Official: Criterion re-releasing Gojira!

It was rumored a couple of months ago that Criterion would be re-releasing Ishiro Honda’s masterpiece Gojira on Blu-ray. Shock Til You Drop is now confirming the film will be coming back to Blu-ray on January 14th, 2012.

Here’s a list of special features we can expect:

New high-definition digital restoration (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)

- Audio commentary by David Kalat (A Critical History and Filmography of Toho’s Godzilla Series)

- New high-definition digital restoration of Godzilla, King of the Monsters, Terry Morse’s 1956 reworking of the original, starring Raymond Burr

- Audio commentary for Godzilla, King of the Monsters by Kalat
New interviews with actor Akira Takarada (Hideto Ogata), Godzilla performer Haruo Nakajima, and effects technicians Yoshio Irie and Eizo Kaimai

- Interview with legendary Godzilla score composer Akira Ifukube

- Featurette detailing Godzilla’s photographic effects

- New interview with Japanese-film critic Tadao Sato

- The Unluckiest Dragon, an illustrated audio essay featuring historian Greg Pflugfelder describing the tragic fate of the fishing vessel Daigo fukuryu maru, a real-life event that inspired Godzilla

- Theatrical trailers

- New and improved English subtitle translation

- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic J. Hoberman

Awesome! It looks as though this film wil finally get  a worthy release this time around.