STEVE RYFLE has contributed film journalism and criticism to the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Cineaste, Virginia Quarterly Review, POV, and other publications. He is the author of a book on the history of the Godzilla film series. ED GODZISZEWSKI (Arlington Heights, IL) is editor and publisher of Japanese Giants magazine. He is the author of a Godzilla film encyclopedia, and has written for Fangoria and other publications.
"[Up] to the challenge, a major achievement ... as authoritative a
biography as [Honda] will probably ever receive. If you loved these
movies as a kid (or even continue to do so in adulthood), this book
will be mighty hard to put down."--Steve Mcfarlane, Cineaste
Magazine
"[Up] to the challenge, a major achievement ... as authoritative a
biography as [Honda] will probably ever receive. If you loved these
movies as a kid (or even continue to do so in adulthood), this book
will be mighty hard to put down."--Steve Mcfarlane, Cineaste
Magazine
"Where the authors really triumph is in the wealth of information
provided about the autobiographical, historical and cultural
context to Honda's work ... The impression gained from this
impressively researched tome is of a self-effacing yet highly
accomplished director with his own distinctive vision, who despite
being hamstrung by the success of his most famous film managed a
career that fully justifies the comprehensive and in-depth
consideration presented here."--Jasper Sharp, Sight & Sound: The
International Film Magazine
"[A]n appreciation of Japanese fantasy-film history through the
eyes of a filmmaker whose name is obscure but populism remains
influential."--Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune
"[A] wider, deeper and more valuable examination of not only one
man's career, but also the life that produced it and the system
that nurtured it--and almost destroyed it."--Mark Schilling, The
Japan Times
"Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, From Godzilla to Kurosawa should
serve as a model of how to do a film biography--any biography,
really. Beautifully designed and produced, Ishiro Honda
incorporates many illustrative photographs of the Japanese director
and his associates without becoming a coffee table book; the text
is clearly written, free of academic jargon or fanboy effusions;
the book answers to a need as the first full-length account in
English of Honda."--David Luhrssen, Shepherd Express
"[A] must-own title for anyone interested in Japanese
science-fiction and Japanese cinema in general."--Patrick Galvan,
Toho Kingdom
"Assembled from years of meticulous research, and detailing the
entirety of Honda's filmmaking spectrum, this prestige book offers
an in-depth, revealing portrait of the man--as well as his
movies--on a level previously unseen by western
audiences."--Patrick Galvan, SYFY Wire
"Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa
accomplishes a lot in under 350 pages. Perhaps most impressively,
it provides the reader with a lasting sense of the man--his
temperament, values, philosophies, dreams, and
disappointments--behind some of cinema's most beloved characters
(Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra), while also exhaustively detailing the
lifelong Toho director's entire body of work (much of which is
unavailable in the U.S. and even Japan)."--Chris Shields, Film
Comment
"This carefully researched and detailed book gives us a full
picture of the man and his life."--From the preface by Martin
Scorsese
"I first saw Godzilla in 1956 at the tender age of eight. Something
about the film filled me with a somber dread--not the giant,
fire-breathing monster destroying Tokyo, but the overall tone, an
underlying sadness, a sense of grief and horror. Japan is the only
nation to suffer atomic bombs dropped on two of its cities, and
Godzilla gave powerful expression to this emotional ambience
disguised as a giant monster movie. The director of this seminal
motion picture was Ishiro Honda, the creator of an astonishing
output of science-fiction and horror films from Toho Studios and
one of my personal cinematic gods."--John Carpenter
"Exhaustive researchers, Ryfle and Godziszewski delve deeply into
the entirety of Honda's sometimes harrowing life while defining his
films within Japanese studio system and his later collaborations
with Kurosawa. Filling a huge vacuum of needed scholarship, it's
required reading for genre fans and serious students of Japanese
cinema alike."--Stuart Galbraith IV, author of The Emperor and the
Wolf
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