Still wading here in the shallow end of the movie poster pool this week (weak), but I’ll try to make the most of it. Thanks for playing.

The only piece(s) that did anything for me this week was a nice set of (gasp) character posters for a movie I wouldn’t have expected to produce such a set, but, since it’s all the rage, and apparently movie studios and their marketing departments are convinced that the audience just loves these character posters (probably because focus group testing has revealed that people who will sit in a room to fill out some forms and look at some poster designs for some free pizza and a soda can “connect” with the characters of a movie better if each character had their own poster).

Gag me with a pizza crust. Design by committee or pizza bribery never works.

This might explain some of the posters I’m about to drag over the coals. I’ve seen it happen in my experience. It’s not pretty.

“YOU DON’T EVEN BLINK, DO YOU?” – MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS Character Posters

I really admire the simplicity for this unassuming set. Confident use of whitespace and a clean, sharp stencil font (because this is a military operation after all) balanced perfectly with the character images gives just the right amount of attention to every piece of information on one-sheet, from the title to the actor names down to the release date. All that “empty” white space just forces you to pay attention to what IS within an otherwise “empty” frame.

My only problem with this set is that Clooney seems to be the only one who’s actually doing any goat-staring. His cohorts are either looking right past their respective farm animal or in a completely different direction altogether. Really? When the name of the movie says what you’re trying to portray quite literally on the poster, then it should literally be doing so. It’s more like “Men Who Like To Be Near Goats.” Little details like this stick out like a typo on an otherwise excellent piece.

WITHOUT DARKNESS, THERE IS NO LIGHT – Poster for UNTIL THE LIGHT TAKES US

This poster intrigues me. It’s bold by it’s high-contrast two-tone nature, and the text is handled with almost a conservative sensibility, adding to the clean contrast of the piece over all. Yet the part that intrigues me is the central image. It’s grainy, and not as menacing as it appears to intend on being. I know this poster is for a documentary film about Norwegian Black Metal, so, initially, it’s working when held against a general subject matter litmus test, but, that image of a man/woman/child/demon just feels a little wimpy. One of the critic quotes says “Incredibly Effective,” but as far as this piece goes, the only effect I’m getting is the result of taking a poor quality image and blowing it out to fit in the space provided. The more I look at it, the less intrigued I am with it, and the less I take it seriously. That’s too bad. I guess I’m just expecting more anger and fear from a poster about a film like this. Maybe I’ve got it all wrong. I’ll definitely be keeping the light on for any subsequent versions to arrive closer to release.

PUZZLING – Poster for TELL TALE

There was a lot of effort made on this poster. Lots of detailed photo-composition, photo-illustration and masking work, all obviously evident, and at times, looks really good. But then your brain gets too hooked on how well-done the main character’s face has been jig-sawed, and that’s where logic starts to argue with what you’re seeing, and you see how there are highlights and shadows were there shouldn’t be. You realize how they’ve added an edge to these pieces to make sure you know it’s “real” but then, if it were so real, why the errors in light? How is it that his hair is all of a sudden flat and two-dimensional on that three-dimensional cut-out? Yikes.

Conceptually, it’s cool, of course, but a trained eye is going to get stuck on these “errors”. An idea like this would have probably worked better as an illustration or if the image was more abstract instead of a distinctly lit portrait that’s been painstakingly modified like this. There are decidedly two well-done works competing for attention within one piece.

(Don’t get me started on the movie still super-imposed on the puzzle pieces. Sigh.)

Overall, I think what could make this a truly conceptually attractive poster is actually self-defeating, distracting from itself. Trying to force a puzzle piece where it doesn’t actually go, no matter how much it “sort of” fits, ruins the whole thing.

A BLOODY MESS – Poster for KILL EVERYONE

Someone call 911.

Allow me to go over the list of crimes that have been committed here:

Novelty font (for title) in a use that’s not explicitly known to be parody.
Low resolution background image (blood splatters) making for soft, blurred imagery.
Operating Photoshop without a license, resulting in a photo composition made of film stills, static stills, with various light sources, making for a cluster of undesirables.
Inexcusable airbrush fade to transparency
Classic serif-font being used for credit info that doesn’t seem to have any reason to be associating itself with it’s novelty font partner.

I’ve never said this before, but the title of this column is “The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly,” and I think I’ve found my first genuine “Ugly” honoree.

And with that, I leave you, the reader, an opportunity to request which of these posters I’ve poo-pooed on this week you’d like for me to take my own stab at. I’ll post the results in next week’s article. Until then.