Post-Up

A selection of only the finest movie posters. Some of these we have on the walls here at Basis Design. Yet more in our ambitious coverage of the impending Academy Awards in Hollywood, California.

Full disclosure; a few of these are cheats, as they represent the modern day Criterion posters, and not the originals. We’ll let you know.

Let me commit film-lover heresy here by saying I’ve never thought of The Birds as one of Hitchcock’s better films. Even worse, the famed “Tippi Hedren watches in horror as the flames lick backward up the gasoline spill to explode the car” sequence leaves me cold; her reaction shots are poorly timed, static, and unconvincing. Whatever, this poster kicks so much ass.

From Criterion. Drop-dead gorgeous, and chilling if you know what happens in the film. Ang Lee is somewhat under-appreciated, in my view; I thought this was a fantastic film, and I rate his recently released (and NC-17) chinese-language feature Lust, Caution, as one of the best of the last half decade.

Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder, a really cool look at a particular type of design/art-work. You can see this re-hashed on the covers of dozens of dime-store vintage paperbacks from the fifties and sixties.

One of the weirdest, wildest films to emerge in the last half century. Calling back to the equipment, editing strategies, and acting of the bygone silent era, mad-Canadian Guy Maddin produced a lucid dream that engulfs viewers in a visual storm.

For my money, the creepiest, most stomach-turning movie ever. And the poster matches it sense-of-pervasive-dread for sense-of-pervasive-dread.

This poster is perfect for the film within. Not at all for the faint of heart or stomach, this is a documentary on the holocaust by the great French director Alain Resnais (Hiroshima, Mon Amour).

A chilling and iconic snapshot of dystopian science fiction, early century one-sheets, and German Expressionism through the lens of the great Fritz Lang.

Funny, dark, sarcastic, ironic. Describes the poster, describes the movie. One of Basis’ favorites, and hanging proudly on our wall.

Our favorite movie poster of all time. One of our favorite directors of all time, and probably the greatest. There is nothing about this poster that isn’t cool, ahead of it’s time, and gorgeous. Hanging on our wall as well.

Tagged with:
 

The Fantastic Mr. Anderson

Wes Anderson movies, apart from their charm, their ironically barbed New Yorker humor, and their endearing human quality, are a tour de force of set design, presentation, framing, and costume choices. There is no director working in America or across the globe whose sense of style, whose taste for design, so completely and beautifully informs his work.

Recently Anderson’s latest creation, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, was released on DVD, and second and third viewings of his thrilling and original use of animation and stop-motion photography are well worth the cost. The dollhouse-level control and placement of detail, the use of symmetry and the emphasis on balanced compositions within wide-screen formatting, in addition to the ubiquitous dolly shots, long takes and focused, mid-shot slow motion effects used without exception in all of his films, mark him not only as the American cinemas premier auteur, but also as that rare director whose style is so personal, so pervasive, and so beguiling, that it becomes a kind of cinematic prose. Anderson’s films are so good they’re literature, and there is no higher complement that can be paid to a director reared in the French New Wave, and riding the crest of the American.

The proof in the proverbial pudding:

Some of these may seem a little familiar to lovers of the Anderson oeuvre. They are in fact semi-photographic archetypes; they speak to the way he likes to frame families, performances, and offices. More compositional brilliance here:

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Rushmore

Bottle Rocket

The Darjeeling Limited

Tagged with:
 
Page 2 of 212

Looking for something?

Use the form below to search the site:

Still not finding what you're looking for? Drop a comment on a post or contact us so we can take care of it!

Visit our friends!

A few highly recommended friends...