Recent palaeontological research suggests that those spectacular crests that adorn the heads of the duck-billed type of dinosaur may have been used to communicate.
“The structures contain extremely long, convoluted nasal passages that loop up over the tops of their skulls. In the study, scientists used medical scans to peer inside these crests and reconstruct the brains and nasal cavities of four different lambeosaur species,” reports World Science.
Computer models … suggest that the crests could have been used to make low, eerie bellowing calls that could have been used in communication, perhaps to call for mates or warn others of predators.
The new study used used CT, or computed tomography, scans, a method of examining objects with X-rays and a computer that builds a series of cross-sectional scans.
The scans documented a delicate inner ear that confirms that the dinosaurs could hear the low calls produced by the crest, said [a member of the research team]. “We were surprised to see just how large the centers of the brain associated with higher cognitive functions were … We suspected that the crested duck-billed dinosaurs used both vocal and visual displays, but now we see that they had the brain power and hearing to pull off these behaviors.”
Check out this excellent set of kaiju illustrations, featuring Godzilla, Gamera and their over-sized mates.
The artistic style is consistent throughout so I assume the pictures are by the same artist, and the indications are that he is Japanese and their source a Japanese magazine. This site gives no indication of who did them, though, or where they came from, but I’m sure the more kaiju-art savvy out there will know.
There are even some anatomical illustrations of the monsters. The diagram of Godzilla’s inner workings (below) appears to be the one used in an article in the current issue of that definitive kaiju magazine G-Fan (#85), “The [Fictional] Science of Godzilla” by Timothy Lee Elliott.
Adult being eaten by giant insect, screaming, being thrown around, running and ultimately dying on camera.
Crowds of people running from the giant insects, and possibly being chased down by the monsters and eaten. This includes individuals, such as business people, the homeless, artists, tourists, families, older/retired people as well.
Individuals who can perform acrobatics, are willing to run, fall, scream and die on camera, and possibly be willing to be dragged on camera.
E.M.T./E.M.S. workers with their own uniform, props and makeup.
Firefighters with their own uniform, props and makeup.
National Guardsmen with their own uniform and/or props OR must fit our uniforms, and have a military-style look appropriate to the part. Must be physically fit/slim to medium build.
Military Personnel with their own uniform and/or props OR must fit our uniforms, and have a military-style look appropriate to the part.
Uniformed NYPD Officers with their own uniform and/or props …
NYPD Detective. Must be over 23 years old and come dressed in a suit that you can run in.
Children, tweens and younger, who have lost their parents or are with their parents.
Older/retired and/or slightly senile/cantankerous person who has been left behind or is lost in the midst of a giant roach attack.
Crazy person/homeless person. Must provide your own clothing, props and makeup.
Got the picture?
This is from a casting call that went out this month advertising a film shoot in Manhattan — South St. Seaport area. It’s for the film Pesticide (directed by Pat Cerrato). A low budget independent film, Pesticide features giant insects invading New York.
Giant insects are found in the sewers of NYC. One man, who is known for crying wolf, has to tell his bosses, who never take him serious. He puts his job and his love life on the line for the sake of the city! Only when they find his story to be true it is too late … or is it?
Britain’s answer to Japan’s iconic Gojira [aka Godzilla] featured the rather clever concept of a large sea monster captured and returned to London by authorities, who are soon enough dismayed to discover that it is only a little ‘un. Now Mum’s come to town looking for junior — and she’s not happy.
This film was Gorgo (UK-1961; dir. Eugene Lourie).
Fans have speculated on the possibility of a sequel for decades. Now M.J. Simpson (whose work appears in Fangoria and elsewhere) has scripted a short film called Waiting for Gorgo that partially addresses the speculation. Not that it is actually a sequel, mind you. It’s more like a “semisequel”, he says, set about 40 years after the events of Gorgo.
Apparently no monsters actually appear in the 15-minute movie. “We’re using the conventions of a monster movie to satirize the bureaucracy of the British Civil Service,” Simpson commented.
Deep in the bowels of the Ministry of Defence lies a secretive government department identified only as the ‘DMOA’. Just what the DMOA does has been lost in the annals of time — all that is known is that it’s the last line of defence protecting London from total destruction.
Determined to find out more about this strange department, Alexandra, a young ambitious defence analyst, sets off into the rabbit warrens of Whitehall to see the DMOA for herself. Finding two aged public servants in varying stages of senility, Alexandra is convinced that the DMOA is the result of an unfortunate mistake. However, as the conversation progresses it becomes apparent that the old guys may not be as senile as they seem, and more worryingly, they may indeed be London’s last line of defence.
