Stoker

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After a considerable amount of time, when I left this blog in hiatus, lost in the ineluctables waves of procrastination, I finally anchored in Port Productivity and decided it is time for a new blog post:

Stoker.

This movie is the first effort of director Park Chan-wook in the English language.
Plot wise, it recreates the same vibes of Shadow Of A Doubt, one of my favorite, but at the same time underrated, Hichtcock's movies.

This poster re-creates a dark, intricate, double-edged plot in a perfectly executed graphic art work that blows up all its fine, detailed complexity.
The art work has been rendered by a team of illustrators and entirely drawn simply with pencils and ink.

It is rare nowadays to develop a film poster - a representation of the first glance at a movie even before its first teaser/trailer - deploying talented artists and impactful visual imagery instead of settling for a hasty composition of random screenshots of the movie itself.

To compare and analyze this aspect, please remember The Avengers' one and simply notice how all elements are simply juxtaposed next to each other with no respect for physic-lighting rules where each character receives light from a different source.Compromises for the sake of marketing or deadlines can be done, but for the ones who care it is mandatory to embrace the importance of upgrading from a level of  complacency to a superior level that can be truly appreciated.

And since I care about this blog, from now on I will only review movie posters compatible with my excellent taste.

Sorry Avengers!

Man On A Ledge

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It is always nice to see self-explanatory posters like Man On A Ledge. 
Funnily enough, it portrays a man on a ledge (duh) and, just in case the concept is not clear enough, the upper text tells us "you can only push an innocent man so far" because yes, he is on a ledge and if you push him he will most likely fall. Unfortunately that is still one of the biggest risks of being a man on ledge. 


And again the main graphic shows us a man on top of the building staring at thousands of people in the street, fire trucks and an extremely distorted building.
Using a fisheye lens for a movie poster is never a good idea - it always deters from the dramatic factor and instead, looks like something from Jackass. Come on Johnny Knoxville, I bet you can jump from that building and land in a tiny, inflatable pool.
At the bottom, the pictures of the rest of the cast are displayed - one of the worst graphic compositions of all.
Screenshots never work for posters, especially when they are cropped in passport picture size and all have different color temperature. Do they really have to show their faces because nobody will recognize just their names? That's a possibility, but the lack of alignment between names and pictures is a fact.


The overall impression about this poster is that other than communicating that the movie is about a man on a ledge it  doesn't tell much more except that Sam Worthington will not need a trichological treatment anytime soon.

Safe House

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I feel like I have an obligation to comment on this poster since it is almost impossible walk in the city without being visually assaulted by the huge face of Denzel Washington telling me, "No one is safe". 

Thanks for reminding me that I am actually walking in a city with a high crime rate and that I could possibly get mugged in the next alley.

Since putting on the poster just the giant face of Denzel Washington warning people about safety issues would be too similar to a public service announcement - which would raise questions about matters way too serious for an action movie - somebody in the graphic department thought it was a good idea to combine it with a Calvin Klein advertisement that shows how good Ryan Reynolds is at glancing behind the camera. 

I would like to imagine that an intern in the company that designed this poster tried to warn coworkers about the problems of compositing both a close up and a wide shot on the same page. 

And, even if this never happened, I am sadly sure somebody else came up with the idea of a split page, candidly thinking he just conceived the smartest arrangement in modern history.

Compositing a poster split in two different images is never so easy. It needs to hold an aesthetic meaning, shapes and vector lines should merge to create a geometric order that is harmonious to the eyes and the dividing line should never be too abrupt.

If interested, a good example of the union of two images is the poster for The Ides Of March. 

The poster for Safe House seems to represent a hasty graphic work where the two images are put together with no logical sense or purpose beside aligning Ryan Reynolds' pubes to Denzel Washington's mouth.

And I honestly don't think it was something they were going for.

The Bourne Legacy

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I am always happy when there are producers around that, pushed by a primal thrill, gamble their money in Avant-garde movies. 

Unfortunately this is not the case.

The Bourne Legacy is just the last chapter of a series we thought was over.  The trilogy, written by Robert Ludlum, ended in 2007 with The Bourne Ultimatum and nobody imagined they would continue filming the adventures written by a guy named Eric Van Lustbader, most likely because nobody read that. 

So, get ready for the fourth chapter and if you are wondering if the movie will star Matt Damon, the answer is... almost.

Same t-shirt, same body type, same boring haircut, but this time the hero is Jeremy Renner who, after being Oscar nominated for The Hurt Locker and The Town, continued riding his fame by being the only superhero without powers in The Avengers.

This poster, in case you are struggling with Matt Damon's absence, tells us "There was never just one" implying that Jason Bourne is only one of many others like him even if this can potentially kill the plot of the first three movies. But who cares? I personally could believe that Jeremy Renner is Matt Damon and it would make no difference.

The graphic uses many big, black streaks aiming to recreate the Psycho graphic artwork. 

Since the final result is not very elegant, creating just a very unbalanced composition, I would rather keep awarding the superb job Saul Bass did, animating black streaks, for the opening sequence of Psycho (nostalgic people like me can click here to relive it).

One last detail I can't avoid noticing is that the new Jason Bourne (that in this movie goes by the name of Aaron Cross, whatever) is pointing his gun very low. 

Thanks to this tiny detail, the movie poster is revealing us that our hero will finally battle versus... a little child or, in the worst case, a midget.

Shame on you Jeremy Renner, nobody wants to see you killing midgets at a children party!

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

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It is my pleasure to introduce on this page the first review by a guest blogger.

Dianagster: welcome to the Movie Poster Drill page!

Make yourself comfortable and tell your edgy personal opinions on the poster for Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.

Take it away Dianagster!

I have no idea what Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is about.

Nonetheless, this movie poster is telling me that this movie came out this December. Is it maybe a Christmas movie? A really sad Christmas movie about an orphan elf with a horrible secret inside his mouth?

Well, I guess Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock are going to be in the movie so I take it as a sign that this movie is probably going to suck. But wait, that kid, who is that kid? This actor, who is gracing thousands of posters hung on hundreds of movie theaters is a total anomaly to me and I guess, since I won't see this movie (see Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock) then I'll have to wait a few years, hoping that this kid did a swell job in Extremely Loud Incredibly Close, and got a crazy role as a pre-pubescent, extremely mysterious, smart, riveting and haunting tween.

Judging by this poster (assuming we did not read Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock) this movie looks like it might be pretty good. Oh. Wait a minute, it seems it says 'From the director of Billy Elliot' Again, distracted by this awful nugget of information that deters from the nice graphics.

Anyway, for the illiterate, that cannot read anything about Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock or Billy Elliot, this movie poster is visually striking, pretty nice, kinda feels like it's going to be a thoughtful, insightful, if a little intense and kinda boring but still artsy and enlightening kind of movie. It feels like it wouldn't matter if the book or the movie came first but one is sure to follow the other.

Edit: Just read what this movie is going to be about. Let's hope Tom Hanks dies off quite fast and it really is about this enigmatic boy after all.