This Week in Posters


THIS WEEK IN POSTERS: This week, we’ve got STILL MORE DIAGONAL HORIZON LINES, plus Tim and Eric, C-Tates and J-Hill in 21 J-Strizz, and I try to control the homicidal rage I feel towards those Mirror Mirror clowns for missing the best tagline in the history of taglines. Enjoy!

Even if you hate Tim and Eric, you have to admit that they get the best art work. It’s all in the details, like Tim’s fly being a quarter of the way down and the way his belly hangs over just so. Also, I know some people type it “Tim & Eric,” but the ampersand seems needy to me.



Wait, are they together forever or are they Apart? QUIT CONFUSING ME, MOVIE I’M PROBABLY NOT GOING TO SEE!

Okay, I looked it up. Apparently it’s written and directed by a guy named “Aaron Rottinghaus,” which is an incredible name if it’s not made up.

When a pair of star-crossed lovers are forced apart by fate, it’s up to them to right the future. As they fall deeper in love, they experience visions of a deadly future — those around them are doomed to die. Within days their premonitions become reality as their friends start dying around them. As the visions intensify, it becomes clear that the next people to die will be them. The couple has to choose between remaining together and hurting those around them or staying apart forever. [DreadCentral]

Meh. Thrillers never did much for me. And doesn’t that imply that they die if they stay together? Where’s the conflict?

Also, I prefer to interpret the silhouette in the poster not as a romantic interlude, but as two combatants frozen in the act of pummeling for a Thai plum while they try to deliver knees to each other’s midsection. I’ve seen it a million times. I think the girl currently has the advantage. She should push down on his right hand and throw the left elbow.



ATM is the latest from the writer of Buried. Instead of a coffin, this time they’re trapped in an ATM booth! My hatred for Buried is well-known (I thought it was cheap gimmick with no real purpose) but I was willing to give the writer the benefit of the doubt on his next project, until he seemed like kind of a douche. Also, why are they trapped? There are at least three of you. You can’t take one dude with a tire iron? Sorry, you’ve lost my sympathy. You deserve to stay in that booth until you grow a pair.

The Italian is perfect though. I hope this writer continues along the same narrative gimmick path, and that all of his movies are henceforth known as various incarnations of “Trappola.” Buried: Trappola eena di coffin! ATM: Trappola eenside a cashola machine! Trappola 3: The Jacket, She’s-a too tight from-a too many meatball!



Have you noticed almost every male heartthrob — James Franco, Brad Pitt, R-Pattz here, C-Tates — all have squinty, tiny, little eyeballs? I understand what makes girls with big eyes attractive to men. It’s a neotenous signal that relates health and youth in a woman, as someone astutely informed me on Twitter. But why the tiny eyes for men? And why aren’t there more Asian heartthrobs, when they clearly seem to have the advantage in this regard?

[here’s the trailer for this one, by the way]



This is probably going to sound incredibly racist, but if I’m going to watch a whole movie about Islanders, I kind of wish Chris Lilley (from Summer Heights High/Angry Boys) could play one of them.



If you cut out the Cavill/Willis part of this poster, it could totally be a Steven Seagal poster. It has all the ingredients — pistol, shades, standing in front of a burning foreign city — all it needs is Steven Seagal and a sweet tagline. “Steven Seagal is Lt. Jack Day. He was falsely accused of war crimes, and now his niece has been kidnapped…”

It takes more than sex to make a baby. It also requires… uh… a bed? Is this some kind of Virginia Woolf thing? Like, to make a baby you need a bed of your own? I’ll be honest, poster, you lost me.

I have no idea what this movie is about, but I’m pretty much down for any two-color, stylized depiction of crows. That’s a promise.

Well this is obviously kick-ass, and I’m not just saying that because I’m hosting a screening of it next week. But really, if there’s a better way to sell The FP than the image of a guy in moonboots about to play some serious Dance Dance Revolution Beat Beat Revelation, I don’t know what it is.

Even putting aside the fact that Billy Elliot is wildly overrated and shitty, I can’t trust any poster that’s just people having fun in period-appropriate outfits. I think we all remember the lesson of Take Me Home Tonight. …Well, I did, anyway.