Director: Benjamin Craig
Screenplay: M.J. Simpson
Producers: Lisa Whelan, Benjamin Craig
Executive Producers: Omar Todd, Kylie Herd
Director of Photography: Brian Strange
Production Designer: Timothy Orman
Filmed at the George Lucas Stage at Elstree Studios in the UK, Waiting for Gorgo stars Geoffrey Davies (Tales from the Crypt and Oh! What a Lovely War), Nicholas Amer (the 1990 version of Treasure Island, Disciple of Death, The Draughtsman’s Contract and an episode of The Avengers), and Kelly Eastwood (Death at a Funeral).
Geoffrey Davies with M.J. Simpson in the DMOA offices
Currently in post-production for a release “before Christmas”, this looks like it will be a well-produced and loving tribute to Britain’s best giant monster flick.
Das Wunder von Loch Ness [lit. The Wonder of Loch Ness; aka The Secret of Loch Ness] (Germany-2008; dir. Michael Rowitz)
Thanks to our friends The Gualagon Team, the Backbrain can tell you a bit more about this new German-produced Loch Ness Monster flick.
Made by Moonlake Entertainment‘s TV Film subsidiary company Alpha Filmtime, this family-oriented monster movie premiered on 5 February this year on Sat1 TV and has garnered two nominations in the 2008 German TV Awards, in the categories “Best Camera” and “Best Visual Effects”, as well as winning the Award for “Best Visual Effects” — thanks to the efforts of VFX Team “Trixter”, headed by Michael Coldewey.
According to IMDB, it has also won a Bavarian TV Special Award for “the development and production of virtual characters” and gained a White Elephant — Special Award at the Munich Film Festival for child star Lukas Schust.
The film was directed by Michael Rowitz, a veteran of TV production, and features Lisa Martinek, Hans Werner Mayer and the animated 3D Character “Oki”.
The movie is about an eleven year old boy named Tim, who has a passion for dinosaurs and, in particular, the Loch Ness monster.
While doing research, he stumbles across information about an explorer who has a striking similarity to his supposedly dead father. Tim decides to go to Loch Ness where the explorer is currently working. He meets Eric and a six hundred year old [CGI] druid called Oki. This druid tells Tim the real Secret of Loch Ness. There are lots of surprises waiting for Anna, Tim`s mother, at Loch Ness.
Word on the film has been positive so far and as it has been released on DVD in Germany by Warner Home Video, hopefully we’ll see a subtitled release in the US and worldwide sooner rather than later.
It’s quite a coup when you get the original actors, all dead, to cameo in your movie about the silent era of Hollywood — without splicing in old footage or engaging in CGI re-constructions.
Director Alex Monty Canawati’s silent, black-and-white biopic, Return to Babylon, is said to have been infiltrated by phantom figures — ghosts, they reckon, of the dead stars that are the subject of the film, which is about assorted scandals in Hollywood at the beginning of the 20th Century.
Much of Return to Babylon — “part mystery, part comedy and part psychological drama” — was filmed on location in the estates of the deceased stars, and lead Jennifer Tilly and other members of the crew began to feel that they were not alone on the sets.
It was only in post-production that Canawati noticed that the film was haunted by odd visual glitches; “several of the stars were ‘replaced’ by images of haunting ghostly apparitions”. Or at least ghostly faces were superimposed over their faces:
The film’s release has been long delayed, and according to IMDB, the reason for the delay was the discovery of the “odd figures, morphing of characters and ghost-like images, etc. in some scenes. These were especially clear in still framing. These were found to be in the original negatives and not in the special effects. The film makers decided the images do not take away from the integrity of the film, thus the release date.” The film is being release this Halloween at the Salem Cinema in Salem, Massachusetts.
As Ken Hulsey, reporting on Monster Island News, puts it: “It seems that many deceased silent movie stars jumped at the chance to once again grace the silver screen!”
Spooky, eh? Whether it’s an unexplained phenomenon or a bit of canny (or uncanny) PR, I like the idea!
OK, it’s not as big as this one (sighted at Mesa Del Sol, Albuquerque NM), but the idea of a giant snake 12.8 metres in length (that’s about 40 foot long) is fairly daunting. We’re used to them in films such as Anaconda… but for real?
