THIS WEEK IN POSTERS – This Week in Posters & Stills is our weekly round-up (and critique) of all the posters, publicity stills, one-sheets, and set photos that hit in the previous week, a nice little early preview of what’s to come in the movie world. Posted every Wednesday, or as close as we can get.
JACKASS PRESENTS: BAD GRANDPA. I’m sick of the “Bad ___” naming precedent, which is climbing up there with “Got ___” and “Keep Calm and ___ ____” in the ranks of stock slogans that need to go away. And something about this whole idea seems stale (maybe the fact that they already did extended old-man makeup bits in the Jackass movies)… and yet… everything they put out just makes me more convinced that I’m going to see it. I could watch that scene of Knoxville making it rain in the strip club from the trailer a million times. I guess “Grandpa making a scene” is just classic comedy that never ages. Which is good, because in a few years, the Jackass gang will be able to pull this off without make up.
AFTER TILLER. They certainly didn’t make me Google it to find out what it was about, which I appreciate. I would comment on the color scheme, but as a red-green colorblind-afflicted American, I don’t really know what it is. Basically, this poster is racist against the colorblind.
GENERATION IRON. This is sort of the spiritual sequel to Pumping Iron, a film about my favorite subject, dudes getting jacked and greasing up their ripped bods with their bros. They basically could’ve shot this in Uproxx offices. “ONE MORE REP! FEEL THE BURN! COME ON, SQUEEZE THOSE KNEES TOGETHER, PROM QUEEN!”
Generation Iron examines the professional sport of bodybuilding today and gives the audience front row access to the lives of the top 7 bodybuilders (including Phil Heath, Kai Greene, Branch Warren and Dennis Wolf) in the sport as they train to compete in the world’s most premiere bodybuilding stage – Mr. Olympia.
GENERATON IRON will be in theaters across the U.S. on September 20, 2013.
Having Mickey Rourke narrate is a nice start, but after Arnold’s speech about all the different places he is cumming in the original, I don’t know if any other bodybuilding movie can compete.
Here’s another still from same.
The trailer:
Hmmm, I don’t like that there’s only one token mention of steroids. If you do a documentary about body building and the only mention of steroids is “not everyone who takes steroids could do this,” you’re missing out on half the interesting part. I know it’s just a trailer, but I hope it’s more about all the crazy stuff these guys put their bodies through than just them talking about heart and determination. It takes heart and determination to compete at a high level in a sport? You don’t say!
I once worked as a grip on a fitness infomercial, and the body builder they shot for it was talking about how he always pees in measuring cups to see how much liquid he loses every day. He measures his pee, son! Show me that. Never shy away from weirdness.
ALGONQUIN: Why don’t you make like this guy and LEAF me alone! (*pantomimes golf swing*)
But seriously, I have no f*cking clue what this is about.
[the gives-way-too-much-away synopsis is here]
AMERICAN MILKSHAKE: I know what all of those words mean, but together they’re just a mess!
Ohhh, I get it, “Milkshake” is like black slang for a white dude. Is that a new thing? When I was playing high school basketball, the black and Latino dudes usually called us “cornflake.” And in my case, “Gopher” or “DNA” (don’t ask). Thank God no one had heard of Luke Walton back then. In any case, even knowing what the movie is about, that is an incredibly obtuse poster. The movie is about a white dude who wants to be black at a black school… and the poster has zero black people in it?
THE ANIMAL PROJECT. Oh God, please tell me this is about furries.
As a thirty something acting teacher attempts to push a group of eager young performers out of their comfort zones, he struggles with his own ability to live an authentic and fulfilling life with his teenage son.
Damn.
THE CONTRACTOR. Is it just me or did they try really hard to make Christina Cox and Brad Rowe look like Vera Farmiga and Guy Pearce? Not that it matters. If Danny Trejo is the main character, the answer is yes.
You know, unless the question is “want to see Machete 2?”
DALLAS BUYERS CLUB. Interesting concept for this one (trailer here), but I don’t know how you beat this as the poster:
Cool poster concepts are all well and good, but not when you’ve got Matthew McConaughey parting with chicks and punching out cops.
THE DICK KNOST. I’m just going to assume this is something super Canadian and back slowly out of the room, if that’s okay with you.
DIVERGENT. Here’s an infographic for the YA-fiction-based Shailene Woodley vehicle. TAGLINE: “Not The Hunger Games, we swear.”
WE GOTTA GET OUT OF THIS PLACE: I like the artwork. It’s like if Van Gogh were alive today and decided to paint a movie about a guy with Down Syndrome losing his virginity.
WE GOTTA GET OUT OF THIS PLACE starring Mackenzie Davis (SMASHED), Logan Huffman (“V”), Jeremy Allen White (“Shameless”), William Devane, Jon Gries, and Mark Pellegrino. The film is directed by Zeke Hawkins and Simon Hawkins and produced by Justin X. Duprie and Brian Udovich (THE WACKNESS, ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE). The poster is live now on INDIEWIRE!
WE GOTTA GET OUT OF THIS PLACE is about three teens who are forced to pull off
a dangerous heist for a brutal cotton farmer. The film will make its World Premiere at next month’s Toronto International Film Festival as an acquisition title.
HOW I LIVE NOW. All I want to know about this is whether Saorse Ronan plays something besides frowny-faced precocious girl, and in that regard, the poster has failed me miserably.
