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.
An interesting film poster key art subject matter are the many creatures (and monsters) found in the “wild kingdom”. In honor of the upcoming Halloween holiday, we thought we would post a few images of movie posters featuring all matter of animals inflicting various types of terror, horror, and mayhem. So here is a poorly written paragraph with a lot of movie poster image links:
The deadly creature menace goes all the way back to the prehistoric era of dinosaurs (and in this case, fur bikinis). Many victims become worm food. Battle against an empire of ants. Overcome a swarm of angry bees or a single fly. There are creepy spiders. Dirty rats. Not so harmless birds. It may be raining cats and dogs. There are plenty snakes (without a plane). Kissing a few frogs might be dangerous. Watch out when the fish are biting. Speaking of biting, what is the difference between a crocodile and an alligator? An octopus may be one of the largest sea creatures, but the scariest of all sea life will always be sharks. Then again, some work really hard to avoid pigs. Others wonder if man descended from gorillas or (space?) apes. And don’t forget the lions, tigers, and bears, oh my!
Then there are the most dangerous creatures of all: man… or is it woman?
Whether you choose to call it an homage, rip, or branding, movie posters (like all matter of advertising) frequently emulate designs from other film posters. Occasionally this film poster deja vu can be unintentional, but often it is a calculated effort.
For the upcoming George Clooney film The Good German (a murder mystery set in post-WWII Berlin directed by Steven Soderbergh), the studio invoked the image of an old Hollywood film poster (and one of the greatest films of all time). The Good German movie poster recreates the look and layout of a popular Casablanca movie poster from the 1940s.
Varations of this particular Casablanca artwork originally appeared as a movie poster three sheet (41″x81″), poster insert and Australian daybill. This Casablanca film one-sheet was chosen as one of the classic posters in AFI Presents 100 Years 100 American Movie Poster Classics, and was part of the AFI program (PDF) to create high quality lithographic reprints of the top classic movie poster one-sheets:
Through this historic project — a collaborative effort by the AFI, major Hollywood film studios and Art of the Movies (an S2 Art company) — the 100 most memorable and striking movie posters of the 20th century are being recreated as a spectacular collection of limited-edition fine art lithographs. Using old-time, hands-on lithographic techniques, the program recreates early film posters in exactly the same way they were created during the first half of the century — from painstakingly hand-drawn plates, slowly ‘pulled’ one color at a time on the extremely rare antique lithography presses of the S2 Atelier in New York City. At the same time, later 20th-century movie posters, which typically were produced using cheaper, lower-quality photo reproduction methods, are being reborn in the form of these exquisite, aesthetically superior lithographic artworks.
The Good German movie poster reproduces many elements of the Casablanca movie poster, including the “stacked heads” cast gallery and the brush hand-lettering style title treatment. Since The Good German film draws inspiration from Casablanca and the classic film noir genre, a movie poster echoing those same conventions seems to be a good fit.
Buy The Good German movie poster at: AllPosters.com, eBay