Jonathan Bloch and his colleagues have found vertebrae from a gargantuan prehistoric snake in the rocks beneath a coal mine in Columbia. Bloch, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida in Gainesville, commented that the as yet unnamed creature would have been so big it “would have had trouble fitting though the door into your office.”
Estimating a snake’s length from fragmentary remains is difficult because most of the creature’s vertebrae differ only in their size, not in their proportions. Bloch and his colleagues can’t readily determine whether the segment that they unearthed came from the thickest portion of the snake, so their estimates of the snake’s size and weight are minimum values. The researchers contend that the ancient snake they discovered would have stretched at least 12.8 meters and weighed at least 1.27 metric tons.
With the proposed big studio John Carter of Marsproject still slated for 2012 — “reimagined at Pixar as a half animation/half live action project”, having gone through a gamut of directors (from Robert Rodriguez, to Kerry Conran of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow fame, then to Jon Favreau, director of Zathura: A Space Adventure) — it may be that Edgar Rice Burroughs’ space fantasies are about to see some long-overdue big screen action. Another Burroughs film project has raised its head into the bloglight, this one from Angelic Pictures.
Angelic Pictures is an independent production company that was founded in 1997 “to assist in the creation of a major Steven Seagal action film”. In 2003, according to its website, it changed its focus to the production of fully funded feature films.
Now the company has announced the development of a $40 million project to film Burroughs’ Pirates of Venus, the first in the five-book “Venus” series. The film is scheduled for a 2010 release and the treatment and script is said to be completed. The website claims that Angelic has secured the rights to six Burroughs novels altogether.
Sounds ambitious, doesn’t it? From the website it’s a little hard to determine how current this information is as the most recent date mentioned is the launch of the film’s first public promotion at Comic Con International in 2006. The film may be dragging its heels after an enthusiastic start, as is often the case. The Pirates of Venus movie website is copyrighted 2005.
Still, it looks like something to watch.
Synopsis
After the carnage of World War 1, flying Ace Carson Napier had given up on life and the “civilized” world. At the lowest point in his life, Carson’s fortune changes as he inherits the expansive estate of his lost Grandfather. Fate leads him to decide if he should risk his life and follow his Grandfather to a distant world aboard an aged craft built by the old Man. A beautiful alien princess in need of his help gives him a new purpose in life within the dense jungles of Venus.
The website includes lots of concept art by Scott Benefiel(done in 2006, by the way) and this is certainly worth a look:
It also includes several galleries of “Vintage Art” relating to Pirates of Venus. If the giant monster goodness of the images below from Joe Jusko’s Art of Edgar Rice Burroughs (FPG 1996) reflect something of the potential final product, you can definitely count me in!
Current producer of the film is Bruce A. Pobjoy, who, apart from other credits, was post-production supervisor on the 1991 “Dark Shadows” TV series.
So your friend is a zombie. How would you handle the problem? With group therapy?
George’s Intervention (US-[in production]; dir. J.T. Seaton)
George’s friends have gathered for an intervention… George’s intervention. You see, George is a zombie. And his friends are hoping to convince him to stop eating people and to enter ‘zombie rehab’. It’s morally wrong to eat people. Plus, it’s unhealthy. The meat is raw. And who knows where these people have been.
With the help of a professional interventionist, George’s friends confront George regarding his ‘addiction’. But, over the course of the night, George’s friends begin to disappear. Have they given up hope that the intervention will be successful? Or have they become dinner?
What you’ve just experienced is a trailer for a documentary about one of the most infamous indie filmmakers you’ve never heard of, David “The Rock” Nelson. Nelson has produced over 30 genre films — all of them notoriously no-budget. He is certifiably insane, yet somehow has achieved the status of a latter-day poster-boy for indie filmmaking.
Nelson’s work has become something of an obsession for Kaiju Search-Robot Avery, too, so I suggested that instead of hiding in the background, he should write up the article himself. He did. Well done, Avery!
David “The Rock” Nelson, Only Slightly in Focus
by Avery Battles
David “THE ROCK” Nelson, the infamous Z-grade, zero[no] budget backyard filmmaker from Des Plaines, Illinois, is at it again! As stated in the title of a 2007 documentary about him, “Can’t Stop the Rock!”, there seems to be no stopping this insane and out-of-control madman. He has been dubbed “The Ed Wood Of The 90s And Beyond That, Even” and “America’s Two-Fisted Filmmaker”. Many see him as a nuisance. To others he is an inspiration. Then, of course, there’s the majority of us, who don’t know exactly what to make of him. Whatever the case, he’s here and he doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon.
