Drew Struzan

While the Hollywood marketing departments have committed creative suicide long ago, and are now being run seemingly by a batch of monkeys — admittedly relatively well-trained, but monkeys nonetheless — there was a time when artists like Drew Struzan helped shape the magic of cinema from well before the audience saw the first frame of the film. He is arguably the greatest poster artist to have worked in Hollywood, and his style is indelibly linked with many of the great movies of past decades, in the minds of the film fans who've grown up in his epoc.

Well, there's a documentary in the works, and while it's almost done, it's run out of money, and needs your help to crawl the last couple of feet across the finish line.

Taming Light

Taming Light Poster

I bought this beautiful poster from Martin Ansin last year, but didn’t receive it until just the other day (it’s a long way from Uruguay). I can’t wait to put it up on the wall I’ve got in mind for it.

PS: You can contact Martin if you’re interested in buying his posters. Both the art and the print itself are phenomenal.

Indy 4 Poster

Though it isn’t bad, it isn’t Drew’s best work either; nonetheless, here is the new Indy poster:

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls

Photo Collages Bad!

So Harry Potter 5 is almost upon us, and not that I have any particular Potter fetish (Rikke does though), but I can’t help but be disappointed by the ever more crappy posters being put out for these movies.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - Harry

What in the hell is that? It’s a photo collage; that’s what it is. And it sucks!

Now this, on the other hand, is a poster. This poster, from the hands of Mr. Struzan himself, looks the way John Williams’ score sounds, and that is a good thing!

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

What is going on in the heads of these marketing people? Well I guess maybe they have better data than me, but really? Photo collages? The same thing happened to the new Star Wars trilogy as well as the DVD releases, all of which contain horrible photo collages with lightsaber lense flares and what have you.

All those stunning posters, and they have some hack apply lenseflares in Photoshop.

Man.

PS: Yes, you’re right, I should do a feature on the best posters ever created by mortal hands.

Poseidon. Confusion.

Dear Marketing Guys: Please make up your mind, is it a white futuristic font, or a black serif font? Compare and Contrast:

Personally I’m all for the white font, but that’s because it looks like the one Cameron used on the Sulaco in Aliens, and I get all nostalgic about the thought of the Sulaco crashing into the sea and the wonderful never-gonna-be sequel that might have been…

Update: I knew I had seen the Sulaco with white type instead of black somewhere. It took me a little while to dig up a photo of it (I could’ve just captured a still from the DVD, but I couldn’t be bothered, ironically). It’s from Alien 3, the mother of all inconsistency sequels.

Black in Aliens, white in Alien 3. I personally like white better.