THIS WEEK IN POSTERS: Okay, I don’t like to bore you guys with too much of the behind-the-scenes around these parts, but just to clarify, I wasn’t lying when I said that I was moving this feature to Wednesdays. It’s just that I wrote up the whole thing Wednesday, hit ‘Publish,’ and instead of actually publishing, the entire post decided to disappear. Which was super convenient, since this post takes longer than half a week’s posts combined. So that was awesome for me. But again, look for This Week in Posters and Stills on Wednesdays. I’ll do my best to grab all the latest posters, one-sheets, set photos, promo stills and the occasional trailer where applicable, in the hopes of giving you a nice overview of the films that are out there, accompanied by my usual smartass captions to help the pill go down. PHEW! We clear now? Good.
DARK SHADOWS: Here’s the first of a big new batch of character posters from Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows. The consensus seems to be that this looks terrible (and generally speaking, trying to adapt cult stuff from 50 years ago that’s already been referenced many times since is a recipe for disaster), but… if you ask me, Dark Shadows looks better than most of Burton’s other recent output. I’ll take this over Frankweenie, for instance. I mean, everyone has super pale skin and ghostly lips, but… at least they’re not desaturated with occasional pops of red this time, right? Baby steps. As long as we view all future Tim Burton projects only in the context of other Tim Burton projects, he should be fine.
Get it?? It’s the superheroes in and out of costume. I saw a coffee table book just like this once, but with porn stars. I like how they put Chris Hemsworth in a super casual Gap tee.
“What’s that? Me? Oh, I’m just your average, every-day Norse deity, you know? It’s not so glamorous, I’m more of a jeans-and-t-shirt kind of God anyway, I barely even go out. A heaven-body, I guess you could call me.”
And here we have the first of a big batch of stills from The Raven, which I never tire of reminding you is about Edgar Allen Poe helping a team of detectives catch a serial killer, who apparently spends all his time devising murders that will be exactly like Poe’s stories.
IMAGINED DIALOG: “Hmm, well as I’ve learned from my years of experience as a drunken goth poet, the pattern of ligature marks around the neck can mean only one thing…”
POE: “Yeah, yeah, I heard about the murder, but did you see this other thing on page five, the story about this really stupid movie coming out?”
STEVENS MCPOMADE: “That’s so Raven.”
I’d be wearing a mask too if I was in this dumbass movie. You blew it, Cusack.
“And verily there came a throbbing, a tumescence truly hobbling, an urge to come a knobbing, through my trouser door.”
Alice Eve has nice boobs, I guess is what I’m saying. I’ll show you an incredible, NSFW gif of them if you follow me on Twitter.
[More pictures at ComingSoon]
In case you don’t read whatever Asian language this is, the poster is for Battleship. You guys excited for the great Rihanna experiment of 2012? I know I am. I hope those flying ball thingies will be bringing Taylor Kitsch some charisma.
The poster’s not much to write home about (silly Russians, that’s not how you make an R!), but here’s the trailer:
It stars from Jonathan Sadowski from our buddy Justin Halpern’s old show and Olivia Taylor Dudley from 5SecondFilms, so, uh… there’s that. (I don’t really know where I was going with that either). I’m just excited for the part where the uranium rod tries to hide in her attic but gets ratted out by a neighbor.
“Strange is relative. Like, what if you had REALLY PALE SKIN and GHOSTLY LIPS! Wouldn’t that be STRANGE??” -From the mind of Tim Burton.
Dude. What the hell. Chloe Moretz is 15. She was 14 until like a month ago. That’s not right. It’s like she was created as an attempt to legitimize pedophilia.
OH THANK GOD, A DUMB WIENER KID IS IN THIS, I PROBABLY WASN’T GOING TO SEE IT OTHERWISE.
Hmm, if this is “strange,” what would you call Helena Bonham Carter’s outfit on a normal day?
That box is full of puppy dog tails and live crows, you know it is.
Remember when Michelle Pfeiffer was Tony Montana’s girlfriend? That was cool.
“Let’s see- ascot, mock turtleneck, turtleneck; how else can we keep the men’s necks covered? Just get it done. I swear to God if I see an Adam’s apple everyone’s fired.” -Tim Burton
Hmm, I like the wool turtleneck underneath the flannel, but could we also give him a scarf?
Let’s keep in mind, the major conflict in this story is that the girl on the right in the red is a witch who wants Johnny Depp’s character all to herself and won’t leave him alone. I’m pretty sure she could be the actual flaming corpse of Satan and I would still have sex with her.
I never knew a face rendered mostly featureless by overexposure and Photoshop could be so attractive.
Oh, did you say non-ghostly lips? That’s Tim Burton for “temptress.”
Whoa, looks like Barnabus Collins found a victim. Some dude must’ve left his neck exposed for a split second.
[via ComingSoon]
I like how it’s a movie about cage fighting but they still managed to make the guy in the poster look like a ballerina. Nicely done, poster designer, way to know your audience. “Don’t be scared, fruity, we’re performers too!”
[trailer via Filmjunk]
Jeez, Peter O’Toole sure is looking young these days… oh wait. MISMATCHED NAMES AND FACES STRIKES AGAIN!
Hey, why’s Willem Dafoe trying to headbutt the weird chick from 24?
Thanks to Frotcast Brendan, all I can think about whenever see Willem Dafoe is “…I’ll suck ya dick.” Anyway, Willem Dafoe teams up with the director of Bad Lieutenant? Gee, I’m sure this won’t be super effed up and weird.
Our pal Chris Mintz-Plasse tweeted these pictures from the set of Get a Job, which also stars John Cho from Harold and Kumar.
