That’s right, everyone, I’m back from vacation, so you can stop pulling out your hair and rocking back and forth now. No more cutting! Daddy’s home! Just kidding, I know you don’t care. Let’s get straight into This Week In Posters, everyone’s favorite.
This poster for Elsetree 1976 might be my favorite design of the week. Simple, intriguing, lucid. I hadn’t heard of it before now, but the poster gives me a pretty good idea what it’s about. That image of a Jedi eating a sandwich sells the whole thing.
Not that it needs it, but here’s the official synopsis from BFI (via SlashFilm):
In this affectionate documentary, we meet ten of those bit performers who appeared, however fleetingly, in Lucas’ box office behemoth. Rather than the standard ‘making of’ – the likes of which have been seen countless times before – Elstree 1976 paints an intimate portrait of these performers, examining how their brushes with Lucas shaped the paths of their lives. With a cast ranging from Darth Vader himself (or David Prowse as he’s better known to his friends), to a performer whose character was cut entirely from the finished film, this is not so much a film about Star Wars as the story of a group of people united by one life-changing experience.
This was actually funded on Kickstarter. Anyway, it sounds great. My only worry is, will audiences really care about an obscure little art film called “Star Wars” or whatever? Only time will tell.
Executive produced by Martin Scorsese, starring Vincent Piazza and Patricia Arquette? Yes, I am excited by all of these names. Great tagline too. Trouble is, a bunch of a big names and an interesting looking movie on such a small, sketchy poster kind of make you wonder if it was one of those failed attempts that the studio is now trying to bury or hide. Cursory research tells me it isn’t, so… might I suggest a bigger, better poster? I’m willing to bet we’ll see one by next week.
The film tells the true story of Thomas and Rose, who attempted to climb the mafia ranks after becoming obsessed with the 1992 trial of John Gotti. (You know it’s the ’90s because they talk about Blockbuster Video.) In order to make their mark in the world of underground crime, the two start to go after some of the jurors of the Gotti trial. [THR]
I would’ve had no idea that was Patricia Arquette if the caption didn’t tell me. And I love Patricia Arquette.
[The Wannabe opens December 4]
Call me crazy, but if your movie has a big scary goat featured prominently, I will see that movie. See: The Witch, Drag Me To Hell.
Does Rams qualify? Hard to say. A “ram” can refer to either a male goat or a sheep, and goats and sheep are closely related, so “get sheepish” doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a sheep. It’s plausible that a goat could be called sheep-ish. Look, I’m not a botanist.
Anyway, it looks like the sheep/goat in this one isn’t evil or possessed by the devil so much as it’s just your average Icelandic buddy comedy. One of the buddies is always a sheep or goat in Iceland. I hope this starts a trend. When it comes to buddy comedies, I’ll take a sheep over Zac Efron any day.
I’m trying to reconcile how much I like that pull quote at the top (in that it’s actually descriptive, contains no “adverbly adjective” constructions, and isn’t too cliché ridden) with the fact that it comes from Rex Reed, of all people.
Anyway, great poster. I enjoy the color scheme, as well as the look on Alex Jennings’ face, which seems to say “Oh my, this Maggie Smith is such a kick in the pants, I can scarcely contain myself.”
Which is the basic hook of any Maggie Smith vehicle.
Don’t piss off the chicken lady.
I don’t know how a massive ensemble Christmas comedy with this bad a title could possibly be good. For one thing, is it “Love, The Coopers” like a letter sign off, or just “Love the Coopers” as in “Oh, the Coopers – we love the Coopers!”?
Neither option is particularly compelling, but either would be better than this vague description of a boringly-named family we’ve never heard of. “A movie about the Coopers? Finally!”
As for the poster, there’s too much going on for us to care about any one thing. They should recrop this so it’s just June Squibb gazing longingly at a big fluffy dog.
I would watch that movie.
Anyone else think it’s weird that the Peanuts movie tagline is strikingly similar to the Entourage movie tagline? I think there could be a sketch there. “This week on Peanuts, Charlie’s lemonade stand makes TOO MUCH MONEY, Snoopy has to figure out how to ditch some clingy bitch from down the block, Pig Pen buys some sick new shoes from Chuck Liddell, and Marcie and Peppermint Pattie start hookin’ up in front of EVERYBODY.”
It appears Emily Blunt is closing her eyes to let the praise rain down on her face. Also, Benicio Del Toro looks strangely like Colin Farrell in this poster. Anyway, I agree with all of these quotes. Though the image of Josh Brolin wearing his flip-flops to a meeting with a bunch of commandos about killing drug dealers would’ve sold the entire thing. I love you, J Broles.
I got treeeeees on my miiiiiiiind…
So, I think these posters are good? I really don’t know. I have a hard time evaluating them on their own merits. Ever since I heard the budget soared from $95 million to $165 million thanks to Iñarritu’s insane creative demands, I’ve had an unstoppable rock-hard anticipation boner for this one.
It’s a film about snow… and sparks.
Honestly, the poster should just be a blank white page with black words that say “we couldn’t afford to make a poster because we let our director shoot sequentially, using only natural light and real snow, and we had to pay the families of three camera assistants who were eaten by bears while shooting a dream sequence.”
SOLD.
No rules, no limits indeed. Why, what with the guns and all, these two look like a couple of no limit soldiers, if you will.
