Back in Black
Johnny Cash Bio Pic
Joaquin Phoenix stars as legendary singer Johnny Cash in the upcoming bio-pic WALK THE LINE. The film chronicles the performer’s early career, including his work at the legendary Sun Records in Memphis, alongside icons Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins. The film also stars Reese Witherspoon as wife and collaborator June Carter. The title comes from the singer’s “outlaw country” hit “I Walk the Line“.
The Walk the Line teaser poster features a woodcut style illustration of Phoenix as “the Man in Black” wearing his guitar. It’s interesting that only a few simple “carved” lines (such as in actor’s hairline) in the poster immediately identify the image as being that of Johnny Cash. The typeface and woodcut technique are also a good fit for the country music subject matter, without falling into the trap of looking like an album cover. Needless to say, this is a departure from most movie posters, both in style and the fact that it is illustrated.
Man, I cringe at the idea of this film, but there can be no argument that the teaser poster is a beauty. Too bad the release poster will probably be a massive Joaquin headshot.
By the way, I’m very glad to see Posterwire back in action!
This poster is obviously inspired by the work of Nashville-based HATCH SHOW PRINT. There’s an excellent coffee table book of their work available on amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0811828565/ref=nosim/onesheetmoviepos
This is strong conceptually, but the clunky type is unfortunate, especially the “November” face, which apparently everyone thinks they need to use when doing something that’s supposed to look “countryish (!)”.
It always bonks my mind when I see a vector’d “woodcut” instead of a woodcut’d woodcut. I mean, what? You _have_ to use a computer to draw everything?
Shepard Fairey is a solid Illustrator. He did a excellent job at keeping this as minimal as possible while still being visually captivating.