Godzilla roars, with help from Hollywood
Play
Godzilla, the anti-hero giant lizard, is back to save us all in a new Hollywood take on the Japanese franchise. That is if we don't get stomped on by his massive legs, thrashed by his tail, toasted by his atomic-fire breath or deafened by his roar.
That roar is important – “the most important sound effect in cinema history” – “Godzilla” sound designer Erik Aadahl tells Wired magazine.
To create the effect, Aadahl and his team put dry ice on a metal vent, where it would scream and vibrate. “We enhanced that with some low-end sound of rocks crunching,” Aadahl adds.
Eventually, the aural portrait was filled out by dragging a giant wooden crate across a Warner Bros soundstage floor, and pumped through a massive array of loudspeakers. The reverberation bounced off walls and was heard across town.
“We got calls from Universal Studios, asking what we were doing,” Aadahl says.
Also opening
l “Enemy” – Jake Gyllenhaal is a sad man who takes no interest in anything in life. Even having a beautiful girlfriend (Melanie Laurent) isn’t enough to snap him out of his sorry state. But he perks up when he spots an actor in a movie who looks just like him. Based on a 2002 novel José Saramago, “O Homem Duplicado” (“The Double”), this thriller is directed by Denis Villeneuve, who previously worked with Gyllenhaal on the twist-filled child-abduction drama “Prisoners”.
l “Haunt” – In a creepy old house, a teenage boy begins experiencing scares. A neighbour girl helps investigate, and they find a box that allows them to communicate with the dead.
Also showing
l The Friese-Greene Club – Tonight’s must-see-on-the-big-screen selection is Terrence Malick’s painterly debut, “Badlands”, following Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek on a cross-country crime spree. Shows start at 8. For bookings, check FGC.in.th.
l Learning Through Asean – Indonesian Movies – The second part of a double-bill at the Thai Film Archive opens at 1 tomorrow with “Postcards from the Zoo”, a surreal comedy by Indonesian indie director Edwin. It’s about an orphan girl who grows up in a zoo, working various odd jobs. She then takes up a with an itinerant cowboy magician. It competed for the Golden Bear at the Berlin fest in 2012. That’s followed at 3 with a selection of Edwin’s short films and then a talk with the director and his producer Meiske Taurisa. For details, see Fapot.org.
l Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand – A bitter widower fights being moved into a nursing home in the 2011 Swiss drama “La Petite Chambre”, showing at 7 on Monday. He ends up saddled with a caregiver, a young woman who is just as stubborn and bitter as he is. It was Switzerland’s Oscar submission. Come early for wine, snacks and cheese. For details, visit FCCThai.com.
l Alliance Française – Tragedy strikes a young family in Australia when the father dies in “L’Arbe” (“The Tree”). One of the daughters, an eight-year-old-girl, believes her father’s spirit lives in the gigantic fig tree that grows in their yard, and it is so big, it threatens to topple over and crush their house. It’s in French with English subtitles at 7pm on Wednesday. For details, check, www.afthailande.org.
