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.
The Gallery Nucleus in Southern California is hosting an exhibition of movie poster key art created by legendary artist Bob Peak. The Bob Peak: Father of The Modern Hollywood Poster gallery show will feature over 40 of Bob Peak’s original illustrations, paintings, and a new line of limited editions prints.
Bob Peak was one of the bedrocks of classic movie poster illustration. His key art and promotional artwork for films includes West Side Story, My Fair Lady, Camelot, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Superman, and Apocalypse Now.
A one of a kind edition 40″ x 60″ print of Bob Peak’s “My Fair Lady” movie poster key art will be auctioned off at the show with the proceeds donated to the Audrey Hepburn Children’s Fund.
The Bob Peak movie poster exhibition runs June 6th through June 23rd 2009 at the Gallery Nucleus, 210 East Main St, in Alhambra CA.
Sam Sarowitz (owner of our favorite movie poster art gallery Posteritati) is releasing a new book called Translating Hollywood. The poster book takes a look at the different foreign movie posters for popular films. The book highlights examples of interesting (and somewhat surreal) foreign movie one-sheets from around the world, including samples from the United Kingdom, Japan, France, and of course the ubiquitous posters of Poland. What sets the book apart is the foreign posters are compared to the original domestic one-sheets to draw a contrast between cultures and marketing. Look no further than the comparison between the U.S. and the Polish poster for the Dustin Hoffman film Tootsie for an example of this. Our favorite poster from the book would have to be the Japanese Army of Darkness movie poster (which is yet another example of the King of the Mountain pose) which makes several changes to the original U.S. key art, including the addition of several Bruce Campbell soup cans.
Author Sam Sarowitz will be having a Translating Hollywood book signing at his Posteritati gallery in New York City on May 7th.
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.
An original movie poster for Fritz Lang’s classic 1927 science fiction film Metropolis has sold for a world record price of $690,000. A US collector bought the art deco sepia colored poster by graphic artist Heinz Schulz-Neudamm — one of only four known copies — from London’s Reel Poster Gallery.
As we are constantly reminding everyone, there is nothing we like more than “Exploitation” movie posters from past decades. Whether it’s 1950s drug panic films or blaxploitation from the 1970s, the exploitation genres rely on what serves low budget film advertising best: sensationalism. When you take that trait and apply it to a relatively cheap advertising medium (such as one-sheets), movie poster magic can result. More importantly, exploitation posters are a prime example of an advertising campaign overcoming the limitations and quality of the films they are selling. This “saved by advertising” approach is something that Hollywood still tries to replicate to this day.
The Reel Gallery is continuing their movie poster book series with the Exploitation Poster Art book by Tony Nourmand and Graham Marsh, along with an accompanying auction of vintage exploitation one-sheets at Christie’s. From the Exploitation Poster Art website:
Sex, drugs, delinquency, Black power, alternative culture and, of course, rock and roll: these are just some of the themes which have attracted the attention of the cinema’s bottom-feeders over the past eighty years. A few of the resulting films have become cult classics, but most were simply tacky — few would probably now want to sit through two hours of High School Hellcats or Prison Girls. The posters produced to promote them, on the other hand, are wonderful period pieces that vividly evoke the social fears, temptations and taboos of bygone eras.
The Shaolin Chamber has a great collection of Hong Kong movie posters from the legendary Shaw Bros. movie studio. The Asian film studio was like the Warner Bros. of the East, right down to the similar name and company logo. (You might remember the appearance of the “Shaw Scope” logo at the beginning of Kill Bill: Volume 1.) The company has an impressive back catalog of kung fu films, which continue to influence filmmakers today.
The Shaw Bros. film slate wasn’t limited to action or martial arts films — they produced films in a wide range of film genres, ranging from exploitation to the bizarre. What’s interesting about these Shaw movie posters (and most Asian film posters in general) is that the typography of the posters becomes another interesting visual element, since domestic viewers cannot understand the language of the titles. You don’t “read” the title, names, and copy, so they become even more integrated into the poster’s visual layout. (This is one reason graphic designers check their composition by squinting and/or turning their designs upside-down — to keep from “reading” the type as opposed to seeing it as shapes working as part of the layout.)
If there’s anything that can make vintage 70s adult movie posters better, it’s seeing them in Spanish. This Flickr image gallery of Spanish Adult Movie Posters of the 1970s (NSFW) makes for an impressive array of vintage porn artwork. As we’ve mentioned in the past, vintage exploitation and adult film posters often demonstrate an interesting style and visual sense. After all, there’s nothing expensive about having good design in bad taste.
The first book devoted solely to movie poster one-sheets for independent films, The Independent Movie Poster Book features over 200 full-color one-sheets. The artwork featured in the book are from the collection of the Posteritati Gallery in New York City.
The book chronicles images from the independent movie explosion that began in the 1980s, when independently produced and distributed films became synonymous with quality, variety, and artistry. The one-sheets for these films often reflected the freewheeling cultural sensibility that distinguished the films and their creators from their big-budget Hollywood counterparts — provocative, enigmatic and unpredictable images that signified unusual stories and original characters. A diverse selection of “indies” are represented, including: critically acclaimed dramas like Breaking the Waves, vivid design of foreign films like Pistol Opera, and a pre-Hollywood Wings of Desire.
In addition to hosting images from the book in their NYC gallery, Posteritati has also made images of movie posters from the collection available on the web in an online gallery.
Foreign posters represent some of the most interesting, and in some cases, strange examples of film advertising artwork. Perhaps the best example of this combination would be Polish movie posters.
Polish posters for American films exhibit that rare trait of absolutely no interest in marketing a film in a conventional way. In other words, a Polish film poster is first and foremost an abstract piece of artwork. This can be both fascinating and sometimes a bit disturbing at the same time.
