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.
Hitman is the new movie based on the video game franchise of the same name. Timothy Olyphant stars as Agent 47, a barcoded assassin who becomes involved in a Russian political controversy when a hit goes wrong.
The Hitman subway poster and outdoor billboards feature Olyphant flanked by co-star Olga Kurylenko. An eagle-eyed writer at Slate noticed the outdoor key art featured a bit more of the actress than expected.
If you read just one article about bulging female genitalia in a movie poster, make it this one.
As the Slate article points out, Kurylenko leaves little to the imagination (or maybe too much depending on your perspective) via her sheer red dress in the Hitman poster. Need a closer look to decide for yourself? Image blow-up weblog investigators are on the case.
This Hitman poster image is the latest, and probably not the last, of an ongoing series of thoughtful and deep analysis of the female figure as depicted in film posters.
On a more serious note, a group that did not approve of this particular Hitman poster was the city of Philadelphia, which asked the studio remove outdoor posters from around the city — but for an entirely different reason.
With so much talk of sex scandals and secret “gay signals” in the news lately, it is interesting to see how Hollywood (via the movie poster) has been marketing a few recent films and how different audiences might interpret them.
Jodie Foster is starring in a new film called The Brave One. In the movie, Foster’s character turns vigilante after her fiancé is brutally murdered. Some of her fans on AfterEllen.com (a site for news, reviews, interviews and commentary on lesbian and bisexual women) have heralded The Brave One movie poster as the “Best. Jodie. Movie. Poster. Ever.” Reviewing the alternate artwork for The Brave One foreign poster, the AfterEllen.com site asks: “Hey, why did they replace Jodie Foster with Zac Efron’s 14-year-old blond cousin?” The site goes on to list several examples of “butch movie posters” from the past. It’s interesting how different audiences react to depictions of women in media, including what some consider a “glass closet” icon.
At the other end of the sexual identity spectrum (or perhaps in the very same spectrum) is the omnipresent How can we work in a visual joke about balls? creative direction that has been issued by many film account executives. One-sheet posters for the two recent films Balls of Fury and Mr. Woodcock are here to add to that growing list. Of course, invoking imagery of said male gentilia as a visual pun in film advertising is nothing new.
All this talk of balls and fury brings back harsh memories of the year-and-a-half long comment flame war centered around the Brokeback Mountain movie poster.
As we mentioned previously, posters for the just released comedy Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo embrace the time-honored tradition of the phallic symbol as a means of advertising. The city of Los Angeles being an industry town, drivers in Southern California are treated to some interesting film advertising billboards in this vein. This includes an “animated” outdoor billboard for Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo:
For anyone still in danger of missing the point, one version of the sign on Sunset Boulevard has the crooked tower swinging up and down in the wind, presumably from flaccid to erect.
Nothing subtle about that. But the focus of the above mentioned New York Times article is the lead time required by outdoor advertising means billboards go up before a film gets it’s final rating. This is seen as a loophole by some to allow film marketing to target underage viewers without giving their parents ratings information. “The sweet spot for an R-rated comedy is the 15-to-17-year-old range.” Considering no parent gets their ratings information about films by driving down Sunset Boulevard and looking at billboards, this seems like a pointless complaint. The only goal for any outdoor film advertising is to pass what is known in the industry as the “40 Mile Per Hour Rule”: Are you able to identify the movie in the ad and read the film’s title while driving by it at 40 miles per hour? (In the article, Adam Fogelson, president of marketing for Universal, slows the rule down to “35 miles per hour”, but he’s obviously driving too slow.)
We’ve covered hidden (and perhaps unintentional) sexual imagery in movie posters before, but film studios often make phallic imagery front and center as part of a marketing hook. The most recent example is the leaning penis tower of Pisa as a visual pun in the new poster for Rob Schneider’s upcoming comedy Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo. (Apparently the sequel will cover all the unanswered questions posed by Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo.) And if you haven’t gotten your fill of symbolic penises, look no further than 40 Days and 40 Nights, Howard Stern’s Private Parts, the appropriately titled Prick Up Your Ears, or any one-sheet poster centered around a large gun.
In honor of April Fool’s Day, lets review a few hidden images and in-jokes found in movie posters. Artists have long hidden images, words, and other symbols in their work, although the vast majority of modern examples rely more on the viewers imagination than anything else. For example, is that really a hidden penis on the shoulder of Tommy Lee Jones in a poster for Men in Black, or simply a few random folds in his suit? (We have it on good authority it’s not intentional.) And are the alien spaceships blowing up the earth in Independence Day really being controlled by Mickey Mouse? (Probably not, but some at Miramax may feel differently.)
Speaking of penises and Disney, the most infamous example of hidden imagery in a movie poster would have to be the so-called “Palace with the Phallus” background illustration in posters for Disney’s The Little Mermaid. This urban legend involves yet another hidden phallic symbol, and there is plenty of speculation as to how it made it’s way into the key art.