Directed by Dylan Kidd, starring Miles Teller, Anna Kendrick, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Alison Brie, Nicholas Braun [right], Brandon T. Jackson [left], and Jay Pharoah, with Bryan Cranston, Get A Job is a multi-generational comedy about four recent college graduates who discover that their lofty expectations and the realities of adulthood are two very different things. Teller will play Will Davis, who finds his true calling after struggling through an entry level job. Kendrick plays Jillian Stewart, Will’s type-A girlfriend, who lives her life according to the strictest of plans. Cranston plays Roger Davis, Will’s father who is hunting for a job at the same time as his son. Braun, Mintz-Plasse and Jackson will play Will’s three friends, (Charlie, Ethan and Luke, respectively), each of whom find careers with some interesting results. Brie will play Tanya, one of the group’s sharp-witted co-workers. Pharoah will play Skeezy D, who starts his own recession-proof business. [Collider]
Man, I remember those crappy, fresh-out-of-college days. Always, like, drinkin’ Starbucks, and wearin’ polo shirts. Youth is hell.
I’m a sucker for music docs, and this one’s about Hole drummer Patty Schemel. Here’s the trailer:
COURTNEY LOVE: I was completely high on dope, I cannot remember much about it.
[two seconds later]
COURTNEY LOVE: Kurt used to hang around us, because he hated his band.
Hmmm, well which one is it, Courtney?
COURTNEY LOVE: He really did! I mean he HATED those guys. They were really mean to him.
Gee, I wonder if their meanness had anything to do with them trying to get him to stop doing heroine and hanging with his junkie piece of shit girlfriend. You think? Anyway, see this before Courtney Love sues it out of existence. That should be the tagline. “Act now! Before Courtney Love f*cks it up!”
Avengers, assemble! …Good, now that we’re all here, you’re gonna need to get through security. Just put all your metal stuff on the conveyor while TSA pats you down.
Here’s Hugh Jackman all gross and dirty and stinky and beardy for his role as Jean Valjean, on the set of Les Miserables (which I believe is Spanish for “Los Miserables”). Hugh Jackman could crawl through 50 feet of sewer pipe and your girlfriend would still bang him on a white couch she paid for.
Why does that chick have her mouth open like that? Gingers bite, I think is the message of this one. Here’s the trailer.
Precocious doesn’t even begin to describe Henry James Herman, a petri dish child who writes rabble-rousing manifestos on the nature of truth… at age 10. This boy-genius misfit’s world turns upside down when–to the dismay of the doting single mother who raised him–he embarks on a search for his biological father. [Youtube]
At the age of ten, Henry James Hermin, a boy who was conceived in a petri-dish and raised by his feminist mother, follows a string of Post-It notes in hopes of finding his biological father. [IMDB]
So you’re saying a precocious child follows a string of mysterious notes to uncover a message from his absent father while soaring folk guitar plays? I don’t think I want to see it, but if we ever decide to use upper middle class intellectuals for energy like in The Matrix, this will be the gruel pumped through the feeding tube.
Not only is that a cool ass poster, now I’m totally hungry. They shouldn’t have made that blood look so much like barbecue sauce.
Out-of-context B-List celebrities looking board above a vague pun title? This is a nice primer on how to make something go directly to DVD. Oh, Rachel Bilson. What happened to us?
Every horror movie is either about a haunted house or a possessed little kid these days, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say this one’s a possessed kid.
There’s really no reason exotic animals would need to be wearing rainbow afro wigs (or for penguins to be hanging out with hippos) other than blatantly pandering to the sensibilities of little kids, but if I’m being honest, I chuckled a little when I first saw this. Damn you, poster designer guy.
You’d be hard-pressed to come up with a title that more screams “WE’VE STRETCHED THIS MATERIAL DANGEROUSLY THIN!” than “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted 3D.” And yet, if you actually got together a hippo, a zebra, and a lion and shot them out of the same cannon, I would spend my entire paycheck to watch.
“Oh, hi there. I’m Samuel L. Jackson. I was just about to start moving icons around with my hands on a giant holographic computer screen. I invite you to do the same, with this amazing new app, ‘Every Action Movie Ever.'”
Jesus, did he have to hold still like that so they could sculpt the action figure? What kind of pose is that? That is a horrible picture. I hope this got released by accident.
“EUREKA! After years of exhaustive research, time, energy, and toil, I’ve DONE IT! I’ve created the world’s first disheveling ray! I shall wield its incredible rumpling power to bring the world to its knees– OH GOD NO I’VE ACCIDENTALLY SHOT MYSELF!” -Mark Ruffalo
Wow. I mean, wow. This is simply the most exciting promotional still I’ve seen in many, many years. Great job, Marvel Studios. I eagerly await the three-hour slide show of your trip to Universal Studios. Ooh, is that Bob Barker’s star on the walk of fame?? Fascinating.
[Avengers stills via ThePlaylist]
I like to imagine that tagline is what Viggo Mortensen says to ladies to convince them to get fingerbanged.
[I posted the trailer for this one the other day, in case you missed it].
Here’s the poster for Sound of My Voice, which I guess is kind of neat. Supposedly it’s about a cult. Not Scientology though. That cult has too many lawye– HEY, you know what’s neat?? Scientology! Totally not a cult, I’m always saying.
Jeez, what is with Kirsten Dunst and upside-down kissing? I always thought of her more as Tobey Maguire’s power bottom than a top, so it will be interesting to see if she can pull this off.
Hmm, I’m not getting “wrath” from that face. Constipation, maybe. I don’t know who the hell that actor is either. It’s not Sam Worthington or Liam Neeson or Ralph Fiennes. It kind of looks like Gerard Butler smashing his face against a window.
[posters via IMPA, except where otherwise noted]