An atomic breath scream is the perfect way to commemorate 1000 releases in "the DVD era".

This 42-second trailer should be at the top of Criterion's product page, not buried at the bottom.

I hope/wish they do a limited screenprint run plus an unlimited giclee series of every single piece of art in this set. Tell them you want this to happen if you feel the same way.

The Showa Era of Godzilla covers 15 films, from the 1954 original to 1975's Terror of MechaGodzilla. In the meat of the sandwich are Destroy All Monsters, All Monsters Attack, King Kong vs Godzilla, and the rest of what giant monster movie nerds consider the foundational "text" of kaiju cinema. These are the movies that defined and launched the subgenre.

The release date of 29 October times this pretty well with the "Criterion 50% sale" at Barnes & Noble we reliably get each fall. The set is worth the $180 ($12 a movie) sticker price, but $90 ($6 per movie) makes it an impulse buy if you are even kinda-sorta into Godzilla, whether you're the adult kid or you have a kid who wants to (or that you want to) get into Gojira.

The extras include U.S. and Japanese audio tracks, improved subtitle translations, and in cases where they exist, different cuts of films (the Raymond Burr version of the original, for example), including what I think is the first U.S. release of the original Japanese version of 1962's King Kong vs. Godzilla.

Special notice should go to the nature of the packaging, which is always several cuts above with Criterion. It's an oversized hardcover book, with art for each film crafted by an amazing array of illustrators, from already-legends Arthur Adams, Geof Darrow, and Bill Sienkiewicz to legends-in-the-making Sophie Campbell and Becky Cloonan.

Some of these people started drawing because they loved these movies back when they were kids, when they saw original release. I like the poetry of that being embedded in this project.