Movies & TV

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• Movies & TV

  Godzilla: Creator Tomoyuki Tanaka’s long history with the film

  Tomoyuki Tanaka (1910-1997) created Godzilla with the help of three other key people. He was joined in his efforts by film director Ishiro Honda, special effects expert Eiji Tsuburaya and composer Akira Ifukube. A 1940 graduate of Kansai University, Tanaka joined Toho Studios and within four years was producing his own movies. In the early 1950s, he was planning to begin work on a Japanese-Indonesian film titled “Eiko no Kanatani” (“Behind the Glory”), but...

  |2 days ago

• Movies & TV

  Godzilla: Top 5 American radioactive beings

  The idea of nuclear radiation affecting beings in terrifying ways isn’t limited to creative thinkers in Japan. Americans also have dabbled with their own mythologies over the years. Oversized insects and animals abound, along with superheroes — and super villains. Here are our favorite five; how many of them do you know? 1: “Them!”: 1954 Warner Bros. film about gigantic ants discovered in the New Mexico desert that have become giants due to radiation. It was...

  |2 days ago

• Movies & TV

  Godzilla: Toughest enemies have included Destoroyah, Mechagodzilla and Gigan

  King Ghidorah: This was a golden dragon monster with three heads, two legs, two batlike wings and two tails. Often he was under mind control when he was on a rampage or battling Godzilla. His origins have varied. In the Showa series of films (1954-1979), he was created by the Garogans and given to the Xilians, who unleashed him upon Earth. In the Heisei series (1980-1998), King Ghidorah was the result of three Dorats (genetically engineered creatures meant to be pets) fusing because of a...

  |2 days ago

• Movies & TV

  Godzilla: Allies have included Rodan, Jet Jaguar and King Caesar

  Godzilla Jr.: Known by four other names — Baby Godzilla, Little Godzilla, Minya and Minilla. He first appeared in “Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla 2” as an egg found by Godzilla on Adonoa Island. This compact version of Godzilla did not take up the larger beast’s penchant for destruction. But after he is killed by Destoroyah, a battle between Godzilla and Destoroyah, which destroys both, results in radiation saturating the area and the dead smaller Godzilla coming back...

  |2 days ago

• Arts and entertainment

  Godzilla: Blue Oyster Cult’s ‘Godzilla’ song still rocks

  With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound He pulls the spitting high tension wires down Helpless people on a subway train Scream bug-eyed as he looks in on them He picks up a bus and he throws it back down As he wades through the buildings toward the center of town Oh no, they say he’s got to go go go Godzilla Oh no, there goes Tokyo go go Godzilla History shows again and again How nature points up the folly of...

  |2 days ago

• Movies & TV

  Godzilla: 50 years marked with star on Hollywood Walk of Fame

  Godzilla’s 50th birthday was marked by an over-the-top celebration. On Nov. 29, 2004, the much-loved monster was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. The event also honored his retirement from the movies, after completing the Toho Pictures Inc. film “Godzilla: Final Wars.” The icing on the cake was when Hollywood’s honorary mayor, Johnny Grant, proclaimed Nov. 29 “Godzilla Day.” Actor...

  |2 days ago

• Television programs

  Fall TV: NBC adds dramas with Debra Messing, Katherine Heigl

  NEW YORK (AP) — NBC, which rebounded this season from a stubborn ratings slump, will try to build on its gains with a dozen new series that include dramas starring Debra Messing and Katherine Heigl and a pair of comedies produced by Will Ferrell. In the 2014-15 schedule announced Sunday before its New York presentation to advertisers, NBC also said it will move its freshman series “The Blacklist” to Thursday starting in February — surrendering for now its...

  LYNN ELBER AP Television Writer |3 days ago

• Arts and entertainment

  Fall TV: Fox cuts back on ‘American Idol,’ adds ‘Batman’ prequel ‘Gotham’

  NEW YORK — Fox will cut “American Idol” to one night for several weeks next spring, part of a reset for a struggling network that will have 11 new series in the coming year including the much-awaited “Batman” prequel “Gotham.” The network will also break up its Sunday animation block by moving in the critical favorite “Brooklyn Nine Nine.” It is replacing two of its Tuesday-night comedies with an unscripted show that...

  Associated Press |3 days ago

• Movies & TV

  ‘Her,’ one of the best films of last year, coming to DVD

  Set in near-future Los Angeles, Spike Jonze’s offbeat romantic comedy “Her” eerily rings truer than anything else the movies offer on the subject of love these days. Joaquin Phoenix plays Theodore Twombly, a slightly sad character who makes his living writing “personalized” letters for people. One day an ad for a new computer operating system catches his eye, and he buys it, or rather her. The OS can be personalized and it deduces after a few...

  Rob Lowman
  |3 days ago

• Movies & TV

  Local home brewers, Golden Road Brewing in Los Angeles among stars in next season of ‘Brew Dogs’

  There was no chugging, flip-cup tourneys or keg stands, but at a recent beer party there was plenty of drinking and cheering as James Watt and Martin Dickie took over Golden Road Brewing for a “beer-off.” The two self-proclaimed Scottish “beer evangelists” and hosts of Esquire Network’s “Brew Dogs” were at the Los Angeles brewery and pub Tuesday...

  Mariecar Mendoza
  |3 days ago