Tag: 3:10 to Yuma

Favorite Posters of 2007

I love me some movie posters.  Especially when they’re either a) beautiful enough to stand as art in their own right or b) depict the film they advertise in a particularly apt or innovative way.  Thanks to the Internet Movie Poster Awards site (which is a wonderful resource for posters, award-worthy or no), I’ve been able to look closely at last year’s posters (and previous years, but let’s not push this Year’s Best thing too far–we’re already three months into a new year) and chosen several that I think ought to be recognized.

While narrowing down the choices, I did discover several biases I have–things that generally make me like or dislike a poster.  Floating heads of the stars = bad. Selling the film based only on the stars = bad. Lots of negative space = good. Characters depicted facing away from us or in long shot = good. Hand-drawn, cartoony, or stylized quality = usually good.  Anyway, here are my favorite posters from last year. (And regarding the order, I’ve changed it many many times even since I started writing this post, so I don’t even know if it’s at all accurate to my thoughts anymore.)

#10: Eastern Promises

hr_Eastern_Promises_10

 

Eastern Promises is about people who make their living with their hands – fighting and killing, surviving in the Russian mafia.  Highlighting the hands — and the numerous tattoos that identify relationships with specific underworld factions — is perfect, because ultimately what matters in the film is what the characters choose to do with the information they gain.  Plus, focusing on body parts other than the face makes for a much more interesting poster than most.  The only thing that would’ve improved the poster is to have left off the strip of faces on the bottom, which really adds nothing.

 

#9: 3:10 to Yuma

310toYumaPoster

 

Biases alert: character facing away from us, stylized look, focus on story (gunslinger waiting for train, seen between his legs).  This was one of my very favorite posters when it came out last year, but I’ve started to cool on it a little bit because I think ultimately, it’s a little too busy.  The grunge styling is cool, but there’s too much of it in too many places, too many flourishes, and the director blurb on the right side is indulgent.  Still, the monochrome coloring and unusual layout make it heaps better than most posters.

 

 

#8: Spider-Man 3

spider_man_three

 

Another tendency I have: a strong preference for teaser posters over the final one-sheets.  Regardless of how good Spider-Man 3 turned to be (or not be), this teaser is near perfection.  It’s simple, it’s iconic, and he’s wearing a black suit.  Which I know, I know, is evil, but it’s SO HOT.  The later posters made the conflict between good/red Spider-Man and bad/black Spider-Man more clear, but for pure visual impact, none of them match this one.

 

 

 

The rest after the jump.

September 2007 Reading/Watching Recap

And I have a new record for most movies seen in a month. Since I’ve been keeping track, that is. But no more, for school, television, and Xbox360 have stolen my movie-watching time, and October’s recap is going to be fairly thin. Which is good, because then I can get caught up on writing and posting them. After the jump, reactions to Death at a Funeral, Celine and Julie Go Boating, 3:10 to Yuma, Butterfield 8, Breakfast on Pluto, The Double Life of Veronique, Starter for 10, Alphaville, The Color Purple (book and film), The Brave One, Knocked Up, Talladega Nights, Eastern Promises, Two for the Road, A Mighty Wind, The Optimist’s Daughter, Atonement, and more.

Theatrical Picks for 9/7/07 – 3:10 to Yuma and Pierrot le fou for St. Louisans

In wide release, we have 3:10 to Yuma, the latest in a series of attempts over the last decade or so to bring the western back. Most of these attempts have been massively unsuccessful, but from the advance buzz, 3:10 to Yuma and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (opening in two weeks in limited release) could make this the year that changes that. Russell Crowe takes on the role of a captured outlaw, while Christian Bale assumes responsibility for getting him to the train station in time for the 3:10 train to Yuma, where he’ll be tried. The film is a remake of the 1957 film of the same name, directed by Delmer Daves and starring Glenn Ford and Van Heflin–I haven’t seen the original, so my point of reference is that it sounds sort of like High Noon in reverse. I’m planning on going to see it on Saturday. In the meantime, here’s the trailer, and here’s an extremely positive review from CinemaFusion. (It’s sitting fairly pretty on Rotten Tomatoes, too, with a score of 82% Fresh).

Other wide releases this week are Shoot ‘Em Up, which looks like it could be all kinds of terrible, but also all kinds of fun, what with Clive Owen, Monica Bellucci, and Paul Giamatti largely tasked with shooting stuff up, and The Brothers Solomon, apparently the latest in the increasingly annoying category of stupid buddy comedies. However, it does have Jenna Fischer in it, and she’s so adorable on The Office that I hesitate to scratch it completely off my “rent sometime after I’ve watched everything else” list.

On the limited release side of things, there’s Hatchet, which would be a prime example of the sort of horror movie I HATE, and In the Shadow of the Moon, a documentary about the 1960s-1970s Apollo moon missions which looks quite interesting. But if you live in St. Louis, you have the opportunity to see Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le fou at the Tivoli in the Loop. This film is out of print on DVD, who knows when it’ll be back (but hopefully the theatrical rerelease means it’ll be put back on DVD soon), and I only wish I were in St. Louis right now to see it, because I haven’t and I REALLY REALLY want to. It’d probably be a little fanatical, though, to travel 800 miles to see one film, though, wouldn’t it? Yeah, that’s what I thought. I keep trying to see if it’ll turn up in Austin, but my knowledge of where to look for classic rereleases in Austin is shoddy at best. Here’s the Post-Dispatch’s item on the film. And here’s the trailer, but I warn you, trailers for Godard films are not really very helpful at finding out what they’re about (although I’m starting to question more and more if “what is it about” is a helpful question to ask about a film anyway). The title card that says “Belmondo and Karina in a Godard film” is all I need to know about it to Want.It.Now.

(On a tangentially related subject, I just ran across a trailer that had been removed from YouTube due to copyright violations–I mean, okay, yeah, I suppose trailers are copyrighted. But how in the world does “fewer people see the trailer” translate into “more people see the film”? Trailers are marketing materials and marketing materials are more effective the more people that see them, right? So you should post them everywhere that’ll take them, right?)

Trailer Watch – Highly Anticipated by Me (as of 3/20/07)

Here are some of the films I’m looking forward to in the next…year. I haven’t kept up on trailer watching, so these are mostly big releases and many of them are duhs. Oh well.

Embedded trailers and my reactions after the jump. Warning: VERY LONG.

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