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A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about how The United States Postal Service was setting up R2-D2 shaped mailboxes around the country in anticipation of their new Star Wars stamps being released soon. Well, the stamp art has been released and I have to say, I think they’re damn cool.
You can go to USPS.com which is all decked out Star Wars style and if you refresh the page several times (or just click on the Star Wars logo) you’ll get several different layouts and styles of the page featuring a different character each time. This is pretty cool.
Also, vote for which stamp you like the best. In order, I like:
Millenium Falcon
Boba Fett
Vader
…Though the Stormtrooper one is cool too.
I won’t vote for any new episode stamps and I don’t like the one of Han and Chewie because it doesn’t really look very much like Han. Not sure what happened there. Anyway, you can vote once per day per email address if you really feel like it.
They also are releasing special Star Wars postal envelopes. Check those out too.
Just thought this was kind of fun. Considering the 30 year anniversary of the greatest story ever put to film is just around the corner on May 25th.
May the force be with you…
These are the show notes for Cinecast Episode #40.
You can download or subscribe to the show HERE
Widescreen vs Full Screen
Toronto After Dark Film Festival
- NEW 2007 site now available! CLICK HERE
Evan Almighty
- NBC will be premiering the full trailer Thursday night during its marathon of “The Office” throughout the primetime schedule…
Here is the Teaser Trailer:
More Trailer Talk:
28 Weeks Later:
Bourne Ultimatum:
Severence:
The Lookout:
JEFF DANIELS’ filmography at IMDb.com
Rescue Dawn: - Kurt’s Review
Homework:
Andrew’s Homework - rent “Seconds” (Kurt’s Review)
Kurt’s Homework - watch Dumb and Dumber for God’s sake!
YOUR Homework - get to the theater for the above mentioned, The Lookout
DVD pick of the week:
Children of Men
Movie Patron review (Misael Soto)
Kurt’s Review
Rent at Blockbuster
Rent at Netflix
Comments or questions?
feedback@moviepatron.com (general)
andrew@moviepatron.com
kurt@moviepatron.com
- - Kurt’s BLOG
The NEW site for this year’s “Toronto After Dark Film Festival” is online and available now HERE. A lot of the links claim “coming soon” so keep checking back often. Call for film submissions will begin on Tuesday, March 27th. Other key dates are listed at the site as well as links to upcoming TAD events announcements. be sure to sign upfor their newsletter HERE so you get all the free info as it is released.
A more fantastic time cannot be had at the movies, so make sure to sign up and clear your calendars for 2007’s Toronto After Dark Film Festival, taking place Oct. 19th-25th. We’ll see you there!
reprinted with permission from Twitchfilm.net
by Michael Guillen
It’s truly heartwarming to see how much Jesse Hawthorne Ficks is beloved by his MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS fans and—more interestingly—how he cheerleads their adoration. The man knows how to work a crowd. Co-presenting John Carpenter’s Big Trouble In Little China (1986) with SFIAAFF will undoubtedly win him some new converts.
Celebrating the film’s 20th anniversary, Ficks remarked, “This film has been such a bitch to try and track down. There’s no prints in the world except this print. We got it from London.” Admitting he had never actually seen the film on the big screen, Ficks then took count of who had and where. He joked there were more people at the SFIAAFF screening than there were at the opening weekend in 1986. “So give yourselves a hand!”
Acknowledging the co-presentation by SFIAAFF, Ficks added, “How many times are you going to get to see Big Trouble in Little China at a film festival?!” For the SFIAAFF crowd, Ficks explained: “MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS is a series I’ve been doing for about six years. It’s to highlight all the dismissed and overlooked films from the ’70s and ’80s. These are the movies that you begged your girl friend or your boy friend to watch. And then they hate you.”
