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.
Lionsgate has released the U.S. domestic one-sheet for their latest horror film import called The Descent. The movie, which has been receiving great reviews, is about an all-female caving expedition that goes horribly wrong.
The Descent movie poster features six young women posed into the image of a large glowing skull. This “skull orgy” may look familiar to many of you, as it is based on the same skull image featured on the “death’s head moth” found in The Silence of the Lambs movie poster.
As we mentioned previously, this skull pose is based on a famous photo of artist Salvador Dali, entitled Salvador Dali In Voluptate Mors. It’s interesting to compare the incidental take on that photo in the original Silence of the Lambs poster, versus this new (and much less subtle) version in The Descent poster. This new version inverts the lights/darks from the original, with clothing taking place of the suggestive nudes of the Dali photograph. (Sadly, the spelunking women of The Descent poster, with their attire and prominent hiking boots, don’t invoke quite the same feeling as the previous Dali nudes skull.)
The Hollywood Reporter recently announced the nominees for The 35th Annual Key Art Awards. The nominees are in 29 categories covering movie posters, film trailers, online advertising, TV spots, outdoor advertising, theatrical standees, print ads, home entertainment and more. In case everyone is not familiar with the term key art (and why it is the name of an awards ceremony for film advertising), The Hollywood Reporter defines the term as “the singular, iconographic image that is the foundation upon which a movie’s marketing campaign is built.”
One-sheet movie poster highlights include nominations for the Saw II one-sheet (our pick for the 2005 Posterwire.com Movie Poster of the Year), Lord of War, and Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo. All three of these movie posters were created by the design studio Art Machine, which led this year’s Key Art Awards with the most nominations for an advertising agency.
The winners will be announced June 16 at the Key Art Awards ceremony, hosted by comedian Kevin Nealon at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood.
Here are the 2006 Key Art movie poster nominees:
The Washington Post reports that The Road to Guantanamo movie poster (for the new documentary film about the controversial Guantanamo Bay prison) has been rejected by the MPAA:
The image that ran afoul of the MPAA is tame by the standards set by the amateur photographers of Abu Ghraib. It shows a man hanging by his handcuffed wrists, with a burlap sack over his head and a blindfold tied around the hood. It appeared in advertisements for the new film “The Road to Guantanamo,” a documentary with some reenacted scenes, that follows the fate of three British men imprisoned at Guantanamo for more than two years before being released with no charges ever filed against them.
What’s with all the banned film advertising lately? As we have mentioned before, the MPAA approves all print advertising material related to any film that carries an MPAA issued rating. Like most forms of regulation and censorship, the guidelines the MPAA follows are not always clear, but big no-nos for one-sheets include “depictions of violence, blood, people in jeopardy, drugs, nudity, profanity, people in frightening situations, disturbing or frightening scenes.” We’re pretty sure that the actual Gitmo doesn’t follow those same guidelines, however.
The Hollywood gossip blog Defamer.com points out that the new Just My Luck movie poster showcases Lindsay Lohan winking at the camera, which signals the message that Lohan will be showing you a fantastically good time in said movie. In fact, Lohan seems to be sending out this signal with a wink of her eye quite a bit. It remains to be seen as to whether Lindsay can trademark “The Wink” as a movie poster marketing look (see the Herbie: Fully Loaded poster and Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen poster). What’s interesting about the Just My Luck poster is that she has a paparazzi photographer to thank for her one-sheet movie poster image:
Lindsay Lohan may have had problems with the paparazzi, but that doesn’t mean she won’t use their help in promoting her new movie. I’m told that the photo of the 19-year-old starlet on the poster for ‘Just My Luck’ is actually a paparazzi shot from more than a year ago. Lohan sat for an official photo shoot for the poster — she even wore a red wig for it because she had gone blonde by then — but a source tells me the images were rejected because “they were too high style.” The studio asked for another shoot, but someone suggested a paparazzi shot of a winking Lohan. Not only did everyone apparently agree that the pic captured the movie best, but it even inspired the film’s tag line: “Everything changed in the wink of an eye.”
The paparazzi photo of Lindsay Lohan used in the Just My Luck movie poster was taken over a year ago on Madison Avenue by New York Post photographer Larry Schwartzwald. As always, he wasn’t the only celebrity photographer there to capture Lohan out shopping. Since paparazzi photos (and most any other type of news photographs or “photocalls”) are available for sale and licensing by publications and other outlets, it’s not unheard for a film studio to use this type of third party photography of actors. Although, this type of candid photography tends to be an image source of last resort.
While you are in New York City to see the previously mentioned James Bond Movie Poster Exhibition, you might also stop off at the New York Academy of Sciences to see their new film poster gallery exhibit called Coming Attractions! 80 Years of Cinematic Science: Movie Posters from Around the World:
“Coming Attractions! 80 Years of Cinematic Science: Movie Posters from Around the World, an exhibition in the Academy’s Gallery of Art & Science through June 30, brings together posters for more than 25 movies, including examples from such countries as Argentina, Germany, Japan, Russia, Great Britain, Italy, Poland, and the U.S., among others. The exhibit includes a British poster for the re-release of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis; one from France for the American eco-drama, Soylent Green; and an Argentinean poster for the Italian film, Mission Stardust. Also represented will be posters for such true-to-life dramas as Inherit the Wind, the thinly disguised rendition of the 1925 Scopes “monkey trial,” and a poster for the glossy American tribute to the medical profession, Not as a Stranger.”
The New York Academy of Sciences web site features an online gallery of movie posters featured in the Cinematic Science expo. It’s an interesting subject matter for a movie poster exhibition (with one-sheets being supplied by the Posteritati gallery), and something you might not expect to find at a science academy. Besides that, any art gallery show featuring a Re-Animator movie poster as part of the exhibit is definitely worth a visit.
One of our favorite poster galleries, Posteritati, has announced an upcoming exhibition of James Bond movie posters. The vintage poster exhibition, called Bond, James Bond, will be showcasing vintage movie posters from James Bond films, including domestic and international 007 movie one-sheets:
The exhibition will run from Tuesday, May 23 through Wednesday, July 12 at the Posteritati Gallery in New York City and will feature rare international posters from Bond classics including Dr. No (1962), From Russia With Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), Casino Royale (1967), On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Live and Let Die (1973), The Man With the Golden Gun (1974), Octopussy (1983) and many more.
This Bond poster retrospective has good timing, as the “internets” have been abuzz this week about a leaked film trailer and image of the new Casino Royale teaser poster featuring the newest James Bond, actor Daniel Craig. It isn’t clear if this new 007 poster is an international or domestic teaser poster. What is clear is that Sony Pictures really wants you to know this Bond will be “dark”. The studio has been battling quite a bit of negative press about Daniel Craig being cast in the Bond role, so it remains to be seen if any piece of key art (good or bad) or advertising will be able to turn the tide of negative buzz surrounding the film.
