Supermodels have always been great at selling magazines, but not so bankable at the box office — unless you count Zoolander (although, to be fair, that didn’t become a cult hit until well after it was released on DVD/cable).
Let’s take a look at some of the best and worst beauties over the years…
Graphic novels have surged in popularity in the last decade — and not just comic books about superheroes. Arguably, the most inventive artwork of our time is now being done by indie cartoonists/graphic novelists. And they’ve also branched out into movie posters.
Here’s a few of my favorites from Chris Ware (author of Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid On Earth), Adrian Tomine, Dan Clowes (Wilson), and the creepy/touching/funny doc featuring one of the genre’s forefathers, Robert Crumb.
Is it me or do 90’s Sean Penn and 70’s Dustin Hoffman strangely resemble each other? Maybe it’s just the posters — and some of their choices of roles.
Or wait, maybe it’s Dustin Hoffman and Richard Dreyfuss that look alike? (The Big Fix is brought to you by Birney Lettick, of course!)
Master autuer, Quentin Tarantino, not only reinvented action movies with his trademark funny/violent fight scenes as well as recharged the careers of John Travolta and Pam Grier — he also re-established the artful marketing of character posters with Jackie Brown. And many more movies like Pearl Harbor and The Hangover have since jumped on the bandwagon.
Pam Grier was the queen of 70’s blaxploitation movies — and seemed stuck there in cinematic history — until Quentin Tarantino rejuvenated her career in 1997 with Jackie Brown (which had one of the coolest opening credit sequences ever right here).
And now Miss Foxy has pulled out the big guns with a new book!
Uh-oh, J-Lo. Looks like somebody went all Banksy on this bus stop poster of her new movie, The Back-Up Plan…
But it’s not like this poster couldn’t’ve used some serious retouching since it bears a very strong resemblance to this Target ad for mens t-shirts!
What’s up with all these movie posters now that mimic fashion apparel spreads? See Surrogates and Law-Abiding Citizen.
I was at the LA Times Festival of Books this weekend and came across this little gem in the Taschen booth.
This poster book features lots of wonderful, colorful hand-painted posters and original art from Bollywood’s past motion picture history, focusing mainly on early 20th Century productions — so unfortunately, that probably means no Aishwariya Rai!
The new Black Widow character posters from Iron Man 2 are out and Scarlett Johannson’s lookin’ pretty badass!
But let’s see how she stacks up against these other superheroines…
Movie Poster Museum 