Set in the near-future UK, Ronan plays Daisy, an American teenager sent to stay with relatives in the English countryside. Initially withdrawn and alienated, she begins to warm up to her charming surroundings, and strikes up a romance with the handsome Edmund (George MacKay). But on the fringes of their idyllic summer days are tense news reports of an escalating conflict in Europe. As the UK falls into a violent, chaotic military state, Daisy finds herself hiding and fighting to survive.
The synopsis actually sounds interesting. It’s not a good sign that all I got from the poster was “sullen teenager.”
KILL YOUR DARLINGS. I’m sorry, Daniel Radcliffe still creeps me the hell out. I think it’s the eyebrows. I’ll never be able to get over the eyebrows.
KILL YOUR DARLINGS is the previously untold story of murder that brought together a young Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe), Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston) and William Burroughs (Ben Foster) at Columbia University in 1944, providing the spark that would lead to their Beat Revolution. This is the true story of friendship and murder that led to the birth of an entire generation.
So now we’ve had A) a Roland Emmerich movie about Shakespearian cannon fights B) a Three Musketeers movie about flying pirate ships C) an Edgar Allen Poe movie about him trying to stop a serial killer… and now a movie about how the Beat Revolution was sparked by a murder? Oh well, at least this one’s true:
It was here 68 years ago, on a slope descending to the moonlit Hudson River, that Lucien Carr, 19, the Beat Generation’s charismatic, callow swami, buried a knife in the heart of David Kammerer, 33, his besotted, dauntless hometown stalker.
Carr is often characterized as muse to the Beats, but he was more than that. Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg were acolytes, captivated by Carr’s profane rants about bourgeois culture and the path to transcendence through pure creative expression — his “New Vision,” after “A Vision” by Yeats.
Carr’s “honor slaying” of Kammerer, as The Daily News called it, served as an emotional fulcrum for the group a decade before Kerouac, Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs published their seminal works; the violent death in their midst lent credibility to the tortured-soul narrative they yearned for. [NYTimes]
Just because this one so happens to be true doesn’t mean I’m going to stop writing my origin story about Louisa May Alcott the busty lesbian werewolf shaver.
MONUMENTS MEN: When you’ve got Bill Murray in a cravat, why is 85 percent of the poster a paint job for a car?
NARCO CULTURA. Again, points for me knowing what this one’s about. But hey, do you think we could make just one movie about Mexico without a burnt orange filter? I would like to know what color Mexico actually is.
NIGHT MOVES. A movie named after a Bob Seger song with an empty boat for a poster? I give it three stray cats and a man eating soup out of a hat. I refuse to look up the plot of this one.
THE NIGHT VISITOR. “Someone is always watching.”
Is it that guy in the corner? I bet it’s that guy in the corner. He works for the NSA.
SALINGER. If this one wasn’t a documentary, I’d swear it was a fictional account of how Salinger was inspired to write Catcher in the Rye by a deaf mute he mentored a la Finding Forrester.
THANKS FOR SHARING. I just don’t understand the ongoing indie comedy impulse to make mental illness look cuddly and cute.
THE DOG. Here’s a publicity still from The Dog, a documentary playing TIFF in September and New York Film Festival in October:
Coming of age in the 1960s, John Woltowicz’ libido was unrestrained even by the libertine standards of the era, with multiple wives and lovers, both women and men. In August 1972, he attempted to rob a Brooklyn bank to finance his lover’s sex-reassignment surgery, resulting in a fourteen-hour hostage situation that was broadcast live on. Three years later, John was portrayed by Al Pacino as “Sonny,” and his crime immortalized in one of the most iconic New York movies of all time, Dog Day Afternoon. The film had a profound influence on Wojtowicz (who pronounced his name “Woto-wits”), and when he emerged from a six-year prison sentence, he was known by his self-imposed nickname: “The Dog.”
Drawing upon extraordinary archival footage, the film shuffles between the 1970s and the 2000s. Touching upon the sexual revolution of the 1970s, we gain a first-hand perspective on New York’s historical gay liberation movement in which Wojtowicz played an active role. In later footage, he remains a subversive force, backed by the unconditional love and headstrong wit of his mother Terry. The hows and whys of the bank robbery are recounted in gripping detail by Wojtowicz and various eyewitnesses, and don’t necessarily always align with one another.
Directors Allison Berg & Frank Keraudren began filming The Dog in 2002, and their long-term dedication pays off in this unforgettable portrait capturing all of the subject’s complexity. John is, by turns, lovable, maniacal, heroic, and self-destructive. To call him larger than life feels like an understatement. Passionate and profane, The Dog makes no apologies for being who he is: “Live every day as if it’s your last and whoever doesn’t like it can go f*ck themselves and a rubber duck.”
That may be the longest official synopsis I’ve ever read, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t make me want to see it. For the record, you should never go touching on the sexual revolution of the 1970s without consent, or in the work place.
THOR THE DARK WORLD. Ten bucks says he lands in that three-point stance thing with his hammer up in the air and his left fist in the ground in that pose they do in every superhero movie. Is that some running joke among superhero movies? I’ve never seen that in real life and it’s in ever superhero movie.
THOR: THE DARK WORLD. Loki is the only thing that makes me care about this movie at all. OOH! OOH! Say “mewling quim!”
WEEKENDER. Whoa, is Kevin Smith a super producer now?
It looks okay, but does this mean I’m going to have to listen to rave music for 90 minutes?
[most posters via IMPA]