What piece of film promotion did you find equally bad and good?
This entry, which will also double as a review, takes me way back to 1996. At the time, Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson were my favorite film couple, something they had earned with their work in Dead Again, as well as their cinematic adaptations of Shakespearean works. And it's really the last part that cemented their place with me.
I had been reading Shakespeare a lot at the time, and Branagh's movies were all excellent productions. My love of Much Ado About Nothing is already well-documented, and I can only state again that it's one of my favorite films ever. And Mr. B also directed an exceptional version of Henry V. Even aside from the romance between Kenneth and Emma, that picture made me want to rush out and see everything that Branagh had ever been involved in.
Then the news came that KB would be helming a new version of Hamlet. Although I won't give Shakespeare's most famous tragedy the same treatment I gave to Romeo and Juliet, I also can't tell you how eagerly I anticipated this latest iteration. Unlike Zeffirelli's 1990 adaptation, this one would cast British folks who had been in the Royal Shakespeare Company and it would feature the complete text.
Because as happy as I was to make Interstellar the last ever poster entry on this site, I had to show it to you.
There's no actual release date, just a month, the tagline is boring, and someone needs to tell the art department that it looks like JLo has a teenage male growing out of her left breast.
More importantly, the second I saw the stupid title of this sure-to-stink "thriller," I could only think
This Winter:
IT'S
A
BOY
So, between October and early December, I kept running past posters for Christopher Nolan's Interstellar. By now, you should have read my review of the movie, as well as the follow-up entry about flaws in the film. And whether or not you loved the film, I think we'll agree that this poster on the left is neat.
Despite the four main roles listed at the top, McConaughey's spacesuit with the Arctic-style background fills up the frame and makes for a compelling image. Nolan's name is left off (how humble!) of the bottom, but his pedigree is listed in bold (Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception) to draw people in. Then, the different formats are noted with the release date below everything. Above all that text, you get the nifty tagline, "The end of Earth will not the end of us." I think the all-caps makes the line sound appropriately urgent.
What was even more interesting was spotting the next poster. Sorry for the reflections in some of these, but it was impossible to avoid - and sometimes I had to shoot in the street, when a red light stopped traffic.
This poster for The Interview really is wonderful. The hyperbolic nature of the Asian style is different and eye-catching. It reveals very little directly - note the untranslated Korean words at the bottom - but the bombs and such do give an idea of what you're in store for.
But who cares if you can't understand it? The graphic has a great use of color, with the white and title text breaking up the top and bottom of the image. The font for the film title is pretty neat, too, and I like the Korean translated below the stars' names.
I have to appreciate how creative and distinct this poster is - anyone would look twice (at least) at this work...
Today's is a special edition of Imposters, as this one deserves nothing more than mockery. Please follow the link, press play on the video, and listen to the song as you scroll through the pictures.
I'm just a little conflicted here, mostly because I don't approve of the confusion that may occur between this picture and De Palma's 1978 picture, The Fury. However, I really like the general composition of the first poster: Pitt looking off in one direction while the cannon and turret point the opposite way, the busy aspect of the lower half being balanced by a cloudy sky above...
I'm also fond of the contrast between the color of the title and the drabness of the rest of the picture. I'm even a fan of the tagline, though it's not all that informative.
For some reason, however, I like the second poster much more. It's vey evocative, with the sad/anguished expression on Mr. Pitt's face being balanced by the title, Fury. Sure, it's a big picture of the star - and it omits the tagline to just to promote Pitt and the release date - but he's not staring at the viewer, and this image isn't glamorous in the least.
I love that Robert Duvall is still taking roles, and that he's still headlining movies. I will say, though, that RDJr's look and posture kind of instantly makes me lose my interest in this picture. It doesn't matter that I generally like Robert a lot. The undone tie, the hands in his pockets, and the lack of an expression on either man is somewhat off-putting. I keep expecting it to be a more childish/snarky version of Shoot from the Hip, and we all know how that turned out:
The composition is actually nice - I appreciate how the leads are positioned in regards to one another, and the look of the courtroom scene around them. They might have achieved a stronger balance of light and dark if they'd framed this slightly higher - seriously, the bottom of the frame is Downey's crotch - and I think that the image would have been more pleasing for it. Then again, maybe it wouldn't have helped much, seeing as the brown is deeper than the white is...
But the bratty pose and that lame-ass tagline really sort of do me in. "Defend your honor." Really? That's kind of terrible as it is, but if Mr. Downey Jr is playing a lawyer who's defending Duvall's judge character then it's somehow even worse than just a bad combination of words. The only interesting thing about that tagline is that they put a closing period at the end of it, as if it were a sentence.
