This Week in Posters & Stills: Liberace, Red Dawn, & Dogs with Sunglasses

 
After a few week hiatus, This Week in Posters and Stills is back! Did you miss it? I hope so, because these posts take damn forever. Don’t stop at the first slide, because this week, we’ve got new stills from the long-delayed Red Dawn remake, Cloud Atlas, Brad Pitt in Cormac McCarthy’s The Counselor, and more dogs in sunglasses and unnecessary diagonals than you can shake your wiener (or labes) at.
Up top, you’re looking at Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as his gay buddy, Scott Thorson in Steven Soderbergh’s Behind the Candelabra. I’ve been pretty open about my love of Magic Mike, so I hope this is more like Magic Mike Soderbergh than Haywire Soderbergh. Soderbergh’s output is impressive, but, much like Woody Allen, it might be more impressive if he made half as many and fewer of the crappy ones.
[via Buzzfeed]

It’s been a while since we checked in on our old buddy Chewy, aka Chewetel Ojiofor, but here he is in 12 Years a Slave, from Shame director Steve McQueen. Ugh, I hope Carey Mulligan doesn’t sing a billion-minute song in this one. Sorry, I digress. Anyway, speaking of people who could use a nickname, the daughter is Quvenzhané Wallis, who’s been earning raves in Beasts of the Southern Wild.
I know this is only a movie family, but Jesus Christ, that is the cutest damned family I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen otters less cute than this.
[via TheFilmStage]
Here’s a mini-image from MGM’s Red Dawn remake that got delayed while MGM spent a million dollars changing the bad guys from China to North Korea. On the one hand, it’s totally unbelievable that a country the size of North Korea could or would attempt to invade and occupy the United States, but on the other hand, the last thing we need is another generation of wingnuts convinced that a communist country (or whatever the hell you call China these days) wants to invade us.
Josh Peck, Josh Hutcherson, and Chris Hemsworth on the set. No way in hell they could’ve gotten Hemsworth to do this movie post-Avengers. I read the script. It was awful, but on the plus side, it seemed to leave a lot of opportunity for parkour. After this Josh Peck and Josh Hutcherson should just combine into one entity, Josh Peckerson. It will be much better than keeping track of them both.
Here’s Sienna Miller and Toby Jones as Tippi Hedren and Alfred Hitchcock in The Girls. Poor Toby Jones, he played a great Truman Capote in Infamous, then got overshadowed by Philip Seymour Hoffman playing the same role in Capote. Now his Hitchcock is going to be overshadowed by Anthony Hopkins in Hitchcock. Poor guy, he’s a great actor, and played an awesome dickless wood nymph in Your Highness (I will go to my grave screaming about how underrated that movie is). But that’s what he gets for doing a movie with Sienna Miller. Post Layer Cake, Sienna Miller is basically the kiss of death for a project. [slashfilm]
Here’s the French poster for Ted, which translates as:

“Ted, 30, teddy bear. Smoker, drinker, flirty…
Man’s best friend. Couple’s worst enemy!”