So who is this one-man filmmaking machine?
In the early 1960s, at the ripe young age of just 7 years old, David Nelson had big dreams of becoming a monster movie filmmaker. He asked his parents to buy him an 8mm camera, but at the time they couldn’t afford one. However, they did manage to purchase him a Kodak 120 photo camera, in front of which he would pose in his Halloween costumes and masks. Later in the mid ’60s, after forming a ‘monster club’ with some other neighborhood kids — one of whom’s father owned a super 8 mm movie camera with which he would shoot short monster films featuring his mates — he made his acting debut. It was in a 3-minute short called “The Ant Devil”. Looking at the film now, no one could have predicted that one of these young boys would eventually grow up to become an infamous filmmaker nor that the title creature of the short, a 6-inch plastic toy ant, would later be revived to star in films from that future filmmaker.
In high school Nelson would take two years of photography, which would later help his filmmaking career tremendously. In the early 1970s he would become fascinated with boxing and bodybuilding and would train furiously after school with his boxing coach. Subsequently he would join the marines, serving from 1976 to 1980, where he was given the nickname “Corporal Oo-Rah”. There he joined the boxing team and then found God and, as he puts it, “was saved”. It was also in the marines while stationed in the Philippines that he finally purchased his first dual-8 movie camera.
After the marines he would join a bible college and major in evangelism. While there he also took up wrestling. Upon graduating with a BA degree, he would start preaching at any given opportunity anywhere, from missionary churches to street corners. To make a living he became a door-to-door salesman selling encyclopedias, dictionaries, and medical books. The whole time, whenever given the opportunity, he’d film daily events with his video camera. This material is often incorporated into his films alongside other stock footage.
Finally in the early 1990s his love of “Monsta” movies, as he loves to call them, would take center stage as he began filming a series of short films and features starring such famous monster icons as Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, the Werewolf, and others. These sport such insane titles as “Frankenstein And Dracula vs. Sodom Insane”, “The Giant Fly”, “Dracula From Space”, “Miss Werewolf”, “Mummy A.D. 1993” and of course the “Pumkinman” and “Devil Ant” series.
All up, he has produced 33 features and shorts so far. He films them on 8/8mm. film and edits them to VHS, then transfers them to DVD. In his career he has befriend many famous B-movie celebrities, including actor Conrad Brooks (pictured with Rock on the right), director Roger Corman, gore-splattered FX wizard Tom Savini, horror host Svengoolie, Forrest J. Ackerman and others, some of whom would appear and act in films such as “Conrad Brooks vs. The Werewolf” and his personal favorite “Demon Monster From Outerspace”.
Even innocent bystanders can unknowingly become victims in his films as he’s always on the look-out for unsuspecting celebrities and civilians to attack with his notorious plastic “Devil Ant” prop (see below), while catching it all on film to incorporate into his next feature. Nelson has been known to tape public footage of just about anybody and edit it into his films. Just ask Hilary Clinton, Fred Olen Ray, Harou Nakajima and Kenpachiro Satsuma, among others.
Nelson’s personality is quite explosive and unpredictable as he has been regularly known to rip off his shirt and break into an air-boxing match or to flex his muscles for the cameras during live public appearances. He’s been the subject of two documentaries: the aforementioned “Can’t Stop The Rock” and “Baby Food And Monstas”. He is also an annual Guest Of Honor at the “Monster Bash” that takes place each June in Butler, PA, and has appeared on WGN TV News out of Chicago several times, as well as on “Wild Chicago”, Comedy Central’s “Daily Show” and the “Jon Stewart Show”.
The Demon Monster
He will be making a special return appearance on WGN TV News, his 13th to date, this Halloween October 31st, between 7 and 9 in the morning. There he will be presenting footage of his latest “Monsta” movies in segments during the 2-hour broadcast. You can expect “The Giant Horny Toad Monster” [a.k.a. “Son Of Gila Monster”], the double bill “Killer Cicadas” and “Attack of the Giant Cicadas” [a.k.a. “Oo-Rah vs. The Cicadas”], and the short vids “The Giant Grasshopper Monster” and “The Giant Cricket Monster”. Is this something you can afford to miss?
The Giant Fly
Information on The Rock and his films, including how to get copies, can be obtained through the links below as well as contacting the man himself.