”John Carpenter, he’s like the king of these movies that never got respect. What are some of the other movies that he’s made? Dark Star. Escape From New York. The Thing. My personal favorite: Ghosts From Mars. You better re-watch that. But nothing really touches Big Trouble in Little China because this was John Carpenter’s commercial film. This was his big break. And it seems like he didn’t take it too seriously. One of the great things about Big Trouble and why I feel like it’s super necessary to watch this 20 years later is that the stereotypes of Chinese men and women in this film are so hyperstylized, and so beyond belief, that now we can give it a big hug. Because the movie is hugging you! I think Carpenter knew that in 1986 and it took 20 damn years for us to catch up to this movie. I mean, Kim Cattrail [Sex and the City] is in this movie! Right? Kurt Russell’s doing his John Wayne impersonation except he can’t get anything done. He has to depend on all of his Asian friends to fix the damn thing. So let’s hear it for Dennis Dun! He’s the real star of this movie. Let’s hear it for sleepy-eyed Victor Wong. And he’s so good you’re going to have to go rent all the Three Ninja movies after this. You can buy them, actually, in a three-pack, I think. And then James Hong, man. He’s still alive! He’s 2000 years old in this movie and he’s still alive.”
Lastly, Ficks encouraged his audience to turn off their cell phones and text messaging. “You know when you open that shit everybody can see it behind you. You’re checking the time? Don’t do it! Big Trouble plays on the big screen once in your lifetime. So have some respect.”
Ummm, I remember not thinking too much of I Heart Huckabees when it first came out, but after this news, I definitely want to see it again. Apparently director David O. Russell (Flirting with Disaster, Three Kings - which I love) is a raving lunatic; bordering on psychopathic. Here he is “getting into it” with Lily Tomlin. It looks like she maybe starts this little tiff, but it’s nothing that someone needs to go berserk over. Now I’m not one to gossip, but when I see this stuff first hand, it’s worth sharing with others. Maybe the guy just had a bad day, maybe his dog just got run over. Whatever it is, watch this craziness and leave a comment…
Kudos to Ty Webb for the notice 
LOTS of bad language here (you’ve been warned)
Notice how uncomfotable Dustin Hoffman and Schwartzman appear to be during this whole bit. Good for them for keeping their cool.
Wow.
These are the show notes for Cinecast Episode #39.
You can download or subscribe to the show HERE
PREMONITION poster and article
Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
Fido:
Kurt’s Review
Trailers:
These may work and may not…
Ratatouille:
at Movies for the Masses.com
Full Monty:
Can’t find the one we were talking about. Sorry.
Devil Wears Prada:
YouTube
Pirates 3 (in russian):
Official Site
Day Watch:
— QUICKTIME
— WMV
— Andrew’s Night Watch Review
— Kurt’s DAY Watch review
— Kurt’s NIGHT Watch review
Stardust:
at Movies for the Masses.com
Product Placement:
Product Placements for #1 box office films each week
iRobot HILARIOUS article
DVD pick of the week:
Blood Diamond - Andrew’s review
Other DVDs this week: Rocky Balboa, Eragon, The Nativity Story
Andrew is wrong about the release dates. These films come out NEXT week (March 27th):
Pursuit of Happyness, Happy Feet, Curse of the Golden Flower
YOUR Homework:
Rent The Conversation
at Blockbuster
at Netflix
Comments or questions?
feedback@moviepatron.com (general)
andrew@moviepatron.com
kurt@moviepatron.com
- - Kurt’s BLOG
Zach just posted a bulletin on myspace that explains that his ONE attempt at directing an episode of Scrubs airs this Thursday at 9pm eastern time on NBC. I’ve only watched the show a couple of times, but since I’m a fan of Garden State and Braff in general, maybe I’ll check this out…if I remember.
A couple of weeks ago, “Premiere” listed its top 25 movie posters of all time. I reprinted the list HERE. Well, the posters are cool, but they’re all old school except Silence of the Lambs. So I found a few posters that I like that are newer. I don’t know about a top ten, but these are a few that are definitely cool. Feel free to leave comments and place your own thoughts and images int he comment section below.
Wow! Sandra Bullock’s latest film, Premonition is just getting killed by the critics. With an average score of 3.9/10 on Rotten Tomatoes and 30/100 on Metacritic.com.
