Posterwire.com is a movie poster weblog. From images of the latest Hollywood one-sheets to vintage movie posters, this film poster weblog hopes to offer a bit of insight into film key art.
Italian officials have agreed to remove a Da Vinci Code banner from the renovation scaffolding facade of the church of St. Pantaleo (located near Rome’s historic center) because it has been “causing a problem”. The large outdoor Da Vinci Code billboard (featuring the Mona Lisa key art) has been the subject of complaints from church clergymen:
“It advertises something that is against Christ and against the church,” St. Pantaleo’s rector, the Rev. Adolfo Garcia Duran, told The Associated Press.
Buildings and scaffolding serving as outdoor advertising spaces is nothing new, and is not limited to Europe. (And complaints about large The Da Vinci Code billboards is not new either.) A large vinyl banner/billboard on the side of a building is known as a tall wall, and is quite common in large cities, especially in Los Angeles.
No word if anyone was offended by The Da Vinci Code outdoor banners featuring Tom Hank’s new hairstyle.
Author Tony Nourmand (with designer Graham Marsh) visits what many consider the most important decade in film history with the movie poster book Film Posters of the Forties: The Essential Movies of the Decade.
Why are the 1940s so important in the spectrum of movie going, and by extension, the movie poster key art created during that decade? Having two of the top films (at least according to a few) of all-time — Citizen Kane and Casablanca — is reason enough to label the 40s as the latter part of “golden age” of film. The forties also saw the birth of the most beloved holiday film of all-time, It’s a Wonderful Life. And perhaps the most interesting film trend from the era: the rise of the darkest of movie genres — film noir.
Like all of the other volumes of the Essential Movies of the Decade poster book series, this edition features countless pages of color reproductions of movie posters from the 1940s. During this period, film studios hired the best artists they could find for their poster illustrations, including the likes of legendary pin-up artists Alberto Vargas and George Petty.
We have been tweaking the look and the layout of the web site just a bit. Moving ads around, chasing “browser bugs” and what not. (If you see any site problems or browser bugs, drop us a comment in this weblog entry. Bottom line: Internet Explorer is not your friend. This weblog looks best in Firefox.) We have also added a few site banners and updated the Posterwire.com logo in the site’s mastehead at the top of the page — although the depiction of Rick Deckard from the original Blade Runner poster (as illustrated by one of our favorite movie poster artists, John Alvin) is still featured.
Speaking of updates, since we sometimes get requests to advertise on this site, we also thought we would try experimenting with blog ads to help support the site. Hosting all those large high resolution images of movie posters costs money. So if you’d like to promote your site, project, or other content that you think is appropriate to our readers, please consider running an ad on Posterwire. Don’t worry, this ad pitch doesn’t change our policy of welcoming any email with link suggestions, story ideas, questions, comments, criticisms, and so on. If you would like to get in touch, drop us a line by using the Contact: Email link at the bottom of any page on the site.
In New York City, it seems some people have taken to defacing Silent Hill subway posters. The “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” inspired Silent Hill poster artwork features the face of the character of Sharon, with the little girl missing a mouth. That makes for an irresistible target, with New Yorkers drawing her lips back in:
“We’re not happy about the fact that people are drawing on the poster, because other people then don’t get to see it clean,” says Marc Weinstock, a vice president at Sony Pictures.
Considering most outdoor film poster campaigns (whether it be subway posters or wild postings) in large metro areas are subjected to varying degrees of “remixing” (graffiti), we are pretty sure that Sony marketing isn’t too surprised by this outcome. Especially considering the company has been known to create their own fake graffiti in the name of “viral marketing”. (Thanks for the link Cody!)
More than many other film genres, horror film marketing campaigns have embraced the internet as a way to reach a target audience. Since many horror films are comparatively low budget, online advertising remains a cost effective way to reach horror fans. One of the latest genre films to take to the web is Silent Hill, based on the survival horror video game series of the same name. Coming on the heels of their recent “design” a Silent Hill movie poster contest, Sony Pictures has released a new set of character teaser posters.
The Silent Hill Character teaser posters present various characters from the film — a rogues gallery featuring “The Miners”, “The Red Pyramid”, “The Nurses”, “The Gray Child”, “Dahlia”, and “The Janitor”. Each character also gets their own set of desktop wallpapers, PSP wallpaper, and of all things, iPod skins. The teaser posters have a familiar “Seven” sepia color palette, but the creepiness of the characters still comes across well.
The film follows a mother’s search for her sick daughter in a haunted town. Silent Hill is the latest of the much-derided “video game to screen” adaptations — a trend that seems to see little success with audiences. Regardless of the fan-boy reaction, Hollywood will continue to make films from video game properties, as the billion dollar video game industry is just too big to ignore.