Well this tagline is just scientifically inaccurate. And those giant glasses aren’t doing anything to help Minnie Driver look like not a frog. Anyway, the best I can say for this is that at least it’s not named after a popular song. And even then it’s pretty goddamned close.



Yes, that is an old-timey vibrator and Maggie Gyllenhaal looks super excited to get dilled with it. Make sure that thought is in your head, then go back and look at everyone’s facial expressions again. Amazing, right? I could do this all day.

Clive Owen is a handsome man and a solid actor, who hasn’t made a film I’ve even remotely given a shit about seeing in going on five years now.

Iron Sky is a film about space Nazis that has zeppelins in the poster, which makes it almost impossible for me not to love. But a giant poster (POSTER WITHIN A POSTER) for what looks like a Sarah Palin parody in the background makes it feel… well, Seltzer-Friedbergy. Sarah Palin is the lowest of the low-hanging fruit. It’s not cute, or kitschy, or funny anymore. Can’t we all just try to forget she ever existed now? Please?

Save the world? He can’t even keep his pants dry. Though I do like the idea of buying an island and declaring yourself president. I would have a crown made of bananas and a big scepter with donuts on the end that I would take a bit from right after a big pronouncement. “No pants for everyone!” I’d say, and then take a big mouthful of maple glazed.

Do you get extra points for literal imagery? I also like that they used a critic quote that didn’t just say “GREAT MOVIE!” Although now that I read it… it kind of just seems like a fancy way of saying “GREAT MOVIE!” I have no idea what this is about. And you know what? I’m not dying to find out. It looks very boring and very French.

SNOW WHITE: Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the f–

MIRROR: Bitch, stop right there and get some tweezers, this is ridiculous.



UGH. I just… ugh. ARMIE OF ONE! HIS NAME IS ARMIE HAMMER AND HE’S A ONE-MAN ARMY! HOW DO YOU BLOW AN OPPORTUNITY LIKE THAT?!

As someone suggested in the comments, I would’ve also accepted “STOP. HAMMER TIME.”



A gay man wearing a powdered wig covered in fairy dust? Jeez, why didn’t they advertise this during the Super Bowl? Missed an opportunity there. But oh well, I think there’s still a UFC fight night coming up and a couple tractor pulls where they could get the word out.

I’m sorry, I can’t concentrate on anything except how hard this picture is screaming for C-Tates.

Phew, there. All better.



So we’re still making these movies, huh? Okay.

I expect to relate to this movie, because I’m always posing up in a boxing stance while I check out my own titties. Yeah, you like getting pumped up, don’t you, girls.

So it’s “filmed in real time”AND “inspired by true events?” Please, people, one gimmick at a time. And stop it with the “inspired by true events” crap. It doesn’t mean anything, it never has, and it’s never been a selling point. Not even once. Stop it.

[trailer here]



I love Andy Samberg, and while I know it’s only words, just the fact that Adam Sandler isn’t dressed in drag and Kevin James isn’t falling down on the poster gives me hope that this might be the one good movie Sandler makes every three years.


Again, no one outposters Tim and Eric. I would wear this on a t-shirt. And it would be the coolest. With the words removed. People would come up to me and ask what it was and I’d just shrug, all self-satisfied that they weren’t cool enough to know.

My Freudian analysis of this is that Jack is going to steam his Titanic phallus straight into Rose’s uterus. That’s why I always make a foghorn sound when I reach full insertion.

Am I going to have to be the asshole who says it? You’re not going to make me be the asshole who says it. Fine, I’ll say it: This looks like it could be funny. I’m okay with adaptations of old TV shows, as long as the adaptation is undertaken only for the purposes of making fun of that show.

Badges around necks and double pistols? This is basically Bad Boys, right? Does that make Jonah Hill the white Martin Lawrence and Channing Tatum the white Will Smith? That sounds about right.

Seriously, with the f*cking diagonal horizon line again? People, please, stop doing this. I’m not a confused puppy. It’s not cute when I have to tilt my head to the side. Also, there seems to be a poop angel on that backpack.

Okay, I admit it, I’m a little scared. It’s been done a million times, but unlike diagonals, the high contrast with pops of color look actually serves a purpose. And that purpose is… uh… Okay, maybe it doesn’t, but it looks cool. And looking cool is half the battle. That’s what C-Tates’ GI Joe PSA taught me.

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