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.
Finding hidden messages and then labeling it as subliminal advertising has a long history in our culture. Hidden images and messages have also appeared in movie posters (some being obvious and not-so-obvious) as well.
Apparently the staff of a Galaxy movie theatre (or someone with Photoshop) took it upon themselves to stage three teaser posters in just the right order (for Superman Returns, Eragon, and X-Men: The Last Stand) in this hidden message vein. (via 13gb.com)
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.)
Walt Disney Pictures has released a new teaser poster for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. The Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest teaser one-sheet is essentially a reworking of the existing “Jolly Roger” style skull key art from previous Pirates of the Caribbean teaser posters. This newest teaser poster seems to give a hint of a “hidden Mickey” with it’s two flaming torches… or maybe we’re just seeing things.
Reminder: While this isn’t a topical / news weblog, don’t forget about the Red Cross web page for Hurricane Katrina donations.
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 end our Star Wars poster week with the end of the Star Wars saga… or rather the middle of it: Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (Episode III), which was released in theatres this week.
We’ve already covered the final Revenge of the Sith one-sheet illustrated by Drew Struzan. Like the previous films, the final Star Wars key art began with the Revenge of the Sith teaser poster. The art itself is a stylized image of Anakin Skywalker, with his dark flowing cape filling most of the poster area. Looking closer (well, not that close) you can see the folds of Anakin’s black cloak forming an image of Darth Vader’s familiar mask… sort of. As with most things Star Wars related, the Sith teaser art generated a love it or hate it type of reaction. (The idea of his cloak forming Vader’s mask and helmet sounds good on paper, but we’ll leave it to you to decide if the execution was successful or not.)
But just to slip into the world of Star Wars geek obsessiveness, some fans believe you can see hidden images of several characters in the Sith teaser poster. Do you see images of The Emperor, General Grievous, Boba Fett and additional Vader helmets tucked away in that large cloak? While we’d be the first to embrace hidden images in a one-sheet, we think these examples belong in Jar-Jar territory — best forgotten.
If you want to see what happens when this “Where’s Waldo?” style poster art game turns ugly among Star Wars fans, you can follow the very long thread here [Link: Spoiler Warning].
As some of you may know, there is nothing we love more than discussing hidden imagery in movie poster one-sheets. It’s like Hollywood’s version of a hidden 3D poster you saw at the mall as a kid: stare at it long enough, and you are bound to find something. An impressive variation on this “hidden gem” idea is when the extra discovery actually contributes to the design of the poster itself. This idea brings us to the U.S. domestic one-sheet for the Oscar winning film Silence of the Lambs.
When a designer hides or adds a less than overt element to a composition it is sometimes called a secondary image or second read. Perhaps the most famous example of this is the hidden arrow in the FedEx logo. You’ve looked at something countless times only to discover something new (or like most of us, have it pointed out to you). In the Silence of the Lambs movie poster, Jodie Foster’s face is given a high contrast treatment with a large moth placed over her mouth. Looking closer at the moth, we notice a subtle skull on the head of the butterfly — the so-called “death’s head” moth from the film. A striking image, which matches the dark tone of the film itself.
In the Silence of the Lambs image, the ambiguous skull on the moth is actually made up of seven naked female bodies. The image of the “skull orgy” originated in a portrait photograph by Philippe Halsman of Salvador Dali, entitled Salvador Dali In Voluptate Mors. (The photo itself was inspired by surrealist Dali’s gouache Female Bodies as a Skull painting. Dali later translated the same idea into his own live sculptures.) The Lambs one-sheet was created by the (now defunct) film ad agency Dazu, and the skull image idea was reportedly given to the agency by director Jonathan Demme specifically for use in the film’s poster artwork.
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.