Having seen the trailer, I thought the idea looked interesting and the poster is absolutely killer, but there was just something about the trailer from which I gathered it is not going to be a very good movie. Apparently I was right. So aside from my screening of Behind the Mask tonight, I’m taking the weekend off from theatrical releases. How will I cope? Maybe I’ll actually head to the dollar theater and see a Minnesota film, Sweet Land which has been getting fantastic reviews.
But again, that Premonition poster is sick!
[update 3/17] -this rumor has been shattered. Damn.
Almost a year ago now, I posted my excitement about a Motley Crue film adapted from their autobiographical book, “The Dirt.” Since then, Larry Charles (Borat and Curb Your Enthusiasm) has taken the helm as director. Now there’s some new rumours out there about the stars: Walken to play Ozzy (influence and friend to The Crue) and Val Kilmer to play Van Halen’s lead, David Lee Roth.
These casting decisions are still in the rumor stage, but this is according to Tommy Lee (drummer) and the story from Moviehole.com. These actors are also listed on IMDb.com (which is notorious for getting things wrong this early in the game). If the rumors turn out to be true, however, I can’t imagine many others better suited to play the Oz-man other than Walken. Sure, he doesn’t really look like the guy, but he’s eccentric enough and we know he’s got the talent. Should be fun anyway. Kilmer can do anything and he’s already played a rocker once or twice, so this shouldn’t be too difficult for him and it should work out terrifically.
According to Richard’s site, the lovely and extremely talented, Cate Blanchett, is apparently set to star in the next Indiana Jones adventure film. Fact checking with “The Hollywood Reporter,” it seems that this is indeed the case and apparently it is a starring role; as opposed to a supporting role I presume. I just bought 8000 Cate Blanchett shares at Hollywood Stock Exchange.
Since Blanchett is definitely not known for her Hollywood “romp” type of films and only serious, drama-laden projects, I can only assume that this script really grabbed her by the soul and called her to do this. She certainly doesn’t need the money, but maybe after winning an Oscar a couple of years back and narrowly missing another one this year for Notes on a Scandal, she is just looking for some fun; which I totally think is great.
Ms. Blanchett is a tremendous actress and her presence can only help this project. Filming for Indinana Jones IV is set to start in June for a release date of May, 2008. Again, according to “The Hollywood Reporter,” Blanchett is slated for several films in the upcoming months; including David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and her voice in Wes Anderson’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox.
Thanks to E, through apnews, we learn that after R2’s long career as “the little astro-mech droid who could” ended shortly after Lucas’s films were complete, we find R2 has taken on a new profession: mail collection.
WASHINGTON (AP)
- Thirty years ago, in theaters near and far, far away, a movie opened the imaginations of millions, combining the magic of mythology and special effects to launch the “Star Wars” phenomenon.
A star of those films - the brave little robot R2-D2 - is about to take a turn collecting mail as the Postal Service and Lucasfilm Ltd. commemorate that movie launch.
The post office is wrapping mail collection boxes in some 200 cities nationwide in a special covering to look like R2-D2.
It’s part of a promotion for a new stamp to be announced March 28, said Anita T. Bizzotto, the post office’s chief marketing officer.
“It’s a little teaser for the upcoming announcement and we decided to have a little fun with it,” she said.
About 400 mailboxes will be covered to look like the stout droid. “When you look at a mailbox, the resemblance to R2-D2 is too good to pass up,” Bizzotto said.
While postal officials would like people to look for these mailboxes and maybe even drop in a letter, Bizzotto urged people not to tamper with them, noting that’s a crime.
Notice that R2 is also advertising uspsjedimaster.com. I haven’t been there yet, but will now.
Scott Glosserman’s directorial debut, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is getting its nationwide release this Friday. Winner of the audience choice award at The Toronto After Dark Film Festival, this weekend will likely be your only chance to see this fantastic film in a theatrical venue. For a list of theaters (hopefully in your area) showing this film, you can click HERE. While at the main page, check out the trailers and take not only my word, but the word of hundreds of critics who praise this film for its ground breaking originality. But if you do care to take my word, HERE is MoviePatron’s full review along with an embedded trailer.
