MoviePosters Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Like many people, I regularly bemoan the Photoshop-ization of movie posters without any real knowledge to back it up. Sure, I can tell when heads and bodies don't appear to belong together, or when the movie's stars are not in alignment, as though they were taken from two different photographs and smushed against one another. But where is the hard evidence?

A man named Sebo is my hero. He created a blog and invited readers to "look at movie posters and ads with the eye of a graphic designer." Sebo is an "Artistic Director" and graphic artist in Paris, France, and his blog has concrete examples of "duplications and other hidden actions on Photoshop in images." In the example posted above, he found the source image for the "baby with sunglasses" in the poster for The Hangover: the shot of Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms, and Bradley Cooper in an elevator. The poster artist cropped out Helms, Cooper, and the elevator, changed the colors -- Galifianakis and the infant are clearly wearing the same t-shirts in both images -- added sunglasses, and voilà!

Sebo has a very keen eye: he found duplications of the sea in the poster for Becoming Jane, the two different images of a romantic couple merged into one in the poster for Downloading Nancy, the three different images combined for the Summer Hours international poster, and the disturbing way that Matthew McConaughey's face was altered for the Ghosts of Girlfriends Past poster, transforming his mug from movie-star handsome into plasticized perversity. It's all fascinating, and will make me start looking even closer at movie posters.

[ Via Twitter, thanks to Wise Kwai, mattriviera, and transmission.]

We tend to feature a lot of movie poster photoshopping contests on Cinematical because a) they're tons of fun, and b) they promote creativity and imagination. This latest one is close to being one of my favorites -- over at SomethingAwful.com, as part of their Photoshop Phriday, they asked folks to create public service announcements out of movie posters (or, as they say, "rehabilitated them to be educational, informative, and inspirational"). So, for example, the classic Jaws movie poster suddenly turns into an advertisement to join the Amity Island High Swim Team, and The Spirit poster featuring Sarah Paulson turns into a PSA against germs. One of my personal favorites, although a tad fuzzy, takes the famous Fight Club poster and transforms it into a PSA for fighting infections. Some very funny and unique creations to be found, for sure.

Check out the ones mentioned above and a couple other favorites in the gallery below, then hop on over to SomethingAwful.com to see the rest.



[via Superpunch]

I'm not exactly sure where IMP Awards dug up this alternate poster for Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri Make a Porno, but for my money, it's an equally creative and eye-catching way to sell the stars compared to the current stick-figures-and-'Porno'-free campaign ... a campaign which, it should be said, hasn't stopped the flick from grossing $20 million by this past weekend, which is about on par with most of Smith's recent work and (again) not bad for an advertising angle that didn't push either his name or the faces of leads Elizabeth Banks and Seth Rogen.

Besides, I really don't think the bright colors and cute animals would have led anyone to believe that the (admittedly sweet) Zack and Miri falls in line with, say, Happy-Go-Lucky, but we'll honestly never know if swapping colors for controversy would've had the same effect. (Hey, I still think that the Canadian poster would've done just fine.)

Check out this new (cutesy?) poster after the jump ...

What are you doing for tonight's debate? Will you be watching? And did you know the very super awesome Hofstra University was hosting it (and I'm not just saying that because I went there or anything). Over on Fark, they're hosting a pretty hilarious photoshop contest in which folks are taking existing movie posters and re-tooling them to include John McCain and Barack Obama. One of my favorites has to go to the above poster for Dude, Where's My Car -- and if you look closely at those girls in the background, you'll notice a familiar face (and so what if I've been crushin' on the gal -- she's purty and stuff). Very funny nonpartisan humor.

Check out a group of these posters in the gallery below (the first one is nutty and freaky), then tell us your favorites. Additionally, feel free to send us your own creations and we'll post them at a later date. Get creative people! This is why we have imaginations!

Gallery: Obama/McCain Movie Posters

We already know some studios (like Universal) are looking to bring our most favorite childhood games to the big screen, including Monopoly, Ouija, Candy Land, Clue (which was already a film), Battleship and a few others. And while at first it might sound rather ridiculous, you'd be amazed to see the types of stories a few clever Hollywood screenwriters could throw together for these. Heck, I can't imagine Candy Land would differ greatly from something like Willy Wonka.

