Oh, hi, welcome back. Glad you came back for more this week!

Last week wasn’t the most exciting week for poster releases. Honestly, I think it was a pretty mediocre spread, with a few diamonds in the rough. Let’s inspect the gems first.

Curiouser and Curiouser – ALICE IN WONDERLAND character posters

Wow. These were the talk of the town last week. And with good reason, too. It’s the marriage of two amazing entities, Burton and Carroll, a match made in, heaven? Well, whereever the match was made (thank you, Disney!) it’s long overdue. But enough of what I think about Tim Burton, one of my favorite visionaries, taking over this rich intellectual property, let’s talk about those posters!

I think it’s safe to say that a project like this is every designer’s cream-dream. To be able to take such a visually and intellectually stimulating subject, such is the canon of Wonderland, and have license to portray it with your own personal influences and style is just a phenomenal creative opportunity. So here was have the indelible Mr. Burton’s take on such iconic characters, and oh boy, I’m happy to say we’re getting something that we haven’t seen before (to my knowledge, at least). To note that these characters are iconic is actually quite important here in regards to these character posters. In fact, it might have been considered an error to NOT release character posters for this film to preview the aesthetic of this new interpretation of Wonderland. This is crucial, because these characters are so ingrained into the cultural psyche, the audience already has a certain degree of expectations for each. “Alice is blonde, and has a blue dress,” “the Mad Hatter is crazy and wears a hat and is foppishly dapper,” “the Red Queen (of Hearts) is pale-faced, likes the color red, is into playing cards, etc.” and so on and so forth (most of these archetypes, however, such as Alice being a blonde, were originally perpetrated by Disney’s animated version of the film, and has set the visual cues since, so it’s no surprise that these basic cues are being respected in this second Disney iteration). We see here that Burton’s vision is essentially taking the archetypes we have all grown to love and recognize and, well, presented them through his own Burtonesque looking-glass. Each poster is decidedly framing each character in their own archetypal hues and emotions (i.e., their wardrobe, styled to match their temperament and personalities, as well as the more obvious backgrounds with patterned icons representing their character), although I think the most interesting one, of course, is the Mad Hatter, whom, aside from his hat-pattern, doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the gang. This seems to be quite intentional. After all, the Mad Hatter is mad. Look at his wardrobe, make-up, hair, they’re all over the board. Entirely unpredictable (as I hope implies will be the style of the movie, the further down the rabbit hole we go). Overall, I think this initial wave of visual candy for this much anticipated release has done a fabulous job of giving us what we expected, yet still delivering the unexpected, nontraditional kind of fairy tale fantasy that can only be delivered by the likes of Tim Burton. Curiosity successfully piqued.

A Rose by Any Other Name – TYLER PERRY’S I CAN DO BAD ALL BY MYSELF poster
Click HERE to see the motion poster

I need to come right out and admit it. Nearly every poster I’ve seen for a Tyler Perry movie as been extremely compelling (yes, even for the Madea movies – ESPECIALLY the Madea movies). Before I knew who Tyler Perry was, or was familiar with the phenomenon that is Madea, I would see these posters in theaters, and wonder “what is THAT movie about?” I need to do some deeper digging into the reason why all these Perry film posters are just so, just so, NICE. Maybe Mr. Perry just knows and appreciates and understands the power of a well-designed posters. After I learned who he was, and more about the character of Madea, etc., I was actually surprised, considering the attention paid to the posters. Maybe I’m just not the target audience for his films, but I believe that Mr. Perry wants the underlying message to prevail on the poster, and not the madcap comedy that he otherwise employs to get the message to his audience. Fair enough. I highly respect that.