It doesn't matter that I like the overall design. The empty white background really focuses (and draws) the attention, helping make that huge-ass font size jump out at you even more than it already would have.
The all caps complete the look, and lend the title - both as the name of the film and, presumably, the name of Mr. Reeves' character - a sense of importance. My first thought was "what hit book series is this based on?"
And it doesn't matter that I really love the ad's use of color, too. In addition to catching the eye initially as well as drawing you to the letters, it emphasizes the rest of the colors in the poster. Those vivid purples, pinks and reds are just gorgeous - many of them are close to neon-brightness, but backed by softer hues... The contrast between those shades and the stark bright white is just excellent, and a masterclass in advertising and using the color wheel to engage the audience.
I keep saying it doesn't matter because (a) those two things are the only things I like about the promo and (b) it is going to take one hell of a positive review to get me to see this movie. I wish it told me a little more than the tagline, "Don't set him off." It's actually the worst elements of the graphic, seeing as that it's provides too little info and yet is still too "meh" to be cool.
That title plus that tagline do not make an increasingly-busy me want to take the time to look up the plot synopsis. It was the creators' only informative opportunity on the poster and they flubbed it.
But even if I never see the film, I sure will respect the guys who worked on the promotional materials...
The poster for The Boxtrolls would do a perfect job of sucking me in if I were still a kid. It's got a clever use of the sides and top and bottom of the frame. It's very colorful, smartly featuring one boy and one girl amid a slew of crazy-looking monsters.
The background is too hard to make out to be useful, though. And the tagline is just kind of boring, with no discernable connection to the story or characters.
But, hey, childhood me would be all over this thing like white on rice...
[Update: Sorry, a draft went up this morning and stayed up for 9 hours after. I told y'all I was busy!]
A Walk Among the Tombstones has a real honey of a poster. It has a good balance of empty space and use of background objects on the far right side contrasted with the the foreground being quite full on the right. I love the different fonts used for all of the txt in the graphic. And the tagline, "people are afraid of all the wrong things," is quite good.
In fact, the only misstep is that Liam Neeson looks about 15 years younger than he should. But I suppose that many people won't mind that, much less complain about it.
Then, of course, we're left with the masterstroke of this image: everything being in greyscale, save the lake on the right side, which is blood-red. It looks simply beautiful, and it suggests a lot about the plot. You add that to the satchel and gun being held by Mr. Neeson, and you can really start to get intrigued about the picture, or at least start to guess what story is about.
You take that expressive efficiency and simply beauty and the result is a brilliant piece of design. I hope the film lives up to it...
It's kind of impossible to really judge this image, and the reason is simple: this looks like a hell of a lot of fun.
They're too big. Or they don't need to be in the center of the picture. Or there should be something more going on in the background. At the very least, I like the silhouettes of Streep and Bridges, but I'm not sure if they're additional characters, or if these two kids will grow up into these two older figures.
I will say, I'm glad that they use the book's popularity as a promotion, as it's really a well-known work, though one I've never read. I like the choice to make the "V" in "Giver" large, as it looks nice.
And I respect the decision to give the names of the writers and director, but not the actors. I mean, the novelist's name should be there, but it's a brisk, tasteful choice.
I suppose the only element that confuses me here is that, despite the relative lack of information - no MPAA rating, no tagline to give us a sense of what's to come, and a rather bland, empty background - they bothered to include, in the lower left corner of the ad, the words: featuring the original song "Ordinary Human" by OneRepublic.
Given the scant info provided by this poster, it just stands out as an odd element.
Overall, this ad comes close to being a net win...
It does advertise what you would expect: in short, come see these not-young a--holes in a testosterone-fueled action film. Fair enough, I suppose, but this poster really does nothing more than that. I don't find a group photo and a list of 17 cast members to be especially impressive...
Also, judging by the waistlines alone, I've strongly resisted the urge to call this The Expandables. Oh, wait...
This poster is just fine. I may not like the lens flare to the far left, but I do like the blue & gold color scheme, the font, and the title.
So far, the biggest problem I've seen is the tagline, which was left off the landscape-style subway posters and is only used on the portrait style ones. I don't mean to sound like a snob but, "The Funk Don't Quit" doesn't exactly say something special to me...
