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.
We just received the first Saw 3 teaser poster for the upcoming Lionsgate horror film sequel Saw 3.
It’s no secret that Posterwire.com is a big fan of the previous Saw one-sheets. Continuing with a variation of the “body parts” poster theme from the previous Saw campaigns, this “Meth Mouth” teaser poster key art incorporates the three (remaining) teeth of the victim as the numeral stand-in for the “3″ in the Saw 3 poster title treatment. While this Saw III poster may not have quite the same dark wit as the two fingers of the banned Saw II movie poster, anything invoking the thought of dental torture certainly raises the stakes in creepiness. We also enjoyed the poster’s “Opening Wide this Halloween” copy line. We are going to assume the Saw 3 movie poster was created by Art Machine — the film ad agency that designed the previous Saw movie poster campaigns — but don’t quote us on that.
The US vs. John Lennon is a new documentary film billed as “a compelling and provocative look at John Lennon’s transformation from beloved musical artist to anti-war activist to iconic inspiration for peace that also reveals the true story of why and how the U.S. Government tried to silence him.”
The U.S. vs. John Lennon poster seems to be a bit of an “homage” to a famous conceptual movie poster design — the peace V-sign hand for the Robert Altman film M*A*S*H (which is one of AFI’s 100 greatest American films.) The original MASH movie poster features a hand flashing the V sign, complete with an attached pair of sexy legs. Flashing the V-sign originally stood for “V for Victory”, but was also adopted as an anti-war peace sign — perhaps in response to it being the political trademark hand sign of President Richard Nixon.)
A somewhat strange image when seen for the first time, the leggy M.A.S.H. artwork does capture the tone of the irreverent anti-war comedy. (It certainly represents the iconoclast director Altman well.) After the success of the R-rated comedy, MASH was re-edited for a PG-rated re-release to theaters, and later movie poster key art addressed this edit as well by putting a gloved version of the hand peace sign in ads. The hand peace sign has made other movie poster appearances, including in the 1971 Johnny Got His Gun movie poster. The US vs. John Lennon takes that anti-war finger symbol and throws in the popular poster device of “glasses as an image container”. The Lennon poster also pushes the nostalgia look further by incorporating paper folds into the poster artwork itself — making the one-sheet appear as a vintage folded movie poster. (Most one-sheets issued prior to the mid 1980s were shipped folded to theaters, as opposed to modern rolled one-sheets.)
Virgins and illustrators ruled the world of movie poster key art as the winners of the Hollywood Reporter’s 35th annual Key Art Awards were announced in Hollywood on June 16th. Notable winners at this year’s ceremony in the movie poster categories include: The 40-Year-Old Virgin poster (which managed to overcome a premature hyphenation problem) as Best Comedy Poster and the Shepard Fairey illustrated Walk the Line poster as Best Teaser Poster. Illustration also drew in another win for the Lord of War poster as Best Action Adventure Poster.
Here are the 2006 Key Art movie poster winners:
COMEDY POSTER
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
ACTION ADVENTURE POSTER
Lord of War
INTERNATIONAL FILM POSTER
Batman Begins
To see the complete list of 2006 Key Art Award winners visit The Hollywood Reporter.
Fantasy artist Tim Hildebrandt, half of the legendary “Brothers Hildebrandt” illustration team, died on June 11th from complications due to diabetes. “Tim was an otherworldly artist. For 47 years, his captivating work fostered the dreams and fantasies of millions of fans, young and old.”
The Hildebrandt brothers (Tim and his twin brother Greg) have had a long and diverse career in commercial illustration, with subjects ranging from hobbits to pin-ups (NSFW). In the world of movie poster illustration, the brothers creations include the Clash of the Titans movie poster and Barbarella movie poster. Tim also designed The Secret of NIMH movie poster. But most will know the brothers from their contributions to the Star Wars universe, most notably an early Star Wars movie poster that would be a piece of iconic promotional artwork and served as one of the prototypes for much of the Star Wars art to follow.
What’s interesting about the Hilderbrant Star Wars movie poster is that it wasn’t used as a one-sheet for the initial Star Wars theatrical release in U.S. theaters — yet it is, for many, the first piece of artwork they remember for the film. Created as last minute alternate poster artwork, the Hildebrandt Star Wars poster art was an interpretation of a Star Wars movie poster design already created by artist Tom Jung. According to the Star Wars Poster Book, Lucasfilm felt the Jung artwork was “too dark”, and wanted another version:
“They hired twins Tim and Greg Hildebrandt, who were well-known fantasy artists at the time, to paint their own take on the Jung design. ‘The reason they called us is because Tim and I had just done the Lord of the Rings calendar, and we had a fan following.’ says Greg Hildebrandt. ‘We had come through literally overnight for them on a poster for Young Frankenstein. It wasn’t used, but we did it overnight, so they called us and said we need a poster fast.’”
Given the direction to make the image look “comic bookish”, the Hildebrandt movie poster (completed in just thirty-six hours) featured very stylized illustrations of actors Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher, as the brothers did not have photo reference for the characters of Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. In the end, 20th Century Fox opted to use the earlier “dark” poster art by Tom Jung instead of the Hildebrandt art for the Star Wars theatrical poster — the Star Wars “Style A” movie poster — which had a more accurate likeness of the two main characters. The Hildebrandt artwork did appear on many early Star Wars promo items, a consumer retail poster, and eventually as a U.S. theatrical poster for the Star Wars 15th Anniversary re-release.
The “internets” have been abuzz about the recent Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox announcement that the original non-special edition versions of the Star Wars trilogy — A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi — will be released on DVD for a limited time. While these “Original Unaltered” DVDs sound great on paper (they could be called the “Han Shoots First” editions), details about the release have fan-boys feeling “a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.” The complaints being these DVDs will be using old non-anamorphic transfers last used for the 1993 Star Wars laserdisc releases and also include the previous Special Editions, meaning fans will be buying duplicates of what they already own.
The DVD cover art for the upcoming “Original Unaltered” Star Wars trilogy features photo composition style covers, rather than older illustrated poster artwork used for the original theatrical one-sheets. This continues the Fox Home Entertainment trend of doing photo based DVD artwork for Star Wars releases on DVD. You can see a side-by-side comparison of the new DVD cover versions of the Star Wars Style C movie poster (originally illustrated by artist Tom Chantrell), the 1982 The Empire Strikes Back re-release movie poster (originally by artist Tom Jung), and The Return of the Jedi Style B movie poster (originally by Kazu Sano).
Looking at these photo compositions, we can imagine the pain of the art director(s) having to search through the empire-sized Lucasfilm photo archives to find images of specific character poses to match the vintage Star Wars one-sheet artwork they were trying to recreate. Which leads to a common question: Why do film studios sometimes create new artwork for DVD releases rather than using the original theatrical one-sheet key art? There are a myriad of possible reasons, the most common being the film studio’s home entertainment division is interested in “improving” (and in some cases, rescuing) a film’s theatrical release campaign. But in the case of this Star Wars (re)release, a likely reason for new poster artwork is so you don’t confuse the new DVD release with all the previous editions of the same title on DVD.
