Curio: And The Nominees Are

Alexa here with your weekly art appreciation post. This being Oscar week, all the alternative poster designs for the nominated films are making the rounds: see the nominated films posterized as Legos, or as one-liners!  I prefer a less gimmicky, graphic-artist-inspired approach myself.  Unlike last year, the Oscar site does not feature alternative poster designs; I do wish the Academy would follow the lead of the BAFTAs on this.  

To fill the void here are my favorite designs for each of the nominated films.  Happy Oscars everyone! 

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Mr R Will Link You Now

Variety a filmmaker accidentally takes his parents to Nymphomaniac, the secret screening at Sundance
Cinema Blend 50 Shades of Grey gets one of those exceptionally lazy and ubiquitous 'back to camera in silhouette' teaser posters. THIS MUST END. Every time a studio releases one of these I fear a mass suicide by graphic designers. (This is all they ever get to do now?)
/Film Rupert Sanders to direct live action remake of Ghost in the Shell 

The Carpetbagger Oscar's track record with black filmmakers 
i09 images from the making of The Ten Commandments including oil painting makeup tests
The New Yorker 50 Years of Dr Strangelove 
Cinema Blend Attack the Block's lead actor gets a plum role: Olympian Jesse Owens in the biopic Race

The 50 Best Movie Posters of 2013

Glenn here with my yearly tradition of counting down 2013's best movie posters. I've done this for the last however many years at my own blog crowning such gorgeous designs as An Over-Simplification of Her Beauty, Here I Am, The Runaways, and Antichrist. but this year we've shipped it on over to The Film Experience. I've gotten a bit of a reputation as "the poster guy" due to being one of the only people online who seemed to look at poster art in details and with any sort of critical eye. Thankfully that's not so much the case anymore with more and more websites starting features and writing lists dedicated to key art. For once I was ahead of the curve!

This year's list was remarkably easy to compile. Perhaps it goes hand in hand with being a good year for film in general, but 2013 was an excellent year for the art of movie posters. I didn't have to scrounge around for titles to finish the list. In fact, despite the list being a whopping 50 titles long, I still had to leave some out. It will become obvious that I have a thing for horror and indie titles because I feel they have to work harder at convincing audiences to give them the time of day. Still, the lack of Hollywood blockbusters isn't me being contrarian or anti-populist, but just reflecting the rather lacklustre year in that department. But, hey, if it means I get to share the likes of Zero Charisma, Simon Killer, Mystery Road and more with you then I'm okay with that.

From Leatherface to Wolverine, counting down 50 to 1 after the jump!

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Curio: Pre-Mades

Alexa here. As we spend this week looking ahead -- to fulfilling resolutions, to the Golden Globes, to the Oscars -- I thought it might be nice to look through another wormhole of sorts, to these parallel film universes created by artist Peter Stults.  Peter has taken films we know by heart and imagined if they had been made at another time.  [more...]

 

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Randomness: Grandmaster, Paddington, Catwomen and Babies

Can you develope ADHD suddenly as an adult? I'm hating it but as with last weekend, I can't concentrate at all, starting multiple blog posts and never actually finishing any of them. Hours go by and I'm staring at the screen still and WHERE DID THE DAY GO. Nothing. I got nothing. Like, I'm watching The Grandmaster last night and as Tony Leung and Zhangi Ziyi stare at each other for minutes on end, immobile in some badass mixed martial arts yoga pose, all I could think was "such powers of concentration!"

I did NOT expect that movie to be all about Zhang Ziyi's vow to avenge her father and refuse Tony Leung's heretofore unrefusable sexual advances. i thought it was going to be a biopic of Ip Man (Leung) but he's kind of an afterthought once Zhang starts tearing up and reflecting from her opium haze. Once the movie goes back to Ip Man, it seems to give up suddenly. Like, "yeah, we know this isn't half as interesting, kthx bye. Closing credits - bam!" Zhang Ziyi won Best Actress at the Golden Horse Awards (as previously discussed) and though I wouldn't go that far, she sure can hold a movie camera. 

So herewith some random thoughts on everything from overheard drug store movie chatter to that awful silhouetted lone-man back-turned movie-poster plague we can't stop hating on. If you follow me on twitter, and you should, some of this will be familiar. 

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