That said, the folks over at Worth 1000 launched a photoshop contest recently in which the idea was to take a popular children's game and create a movie poster for it. The poster above for Monopoly (which director Ridley Scott is apparently developing for real) doesn't make much sense, but I do admire the casting choices. Could you imagine a film based on the Monopoly board game having a cast like that? After settling all their paychecks, you'd have -- what -- fifteen bucks to shoot the thing? Check out a few more of our favorites in the gallery below.

Out of all your favorite childhood games, which could you see becoming the most worthwhile film?



Related: Cinematical Seven: Bad Ideas for Board Game Movies

As the son of an illustrator, I grew up appreciating movie poster artists more than probably do most movie geeks. And John Alvin, who passed away last Wednesday, was one of the artists I idolized. Alvin is considered one of the most important poster artists of the past 35 years, and it's no wonder. From E.T. to Gremlins to Blade Runner to The Goonies* to numerous Disney films, his art is as recognizable and iconic as poster design gets. The Smithsonian even named one of his works, for Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise, one of the best posters of the 20th century.

His name may not be as familiar as that of Drew Struzan, another well-known movie poster designer whose work is quite similar. And it isn't that strange to (as I did often in my youth) confuse the work of the two illustrators, both of whom attended the same school as my father, Pasadena's Art Center College of Design, and both of whom worked for many of the same clients and for many of the same films. But there's no doubting that Alvin, who got his start with the poster for Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles and worked on many of Brooks' film campaigns from then on, was a distinctly innovative artist.

In addition to designing original posters for more than 135 films, Alvin produced art for many special edition and anniversary releases, as well as collector's art for popular movies such as Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean. There's probably a good chance that, if you're a real movie geek, you have something of his hanging up in your room or home. I think the closest thing for me is a Blade Runner t-shirt on which his poster art appears. And, of course, I can see a bunch of his talent clearly when looking over at my DVD collection*.

For a good list of his work, check out the filmography on his Wikipedia page, and for a fairly comprehensive look at images of his posters, check out this fan site.

*I just realized that the poster for The Goonies that I'm most familiar with, and which is on my DVD, is the one by Drew Struzan. Oops.

Tooling around the internet this morning, a number of movie posters from the Cannes Film Festival have somehow found a way invade my computer screen; one of which just happened to be the production poster for Charlie Kaufman's (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York. Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as a theater director who, while attempting to create a life-size replica of New York inside a warehouse for a new play, struggles to maintain the several different relationships he has with those of the opposite sex. ( I imagine the poster should make a lot more sense to people now.) Of course, since it's also written by Kaufman, look for lots of weird things to happen along the way. Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams, Hope Davis and Tilda Swinton also star.

Apart from Synecdoche, New York, we also have posters from flicks like Paranoid Park (the new Gus Van Sant flick), Leo DiCaprio's The 11th Hour (in which he attempts to be as cool as Al Gore), Tenderness (featuring Russell Crowe sporting a wicked mustache) and a new Jessica Simpson film called Major Movie Star (which in and of itself is a major contradiction). She wears an army-style bikini, and I imagine the film will have her joining the military as a dumb blonde -- gee, keep them original ideas coming boys. I don't get it, is it Simpson's goal to only star in films that are either inspired by or based on old 80s flicks and 70s TV shows?

And you thought the MPAA was strict on our movie posters -- check out some of the artwork for these films from Ghana. Yes, Ghana. A small homegrown film industry has slowly grown over in the African country, as audiences feast on a selection of home movie titles such as Demonic Cat, Ekulu and Child of Destiny. With the films come these posters -- painted by local artists on sack cloth and displayed on walls throughout the Ghanian ghettos.

But it's not just Ghanian film titles that get these vibrant, colorful posters -- they will also create their own take on some American films as well. An artist named Pascal Saumade discovered the posters and has since put them on display throughout Europe; currently, folks can check them out at the Dazed and Confused Gallery in London through December 12. There, they'll be able to catch a very cool poster for the horror film Child's Play, as well as one for that John Travolta/Christian Slater pic Broken Arrow. While the art is wonderful to look at, somehow I cannot imagine that poster for Demonic Cat slapped on the side of a New York City bus driving up fifth avenue. Yeah, it might freak out a few people.

[Thanks to AC for the tip]