“Flirty,” huh? Maybe something lost in translation there. Hey, so have you ever noticed a lot of these posters take great pains to make sure the peoples’ hair is sultrily blowing in the wind without a strand out of place, only to leave the blankest bung expression on their face? Like you styled their hair for hours, but left in a shot where the subject was blinking and farting? It’s really weird.
Here’s a first look at Arnold Schwarzenegger playing a sheriff in The Last Stand. It’s definitely Arnold in sunglasses alright. Very exciting.
[USAToday]
Here’s Ralph Fiennes in Mike Newell’s upcoming adaptation of Great Expectations. Fiennes is clearly playing Larry Liverspots, the town masturbator. Or Pip. Sh*t man, I don’t even remember that book, quit harshing my mellow.
[ThePlaylist]
Here’s Helena Bonham Carter on an average day, about to take her kids to school. Ha, I’m kidding, she’s playing Miss Havisham, but you were fooled for a second, right? Helena Bonham Carter should probably get a new haircut where it doesn’t look like she’s been sleeping in her car for three weeks.
And finally, the last still from Great Expectations, it’s Scraggly Bill the Vagabond, the man who crashes the Queen’s chocolate party. He will be executed, but his ghost comes back in season two to give Pip delicious chicken recipes.
I’m Vince Mancini, and I approve this sideboob.
[Related: Laremy’s 10 Things You Should Know about Step-Up Revolution]
One of these directors is not like the others…
That tagline is great. Just don’t dwell on it, because I don’t know what the hell it means.
This Asian poster for Resident Evil: Retribution is taking the unexplained diagonal trend TO THE XXXTREEEEEME! These zombies don’t obey the laws of gravity OR interdimensional travel! SHOOT THEM WITH YOUR SLUT CANNON!
Again. There are three people on the goddamned poster. Is it REALLY so hard to line up their names with their faces? Sidenote: Melissa Leo is looking at Jesse Eisenberg’s hair the way I imagine all girls look at guys with hair like ours. That look of disappointment mixed with pity. (*sigh*) No one knows the shame of the be-Jew-fro’d.
Hey, Anna Kendrick, you’re in a movie poster, try not to look so much like a taxidermied corpse. I’d probably feel that corpse’s boobs still, I’m just saying.
Get it? She’s quiet because she’s Asian. Learn all about it in Intro to Stereotypes. Also, that’s the closest approximation to a human Dreamworks Face that I’ve ever seen.
“Blows under pressure,” is that even double entendre? That just seems straight-up sexual.
I feel like I went out for lunch one day and when I came back, this chick was in every movie. How did that happen? Her name’s Rebel Wilson, by the way. She was perfectly positioned as a character actor. “Holy sh*t, a younger, Australian Melissa McCarthy? PUT HER IN ALL THE ROM-COMS!”
“All the activity has led to this… A F*CKING SHADOW.”
Now you know why I’ve never bothered watching one of these movies.
I get the feeling Robert Rodriguez wants to make a Machete sequel a lot more than anyone wants to watch a Machete sequel. The first one did a great job of convincing me that it should’ve stayed a two-minute trailer.
Well clutch my pearls, isn’t this kitschy and outrageous.
Isn’t there a shot exactly like this in Die Hard? I can’t find it, but I’m pretty sure there is. Anyway, Lockout. I really wanted it to be better. If it had been more like this poster, it would’ve been.
 
Here’s a better look at Michael Douglas as Liberace. As someone born in the 80s, I don’t think there’s any public figure whose name I heard more without ever having actually seen the person than Liberace.
 
Good God seventies haircuts were horrible.
“Handsome people drink wine and go on vacations.” This looks like it could be a travel brochure.
The guy in the background definitely seems like the top.
Here’s the Asian poster for Adam Sandler’s Hotel Translvania, which I’m sure won’t just be a lazily slapped-together rehash of other stuff.
Tom Arnold is the man. There, I said it.
I still haven’t seen this, but I loved (mostly) World’s Greatest Dad. I haven’t been so quick to see this one. It just looks a little… on the nose. “Get it? They kill people who suck!” I dunno, man, wasn’t that the plot of Boondock Saints?
Here’s Robert Deniro, still not giving a f*ck.
I have to admit that I’m impressed with the amount of fireballs they crammed into this one.
This poster hews very close to the Steven Seagal model. If only Aaron Eckhart’s character’s name is “Jack Expatriate.”
I’ll admit I know nothing about this besides the title, but can we stop glorifying the losers, loners, outcasts, etc.? For one thing, they always end up getting laid by the end of the movie, which just pisses me off, and for another, it keeps drilling into everyone’s heads the idea that if you don’t have any friends, it’s probably because you’re just really smart and cultured and creative and everyone else are jerks. When the reality is, if you don’t have at least one or two friends, it’s probably because you’re an assh*le. Instead “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” how bout “Grow Some Balls and Join the Party, Pussy.”
OH HELL YES DOGS IN SUNGLASSES! Dogs in sunglasses are the cure for everything.
So deep in the south the trees are upside down. Yeah. Gonna have to give me SOME reason to watch this before you start getting artsy.
I have no idea what “‘ave a butchers!” means, and that intrigues me. I hate zombies, but I love barely-intelligible English accents, so I’m torn on this one.
I’m all for a simple poster that tells me about all the heavy hitters in your movie if you’ve got them, but when you’re movie has Tom Hanks in a million different wacky disguises, it seems like a waste to just put some names over an inspirational Christian messages poster.
Here’s Brad Pitt on the set of the Cormac McCarthy-scripted, Ridley Scott-directed The Counselor. Major boner for this one.
Good God, look at that hollowed-out shell of Robert Deniro. If he hadn’t already been in so many crap movies besides this one in the last few years, I’d say Katherine Heigl twisted his head off and sucked his soul out like a crawfish.
Do NOT tell comic book dudes that this is a remake of that Sylvester Stallone movie, they will yell at you. (Here’s the trailer, by the way). This poster looks like The Dark Knight crossed with Game of Thrones. You could do a lot worse.
I just hope they show his dramatic court battle against Sandford.
Oh, man. Remember Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter? When’d that come out, like five, six years ago? Those were crazy times.
[all posters via IMPA, except where otherwise noted]