This latest film of his, I CAN DO BAD ALL BY MYSELF, might actually be a more serious story (again, I don’t know, I’m approaching most of these posters as if I were to stumble upon them in a theater lobby, with no more background then the general public would be aware of), at least, that’s how this appears. It’s beautiful, delicate, and yet very bold. The combination of yellow and black is always a strong color duo. The typography is pretty superb, with the nice clean single line of cast at the top, just at the right size as to not crush the delicate flower below, and the movie’s title below, just tucked away, as to not uproot the central image. Oh, that central image (makes me think of those face-flowers in the Wonderland sneak-peek images from last week as well), so fastidious yet resolute, obviously, this story is going to be of a beautiful insurmountable woman (or could she be just a rose with many thorns?). This is the question being begged without gilding the lily, as it were. Yet, a more recent development that I was informed of is the “motion poster” version of this piece, which is subtle enough to not be obnoxious, so well done; yet this begs another question in my head, “is this going to usher in a new trend of multimedia posters? Will we start seeing flat-screens in place of poster frames in lobbies in the next few years? Will we be saying goodbye to cardboard standees and lenticular posters (thank God) and hello to motion-posters playing in loops, or perhaps even “poster-trailers” that are formatted to the standard vertical one-sheet aspect-ratio?” Hmm, quite interesting indeed. If we do go down that path, be prepared for a bumpy ride, because any time such a format change occurs, it always takes a few miles before the road smooths out. Just be sure to stop and smell the roses along the way.

Le View to a Kill – FROM PARIS WITH LOVE poster

Is it the world’s deadliest tourist attraction? Is it the new starting pistol for the Tour de France? Is it John Travolta’s next attempt to be relevant? When in doubt, always choose answer “C.” To be fair, this poster, even at a small thumbnail size, got my attention. Success in that aspect, yes. Upon closer inspection, well, there wasn’t much to be discovered. This can be problematic for such simple, iconic posters (which is why they can be quite difficult to execute and have depth beyond the initial eye-grabbing strategy). At the very least, something that can be derived from this piece is that (I hope, anyway) the film is going to be stylish (it ought to be, Paris and all), sharp, and action-packed, in the sense that it’s all about to go off (a little subtle cue from the fact that the Eiffel Gun is pointed straight up in the air; although, it probably couldn’t be any other way, otherwise the Tower would lose its iconic posture). Some might argue that the poster is perfect, some may say it’s too easy and defaults itself into being nothing more than what it is already. I tend to lean towards the latter. Of course, this is a teaser poster, and we’ll see what the next (undoubtedly Travoltized) version of the poster will promise us. Oh yeah, don’t the French hate their world renown tourist attraction? I believe almost as much as Americans love guns. How IRONic (sorry, I just can’t help myself when it comes to structural puns).

The Missing -  THE DISAPPEARED poster

Sigh. I’ll tell you what disappeared. The integrity of the designer. I know, I know, some are probably thinking, “no way, dude, this poster is killer! Check out that upside down cross! Check out the totally emo kid in the middle! Check out those skulls, yo!”

Need I impersonate more?

This poster heavily depends on the floating heads of actors that don’t exactly have the kind of popularity or recognition that floating head technology is typically best suited for. So they all have feelings (at least, that’s what they’re paid for anyway), big deal. Upside down cross means evil! Sure. Oooh, skulls! Yeah, there are way too many heads in this poster, and it only really needed one, firmly attached to a capable designer’s body. To be fair here, the designer at least executed the aesthetics well, but the composition is sophomoric. The cast placement is desperate and the inclusion of the other characters’ faces is indicative of either a young designer or one who is at the whim of producers insisting that the actors they’re paying for this film be prominent on the poster. That’s too bad. Imagine how much better this poster would look if we took away the faces, moved the cast list, ditched the background within the cross, maybe lost a few of those pesky skulls, and brought the title down, replacing the tagline. Less is much much more. This thriller should take a lesson from Hitchcock: the less you see, the more frightening it is. Am I judging a book by its cover? Of course I am (that’s what I’m here for). I’m also willing to bet that once this movie hits the box office, it won’t be long before it disappears.