These character posters for Hellboy 2 don’t really reveal much about the second movie. We have seen these people before. They didn’t look that different.
However, they still serve as a nice way to get us reacquainted with them. And the headshots do look great. Ok, so maybe the big red guy seems a little groggy, but Selma Blair never looked cooler.
(Via the Hellboy 2 official site)
These banners for I Am Legend are quite cool. The posters so far focused solely on New York, showing it devastated. This collection broadens the scope of the destruction immensely. And to a certain extent they drive home the point that Will Smith isn’t just alone on New York, on on America. He is alone in the world.
Plus, they should be very useful when marketing the film abroad. Both because they make the film seem less provincial and because the individual banners could make the people in the countries they depict feel included. Included in the mass death and destruction in this case, but it still counts.
Hong Kong
Lisbon
London
Madrid
Osaka
Reykjaviks
Sydney
Tokyo
*Update*
MovieSoonHK has got two more banners. That makes 11 total, for those keeping score at home.
Taipei
Seoul
This poster, which has been making the rounds, may or may not be a fan made creation. Steve Lieber, artist of the original comic book, says he assumed it was fan made, but can’t be sure. And neither can I right now, but I’ll try to keep you posted.
My guess is that it’s not official, and I that might be for the best. Although the poster is well made, and makes Kate Beckinsale look cool, it doesn’t give us a good sense of the film’s story or setting. Riffing on what Jessica said, I think it works better as an advertisement for sunglasses than as a movie poster.
Bloody Disgusting has a bunch of horror posters from the American Film Market. In general, they aren’t very good, and the films seem to be on the cheap side. But the overall effect of seeing them all together is still interesting.
This Japanese poster for the second Alien Vs. Predator is oddly great. I’m guessing that what we are seeing is the silhouette of the Predalien, although it could just be a regular Alien. Either way, it looks a lot more fascinating and scary than any of the much more revealing images we have seen in the other posters or in the photos released so far. This goes to show, once again, that what you don’t show is often much more scary than what you do show.
“But what is that green and blue fog thingy?” you might ask. And I would say that it doesn’t matter what that is. What does matter is that it looks awesome, and gives the poster a weird alien look that is a great fit for the movie.
This poster just might be too strange to work as one of the main posters for the American campaign, but boy do I like it.
Last week the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences revealed a shortlist of fifteen feature length docs that will compete for the five nominee spots in the Oscars’ feature-length documentary category. To help you put the name together with the face I compiled the posters for these docs.
Autism: The Musical (IMDb)
Body of War (IMDb)
For The Bible Tells Me So (IMDb)
Lake of Fire (IMDb)
Nanking (IMDb)
No End in Sight (IMDb)
Operation Homecoming – Writing the Wartime Experience (IMDb)
The Price of Sugar (IMDb)
The Rape of Europa (IMDb)
Sicko (IMDb)
War Dance (IMDb)
White Light/Black Rain (IMDb)
*Update*
A Promise to the Dead: the Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman (IMDb)
Thanks to the folks from White Pine Pictures for taking the time to point this one out to me.
I unfortunately couldn’t find posters for the following films: Please Vote For Me and Taxi to the Dark Side. If you know where I can find posters for them please let me know.
In what may become a weekly thing, here is a round-up of recent posters that for some reason or other didn’t get a full post.
Cassandra’s Dream
(source)
The design here is just original enough to make the look of the poster memorable. Very tasteful too.
Awake
(source)
I really hated this poster the first time I saw it, but I’m softer on it now. It’s a very typical design, but it’s done well here.
Mad Money
(source)
I’m with Ben. Bad poster.
The Great Debaters
(source)
The great debaters gets a not so great poster. Once again, a very typical design, including the very typical sepia tone. But this particular instantiation of it looks rather shoddy.
Cloverfield
(source)
This poster for Cloverfield is exactly like the old poster for Cloverfield, with one small difference: they aren’t hiding the title anymore.
Charlie Wilson’s War
(source)
The main message of this poster seems to be: “Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts together! Oh yeah, and that Hoffman guy is in it too.”
The Spiderwick Chronicles
(source)
The poster is clever in the way it manages to have many moments and elements from the film in it. But it makes for a very cluttered image.
Nanking
(source)
This poster doesn’t make any strong impression on me, good or bad.
The Walker
(source)
It’s funny that in the poster for a movie called The Walker everybody is sitting down. Great cast tough, and directed by Paul Schrader to boot.
I think it’s interesting to compare these two posters for Teeth. The one above is new and is part of the promotion for the upcoming theatrical release. The one below was used when the movie was in the festival circuit.
Like Chris says, the new poster positions the movie as a clear cut sexual thriller, even going to the extent of using a critic quote that mentions Fatal Attraction. The image does a good job of being alluring but still maintaining a sense of danger.
The old poster positions the movie as more of a comedy. Certainly a quirky comedy, and perhaps one with horror elements, like Shaun of the Dead, but definitely a comedy.
If the name wasn’t the same it would be hard to tell that both posters are for the same movie.
As I understand, the actual movie has both the more horror/thriller elements and the comedy side. Balancing those elements in a movie is very hard. Balancing then in a poster is almost impossible. The marketing team seems to have decided that it would be more effective to sell just the more serious sexual thriller aspect in the poster. Can’t say I disagree with them.
7 character posters for two characters. Seems like a bit of an overkill, doesn’t it? And the tone of all the posters is very similar, so the different versions for each character don’t seem to add much.
Which is not to say that I don’t like the posters. In fact, I love them. I love the very dark mood, the style of the clothes and the environment, the little bloody details like the fingers in the pie, and the look in Depp’s eyes, sometimes mischievous, sometimes just murderous. The posters also scream “Tim Burton movie!”, and that is mighty fine by me.
Sweeney Todd strikes me as a hard sell. A musical about a serial killer? Those two genres don’t generally go together. They do have the now very hot Johnny Depp, which helps, but still.
I think the posters do a very good job of selling the quirky horror movie aspect of the film. Obviously, there isn’t much they can do about the singing. Is Tim Burton (and his style) now mainstream enough for this type of movie to reach a broader audience? I don’t know, but I sure hope so.
I love Steve Carell. The guy just has one those faces that can make you laugh even at an unfunny joke, and that can make the good ones great. So, despite my better judgment, I’m sort of looking forward to Get Smart.
That said, I have to wonder about the choice of hiding so much of Carell’s face in the poster. I understand the idea, but for me they are simply obscuring the movie’s greatest asset.
The funny thing about Maxwell Smart is not just seeing him doing silly stuff. It’s also seeing his reaction as he tries to maintain an air of seriousness even as everything goes haywire. The hair joke gets in the way of that in here.
One other side effect of the hair joke is that Anne ends up having to stand a bit in front of Carell, and doesn’t seem to even realize he is there. In the old Get Smart poster, which can be seen below, there was an interesting interaction and chemistry between Maxwell and Agent 99. The new poster completely lacks that.
I still don’t think it’s a bad poster. But it is far from great and it wastes many of the best elements they had to sell the film.
MoviePosterAddict 