As before, Frank Miller's ability to produce fetishized images goes unabated. As I've said before, I'm a fan of a big contrast between light and dark, so this is quite pleasing to my eyes. The shading, the little flashes of red, the white of her eye. This is very nice.
The tagline, too, is pretty good. "Especially bad" means she's either done something terrible, or that she's always a bit bad and she's managed to outdo herself...
It bears keeping in mind, in case you don't know Frank's work or the prior Sin City film, but Miller has this trend of making the most extreme story out of a familiar genre or trope. So 300 becomes more than Zulu or Spartacus, it's Zulu or Spartacus on a potent combo of steroids and meth. So, too, Sin City is a noir film that prostitutes itself day and night to support its heroin/crack addiction. It's a caricature, if an occasionally enjoyable one.
When it works, it works - and when it flops, it flops. I know some of the scripting in the first picture was painful, clearly words that read better on a page than would be heard aloud.
But it's hard not to appreciate how the general sensibility and aesthetic of the noir/pulp thing has carried over into every element of the movie - including the ads...
Take, for example, how the font for the subtitle "A Dame to Kill For" looks appropriate for an actual pulp novel, while the "Sin City" font looks more suitable for a comic book. Hell, I'm just glad Judi Dench isn't playing the Dame.
Now, that poster above and to the right was in a movie theater I went to recently. The one below, however, is the actual subway ad:
And now you can see that this lovely shot of Ms. Green is just taken from a group shot featuring the whole cast. Or maybe it's the other way around - one of the advantages of a movie made entirely on green screen, I suppose. I just hope they went with Eva because she seems to fit the title of the film, not the fact that she's quite good-looking...
I often complain that movie posters are just big shots of the lead staring straight at you. I'm not complaining here because 1) it's not a other white male, and 2) there's some artistry to the image. I over the white-on-black background color being mirrored by the black-on-white scheme to the lettering.
This suggests that the film will deal with duality, or perhaps a giant game of chess... The problem is that the poster is mysterious that it risks not telling the viewer anything or giving them many reasons to see this movie.
Scarlett, Freeman, Besson - it's kind of cool and confident that Lucy doesn't even bother with a tagline or other information to gain your interest. But cool color motifs aside, we've got nothing to go on.
The title "Lucy" tells us the film should be about a woman, but that's it. In fact, I'd say that's a pretty weak choice, but I like when Besson uses old-fashioned female names (e.g., Matilda).
So you can imagine how surprised I was when I saw the phone booth ads.
What's fun here is that it's a completely different take on the same idea - instead of including white and black in equal amounts and in opposing positions, everything's grey. The exception made for Ms. Johansson's eyes is a very nice touch as well.
I really like this poster. The picture is unusual and has a bit of depth to it - so many elements, but it's not a cluttered image - which makes it interesting. The mostly grayscale color palette does a nice job of offsetting the ominous look to the guy and the dystopian look to the background. This coloring also does a lot to make the red tone of the title stand out.
And, hey, anything that makes that title work better is a blessing. Anyone who saw the original (I didn't) or read up about it (I did) knows that the movie's premise is one night when total anarchy reigns on the streets. It would've been far better if they had just given it the title, The Purge 2: Even Purgier or The Purge 2: Purg-atory (oooh).
In short, this ad really pops, and the makers deserve a lot of credit for it - even if I have no interest in seeing The Purge: Anarchy. Sadly, the second subway promo isn't as impressive:
The large poster is, to my surprise, pretty cool. I like the colors, the font looks good, and the graphic advertises the film in general instead of just the actors (hell, they're not mentioned at all).
It's also just a very nicely-drawn image. It conveys conflict, and I like the use of a San Francisco landmark instead of one's from New York City or DC. Also, if I remember one of the reviews correctly, the climax of the last film was a battle on the Golden Gate Bridge, so that's fitting...
I like what they're doing with the different fonts here, just like I like the film's title (heavy-handed, but likeable anyway). I LOVE the graphic - very creepy and tense.
So I don't want to take anything away from a job done well, but the line about the "NYPD Sargeant" makes me want to laugh my ass off. No one who's from here would give a lot of weight to that...
Major props go to the style of the painting itself, which reminds me of Russian propaganda posters or something. I also love the way the names of the cast are written, with such odd spacing...
And the overall effect of the image - a painting of Michael Keaton looking confused with a miniature version of Hawkman perched on his head - prepares me for some sort of satire and makes me want to laugh. It's the subtitle that drives home the idea.
For a poster that doesn't directly say anything about the film (save the title's connection to the thing on MK's head), I find this to be quite evocative. Lovely.