It’s like someone said, “Okay, so Furious 7 already jumped cars from one high rise to the next… What if we did that, but while also shooting bad guys and doing sick motocross tricks?”
I really hope that guys caps three terrorist and then clicks his heels against the handlebars before he lands a yacht full of topless European ladies. XXXTREME SPORTS! I can’t wait for this.
I enjoy this colorful take on the traditional “pyramid of stuff” design, and this looks like a shagadelic good time. That said, I don’t think I could hang this in my house, because having Rupert Grint and Ron Perlman’s face in the same poster would scare small children.
So you see it’s a broken record, with a break in the shape of a knife. Interesting. But I wonder: wouldn’t it have made more sense if the record needle was a knife? I don’t know, I’m just spitballing here.
A blood spatter and a Japanese schoolgirl isn’t exactly reinventing the wheel, but I thought this was well done.
So… vampires… in high school? Has this ever been tried before? I don’t know, it seems a little “out there,” if you know what I mean.
Good thing that drink container says “BLOOD” on the outside, otherwise I’d never know what it was. That’s sort of like when a cartoonist resorts to writing “DICK CHENEY” on his caricature’s shirt so that people know who he’s supposed to be.
Hmm, so it’s about aliens now? I’m confused. I wish they’d led with Key holding a kitty, this version is by far the most effective.
Here’s the poster for Dirty Grandpa, whose trailer we posted last week. You can go watch that if you want, but I think the good thing about a movie called “Dirty Grandpa” is that no one sits there thinking “‘Dirty Grandpa?’ Jeez, I wonder what that could be about.”
Anyway, this poster is clearly a reference to The Graduate, that Mike Nichols classic about Dustin Hoffman driving Anne Bancroft to spring break so she can get one last college peen in her before she dies of lung cancer. Remember when she snorted the Viagra thinking it was molly? So tight, bro.
These posters need to stop prominently featuring John Travolta’s hairline, which honestly raises more questions than it does answers. Everything on his face is painted a too-dark shade of black. They need to switch his hair and eyebrows to a touch of grey or something. He’s aiming too young, and instead of shaving years off his appearance, it just makes you wonder what horrors that ridiculous wig and face paint is hiding. He’s starting to remind me of Dustin Hoffman at the end of Hook.
See that? I was so distracted by Travolta’s hair that I didn’t even have time to complain about the inexplicably mismatched faces and names.
Watching our favorite actors bulk up to play boxers seems to be more compelling than any plot at this point. Maybe instead of a movie, we just get like five of our favorite actors together and shoot a montage of them getting buffer and buffer.
I honestly can’t tell if that hat is Photoshopped. I hope Stallone never takes it off. I hope he takes showers and lifts weights shirtless in that hat.
Stallone’s face is a bit of a Photoshop disaster in this, but at least they lined up the faces with the names.
CRANIUM INTEL, THE FINAL EXECUTION. I don’t know what this is about, but it sounds like a sci-fi mad lib.
It’s a shame “Girl Code” is already a saying and show, because “Codegirl” is actually an apt title in this case.
Join high school aged girls from around the world as they try to better their community through technology and collaboration in this thrilling, heartfelt documentary.
By 2017, the app market will be valued at $77 Billion. Over 80% of these developers are male. The Technovation Challenge aims to change that by empowering girls worldwide to develop apps for an international competition. From rural Moldova to urban Brazil to suburban Massachusetts, CODEGIRL follows teams who dream of holding their own in the world’s fastest-growing industry. The winning team gets $10K to complete and release their app, but every girl discovers something valuable along the way. [official synopsis, via FilmBuff]
That sounds great, though I’m not sure I would’ve gotten that just from the poster. Couldn’t someone at least draw equations on a window or something? Jeez, it’s like you guys have never seen a movie about math before.
Who would’ve ever thought ballet would turn out to be such a fertile setting for sex and intrigue?
I’m not sure if that dress is supposed to be a visual metaphor for something, but I can’t stop looking at it, which was probably the point. Cool poster. And yes, I would see this. Of course, after Black Swan, I’m probably going to expect too much.
Here’s another “pyramid of stuff” poster, this one even better than the last. Do you think the snake means that it’s going to have Biblical themes, or is it a caduceus reference, like this is going to be about medicine? To IMDb!
In A BIGGER SPLASH, the lives of a high profile couple, a famous rock star and a filmmaker, (Tilda Swinton and Matthias Schoenaerts) vacationing and recovering on the idyllic sun-drenched and remote Italian island of Pantelleria are disrupted by the unexpected visit of an old friend and his daughter (Ralph Fiennes and Dakota Johnson) — creating a whirlwind of jealousy, passion and, ultimately, danger for everyone involved.
Dang, I was way off. Anyway, Mattias Schoenaerts rules.
As I said when I wrote up the trailer earlier, it looks like Paramount is selling Anomalisa not based on what it is, but on how much everyone likes it. Which is a wise choice, given how good it is, and how easy it would be to spoil. My only criticism is that they didn’t use any of my quotes in it and now I’m sad. Don’t they know I have feelings?
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Vince Mancini is a writer and comedian living in San Francisco. A graduate of Columbia’s non-fiction MFA program, his work has appeared on FilmDrunk, the UPROXX network, the Portland Mercury, the East Bay Express, and all over his mom’s refrigerator. Fan FilmDrunk on Facebook, find the latest movie reviews here.