Lots of links about poster art today

[cleolinda]

Two headlines that go together: Robbers net $4M in coin convention heist; U.S. warns about Canadian spy coins.

Yale barbershop singers recovering after ambush.

Suzanne Somers Loses Malibu Home to Fire.

Fla. trailer park OKs megabucks sellout: "Residents of this coastal trailer-park town sitting on beachfront property have voted overwhelmingly to sell their community to a developer for more than $510 million, which could make most of them millionaires. Some residents bought their homes for as little as $35,000."

Kansas tearing down BTK serial killer's home.

Man's wallet returned after 62 years.

Research Reveals Secret Causes of Sibling Spats.

Historic passenger lists of ships go online.

Cisco sues Apple over use of iPhone name.

Walters calls Trump 'poor, pathetic man.'

Glitter may get early prison release.

Turtle thought extinct found in Thailand.

'Munsters' star Yvonne De Carlo dies.

Matthew Fox talks about his dark side.

Alternative Motivational Posters with gorgeous retro artwork.


Top five movie posters of the year (plus others, in one blogger's opinion). Includes the Illusionist poster that I loved, a fairly good Prestige poster I linked to a while back, and of course, the Little Miss Sunshine poster.

Posters for 300 that I... really kind of don't like. (Scroll down for all eight.) I mean, the style of the artwork, the color grading, that's fine and good. It's just the whole I WILL CRUSH YOUR BRAIN motif that I can't get into. I mean, these are from the people who brought you Sin City, which I loved, but was extremely violent--but at least had a neo-noir veneer over the whole thing, and they saved the actual decapitating, castrating, bind-and-torture violence for the movie. If the posters are like, COME CLOSER SO I MAY RAPE YOUR SKULL, I don't even want to know what the movie's going to be like.

That said, "You Will Not Enjoy This" cracks me up.

From Oscarwatch:

1. Children of Men, Illusionist, Good Shepherd, Apocalypto and Black Dahlia Earn Outstanding Feature Noms from Cinematography Society.

YAY! I definitely feel like Children of Men deserves this one for the all-in-one-shot first car chase alone, but like I said before, The Illusionist has some beautiful color grading going on. Children of Men has a fantastic palette of its own, but I can't do justice to the way the camera moves, which is the most innovative thing about it.

2. Costume Design Guild nominees from Variety:
>> Milena Canonero for "Marie Antoinette"
>> Sharen Davis, "Dreamgirls"
>> Chung Man Yee, "Curse of the Golden Flower"
>> Ngila Dickson, "The Illusionist"
>> Penny Rose, "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest"

Aww, yay! I'm pretty sure Marie Antoinette is a certain winner at this point, and if it's not, its only real competition is Curse of the Golden Flower. I think they said Kirsten Dunst had something like sixty changes of costume in MA, and they were all gorgeous and elaborate and reasonably period-accurate, as far as I can tell. I'm pleased for Penny Rose because I've always loved the way she dresses Keira Knightley in those movies (not to mention Naomie Harris/Tia Dalma), but also because tecno_fairy actually sewed some of the costumes--and for Ngila Dickson, because The Illusionist was (extreme understatement approaching) a much simpler assignment than Lord of the Rings, but she still managed to put Jessica Biel in some excellent outfits even though all she had to work with was, generally speaking, Edwardian blouses.

3. Writer's Guild nominees (just in):

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
>> Babel, Written by Guillermo Arriaga, Paramount Vantage
>> Little Miss Sunshine, Written by Michael Arndt, Fox Searchlight Pictures
>> The Queen, Written by Peter Morgan, Miramax Films
>> Stranger Than Fiction, Written by Zach Helm, Sony Pictures Entertainment
>> United 93, Written by Paul Greengrass, Universal Pictures

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
>> Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Screenplay by Sacha Baron Cohen & Anthony Hines & Peter Baynham & Dan Mazer, Story by Sacha Baron Cohen & Peter Baynham & Anthony Hines & Todd Phillips, Based on a Character Created by Sacha Baron Cohen, Twentieth Century Fox
>> The Departed, Screenplay by William Monahan, Based on the Motion Picture Internal Affairs, Written by Alan Mak and Felix Chong, Warner Bros. Pictures
>> The Devil Wears Prada, Screenplay by Aline Brosh McKenna, Based on the Novel by Lauren Weisberger, Twentieth Century Fox
>> Little Children, Screenplay by Todd Field & Tom Perrotta, Based on the Novel by Tom Perrotta, New Line Cinema
>> Thank You for Smoking, Screenplay by Jason Reitman, Based on the Novel by Christopher Buckley, Fox Searchlight Pictures

Speaking of Pirates, I grabbed a link from trailer_spot to some excellent new POTC3 posters. Outstanding. (ETA: Yes, that is Chow Yun-Fat.)

Comments

[tecno-fairy.livejournal.com]

Woo! Thanks for the shout out! I'm so pleased that Penny's finally getting some recognition (and that my boss will be getting recognition for her hard work through that); she has got a pretty good portfolio but keeps getting passed over for really Oscar-worthy design contracts.

It's so strange to see those POTC3 costumes again - just went back to work at the old workshop for a month before I go off travelling; it's been about 18/19 months since I worked on those! It's a wicked poster of Keira though, and you can see all of Gavin's embroidery! I'm looking forward to seeing which of our costumes have made it through the final cut, I think the script's probably changed a couple of hundred times since we got a synopsis of it.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Ooo, I couldn't remember if you'd worked on the POTC3 costumes or if you'd left before then. And honestly? I fully expect knockoffs of that embroidered jacket (jacket? tunic?) to hit stores in about six months.

[tecno-fairy.livejournal.com]

We made (or half-made) quite a bit of stuff that then got rejected because the plot had changed. We made more stuff, and I left about half way through, then I came back about three months later and things were still being made (apparantly they'd called a halt to the second load of making while the script was being tinkered with). I remember the embroidered tunic and all the fishscale leather work... let me know when they're availiable on a high street near you! Chinese embroidery should definately be making a comeback.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Well, I know already that pirate-influence jewelry was huge the second half of last year--Lucky Brand, for example, had entire racks of it, key pendants and skull charms and chunky semi-precious stones, and it was really nice in that it wasn't POTC-ripoff per se; it was well-made and like $30-40 instead of $5-10 trinkets, and more of a general aesthetic that would be wearable ten years from now. As opposed to a lot of other places I saw, Hot Topic-type stuff that really was cheap and trinket-y and obvious. I actually went ahead and bought myself some dirt-cheap but authentic Tibetan silver/turquoise bracelets from a Chinese wholesaler late last summer so that I'd have something real I could wear when "pirate" and "Asian" collided this year, because, seriously--a movie this big, you can see the trends coming a mile away. I swear, the embroidered sleeve idea will hit shelves if nothing else does.

[tecno-fairy.livejournal.com]

My ister and a couple of her friends have been working the 'Pirate trinkets' look, and I think it works pretty well, provided (as you were saying) it's not tacky.

I'm quite excited about the embroidered sleeves and Chinese jewellery - I'm out in China before the film comes out so I'm going to stock up on some authentic Far Eastern bounty!

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Oooo. I wish I'd had the money to buy more from that wholesaler--he was practically giving the stuff away, but since he was shipping from China, the S/H was murder. I paid literally two cents for two bracelets--and $14 for shipping.

And if you do the pirate thing more as a general aesthetic--chunky bracelets, semi-precious or cabochon stones, big rings, charms or pendants, layered necklaces, metal with an aged burnish to it, a few beads here and there--you can pull it off pretty well without being tacky. It's mostly about layering and a dull shine rather than being glittery or blingy.