition to Best In Show.

Anime: Neon Genesis Evangelion (Death & Rebirth), Neon Genesis Evangelion (End of Evangelion)

Song: “Still Alive” by Jonathan Coulton feat. Ellen McClain

Creator: jbone

Past AMVs of the Day

Trash Film Guru Vs. The Summer Blockbusters : “Pacific Rim”

Posted on July 15, 2013 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Let’s start with a life lesson here that’s completely contradictory right on its face and therefore of absolutely no value whatsoever — sometimes the simplest ideas are great, and sometimes they’re really, really dumb.It all depends on the inherent intelligence level of the person who has them.

First case in point : a retrograde, racist, trigger-happy, self-appointed “neighborhood watch captain” decides it would be a good idea to follow around a kid in his gated suburban subdivision who’s minding his own business and eating Skittles. The cops tell him to back the fuck off and stay in his car, but our low-grade Charles Bronson-wannabe thinks he knows better : he pursues the young man on foot, removes his gun from its holster, loads some rounds in the chamber, unlatches the safety, and proceeds to generally and obviously tail him for three or four blocks. When the target of his harassment finally decides enough is enough and jumps him, a fight ensues. We’ll never definitely know who threw the first punch, but when “Mr. Tough Guy” was on the ground getting his nose bloodied by the kid’s fist, he decided he’d had enough and shot his “assailant” in the heart.

Dumb idea. I don’t care if a jury gave him a free pass for murdering the victim of his stalking or not, it’s still just not smart. Bargain-basement Bronson was reckless with his firearm, needlessly killed a kid who was, let’s face it, provoked into a confrontation, and now he has this bright, promising youngster’s blood on his conscience (assuming he has one, which is debatable) and has to sleep with one eye open for the rest of his life. Clearly, nothing good came from this guy’s very simple, and very stupid, idea.

Case in point number two : Wouldn’t it be seriously fucking cool if the Transformers fought Godzilla?

The answer to this question is as resounding as it is obvious : hell yes (as long as Michael Bay doesn’t direct it)! Thankfully, Guillermo del Toro is the guy who had this idea, and the result is Pacific Rim, easily the funnest thing to hit the silver screen this summer (even if I did just say the same thing about The Lone Ranger — this tops it, and by a wide margin).

Now, you can take exception to my admittedly over-simplified root description of this film all you want — hey, man, this is about a lot more than that : it’s about giant mentally-linked-to-human-host robots called Jaegers who battle inter-dimensional monsters from beneath the ocean floor known as Kaiju, there’s a nice little low-key love story that develops between out hero, Raleigh Beckett (Charlie Hunnam) and his co-pilot, Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), it’s got Idris Elba as a stoic-but-compassionate military commander, and hey, Ron Perlman’s on board playing a mad scientist/black marketeer with the kind of relish that only he can bring to a role.

All these things are true, of course, but at the end of the day this is still a 12-year-old sci-fi geek’s wet dream realized on an enormous Hollywood budget. And that’s the best thing about it (besides maybe the awesome post-credits dedication to Ray Harryahusen and Ishiro Honda). This is del Toro letting loose his inner child for all of us to see, and that’s a pretty insipiring thing indeed, my friends.

Are there plot holes aplenty here? Sure, bigger than the monsters themselves (most notable among them being that if they know one of these nuclear Jaegers can seal up the dimenstional breach for good by blowing it to kingdom come, why did’t they try it years ago?), but never you mind that. Just sit back and allow yourself to be as thoroughly and completely wowed as is humanly possible by a movie. And when you feel a smile forming at the corners of your lips as the week goes on, don’t fight it — you really did have that much fun at the movies. It’s totally okay to feel like a giddy little kid again for awhile.