No Kidding Sherlock

The Sherlock Holmes posters so far have been pretty consistent visually, always sporting some fog, and blue tinge (a little more pronounced here) and backgrounds that scream period. Not earth shattering stuff, but distinctive enough to to be remembered and essentially ok for a movie which will be sold as “Robert Downey Jr. IS Sherlock Holmes!” anyway. Just get Downey out there looking like Sherlock and make a poster that isn’t completely boring to look at.

The humor is throwing me off a little bit though, especially as portrayed by the tagline. “Holmes for the Holiday”. Are we supposed to consider this to be an example of the supreme wit that will be displayed by Sherlock in the movie? My guess is that the film will have the kind of combination of drama and sometimes caustic humor that we see in, to pick the most obvious example, House, but the tagline isn’t exactly giving me confidence that they got the humor part of the formula right. And to be quite honest, Jude Law’s expression isn’t quite encouraging either.

This are probably just quirks of the poster, not very representative of the actual movie. But it would be nice if they were gone

(Via IMPAwards)

Law Abiding Citizen Gets Another Poster

The Law Abiding Citizen poster campaign has seen several iterations of the same concept: Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx’s heads float around some stylish design that tries to make the poster energetic and hip. The design changes but the same problem remains: the posters tell us nothing about the movie or about the relation of these men. In fact, I didn’t realize they were antagonists in the film until I saw the trailer. At first I thought it was some kind of buddy cop flick.

Now, of course posters aren’t necessarily meant to explain the movie. The trailer is much better at doing that anyway. But the poster should serve as a reminder of why that film could be interesting and exciting, perhaps building on the images in the trailer. In this case it doesn’t, unless your reason to be excited about the film is simply Gerard’s and Jamie’s presence.

They could at least be looking at each other with expressions of rage. Some teeth baring would go a long way.

(Via IMPAwards)

Law Abiding Faces

No, no, no, no, no, no. This is exactly the wrong direction! I said MORE text over their faces, not less!

Consider me displeased.

Law Abiding Citzen Posters

Well, I’m myself think Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler are a little overexposed these days. Apparently the designer here thought the same and decided to cover as much of their faces as he could with the title, and the tagline.

Which is all fine and good, but the idea could be taken further. Put some critic’s quotes in there, long ones! The name of the director, all the movies these people have been in, and, of course, “Oscar Winner” on Foxx’s. With that you could easily make it so we didn’t have to see even a bit of these guys faces.

Sure, that would probably draw the ire of whoever is paying these guys lots of money so they can sell the movie using them. But it would also conquer my undying slight appreciation.

When Close-Ups Attack

Johnny Depp is a very charming fellow with a very expressive face which is normally endlessly entertaining to watch. And yet in this posters I don’t quite get the intriguing sense of danger that was quite clearly emanating from his character in the poster below.

Sure, part of that can be attributed to a more felicitous choice of facial expression. But it is also the case that sometimes less (close-up) is more. Sometimes characters need room tho breath, to convey things with their bodies, to be in their environment.

This is, of course, another aspect of why the floating heads convention grates.

(Via Kinopoisk and IMPAwards)

Brothers Bloom Posters

Ok, first off, this is not an official poster for Brothers Bloom. Instead it’s something the director asked his cousin to cook up. Still, it’s worth posting. Even tough I’m not a big fan of this particular drawing I think it still shows the potential drawn posters have to mesmerize and sell movies. Could we perhaps have a little bit more of this type of thing in official posters? Please?

The drawn poster is, for example, much better at conveying the rollicking trip around the world aspect of the movie than this other, very official poster.

The official poster does have one advantage: the orange umbrellas. No really. The orange on the poster is very lively and the umbrellas are offbeat and rather memorable. Still, not enough to really get one hooked. But at least it is something that will catch your eye, and maybe remind you of that trailer you saw online a while ago and that looked so good.

(Via BrothersBloom and FilSchoolRejects)

Sherlock Holmes Poster

This photo (I’ll update with a better picture when it comes out) of the teaser poster for Sherlock Holmes has me quite surprised. This is not how I expected Sherlock to look. There is a certain edge, a certain darkness I don’t generally imagine the character having.

Then again maybe I just didn’t read the novels closely enough. Or don’t remember them well enough.

Anyways, this is the very first poster, so a lot could happen with the campaign. But right now the focus seems to be Robert Downey Jr. IS Sherlock Holmes. Which seems like fine pitch as far as I’m concerned. Several films have now been sold on top Johnny Depp playing an interesting character, and after Iron Man Downey seems to be inhabiting a similar position in the public’s consciousness.

As a matter of fact I would love if more films were sold based on great actors delivering riveting performances. That would probably mean more good movies were being made.

You can see some more ShoWest posters here, including many you have seen before, but now in the crappy photo version!

(Via FirstShowing)

The International Poster

Can I just point out that this poster for The International has two URLs? One scribbled in the middle and another one in the bottom. That is so confusing! To which one am I supposed to go?

What seems to have happened here is that they took the original poster and decided to reuse it to promote their new spiffy web site. Since they weren’t changing anything else, they kept the old url at the bottom.

Ok, perhaps not the most important thing ever, but still a little weird, right? Right?

In other news, the poster seems to suffer from a bit of Bournitis.

Yo Clive, Damon has been walking around holding a gun for years now. Find your own shtick.

Ok, so perhaps not the most cunning comparison ever, but when you put these two things together you certainly have enough content for a post, right? Right?

(Via IMPAwards)

Separeted at Birth: Mirror, Mirror on the Ground Edition

Separating the poster in two and using the bottom half for a reflection that reveals another version of the character seems to be a popular design choice these days. Outside of these two posters we also had the poster for The Life Before Her Eyes, which went in a similar route.

Of course, in the case of the posters above what is striking isn’t just the similar concept, which is actually a bit different since the one for Flashback uses the reflection to showcase the younger version of the character while the one for Leaves just shows a different version of the same person, but also the general visual resemblance.

I think that the poster for Leaves is the better one, mostly because it has less fat allowing the focus to fall squarely in the main concept. Secondarily, I prefer the strong green, strong black and white color scheme better than a like the similar but bluer scheme of Flashback, and making the poster work with either side up is a neat idea.

*Update*

Is it turns out in Leaves of Grass Ed plays twins, so it’s not really two versions of the same character. But still, same diff, right? Right?

(Via IMPAwards)

Another Blindness Poster

I might be wrong, but I think this is the first non-character Blindness poster to focus exclusively on Jullianne Moore, who plays the only person not affected by the blindness epidemic. Before that we had posters that focused on the general concept or that gave space to the all-star cast.

The focus on the character played by Moore can also be seen on the tagline: “In a World Gone Blind, What if You Were the Only Person Who Cold See?”. So the poster asks us to envision ourselves as her, the only seeing person in the in the middle of the blind. This is a slight change of focus from the sell we had before, which asked us to imagine what would happen if the world was affected by an epidemic of blindness. It’s a more specific, more personal and I think a little more effective focus.

Visually the poster maintains the same style we saw in the last few posters, which I appreciate. But the image of Moore’s face with all the hands around strikes me as more powerful emotionally and more memorable than what we had in the past posters. So overall I think this is a step up for the campaign. Not necessarily a huge step, but a step nevertheless.

(Via IMPAwards)