I had the opportunity to meet with Glosserman for a couple of minutes last year and I can tell you he’s a great guy who really knows his stuff when it comes to horror films. In fact, he wrote his masters’ thesis on the conventions of horror films and was able to create this masterpiece with a genre all it’s own: the slashumentary.
For more information, click on any of the following links:
Behind the Mask official site
Behind the Mask myspace profile
Moviefone’s Showtimes in your area
Full cast and crew at IMDb.com
These are the show notes for Cinecast Episode #38.
You can download or subscribe to the show HERE
Bumper Music by:
Johnny Cash (song: The Man Comes Around - album: American IV)
and
The Tragically Hip (song: Use it Up - album: In Violet Light)
Hot Fuzz at IMDb
Starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.
Also one of the best trailers of the year:
KURT’S REVIEW at twitchfilm.net
300:
Exclusive Clip and “Interview” from 300:
Dawn of the Dead - remake ‘04
First 10 Minutes…
Opening Credits Sequence…
Films opening Friday that we care about:
Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
DVD pick of the week:
Casino Royale
- - Starring Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen, Judi Dench, Jeffrey Wright, Giancarlo Giannini
- - Directed by Martin Campbell (Goldeneye, Mask of Zorro, Vertical Limit)
YOUR Homework:
Rent Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake from 04.
at Blockbuster.com
at Netflix.com
Comments or questions?
feedback@moviepatron.com (general)
andrew@moviepatron.com
kurt@moviepatron.com
- - Kurt’s BLOG
25:
Gun Crazy
The art for 1949’s Gun Crazy represents cinema’s obsession with the aberrant, highlighting a thrill-killing dame. The film was originally released as Deadly is the Female with a poster featuring a more seductive Peggy Cummins splayed out across the poster sans guns. But after a new title and poster was commissioned, the femme fatale flick turned into a hit.
24:
All About Eve
The bouncy, kinetic design of 1950’s All About Eve poster mirrors the movie’s cocktail shaker wit. Erik Nitsche was the artist who came up with the arrow-filled image that, like the film, features an all-too brief cameo by Marilyn Monroe, here in the bottom left corner of the one-sheet.
23:
The Hitch-Hiker
The poster for 1953’s The Hitch-Hiker blurs the line between advertisement and highway safety PSA. The Edmond O’Brien roadside nailbiter had a simple approach to selling its cheap thrills — a gun, a threatening tagline, and the simple, violent colors of red and black.
22:
The Seven Year Itch
If the designers of the poster for the 1955 Marilyn Monroe vehicle had substituted, say, Jimmy Durante for Tom Ewell on the right, do you think anyone would have noticed? No way. Monroe’s pose in this poster has become an enduring iconic image of the sex symbol. The film was the first collaboration between the film’s director Billy Wilder and Saul Bass.
21:
Rosemary’s Baby
Taking a cue from the film itself, the poster for Roman Polanski’s 1968 film makes an innocent object, a baby stroller, ominous. For a film where the concept was definitely more emphasized than stars John Cassavetes and Mia Farrow, Rosemary’s Baby had a poster that upped the creep factor with its unusual use of dark green as a predominant color.
20:
Yellow Submarine
As the film’s art director and man in charge of the advertising art, Czech graphic designer Heinz Edelmann came up with the overall brightly colored, Peter Max-esque look for The Beatles’ mostly animated 1968 romp, Yellow Submarine. Incidentally, the film’s Blue Meanies were originally supposed to be red, but when Edelmann’s assistant accidentally changed the colors, the film’s characters took on a different meaning.
19:
Sullivan’s Travels
Maurice Kallis, who also worked on the This Gun for Hire poster, was responsible for the minimalist Sullivan’s Travels poster. It emphasizes the beautiful blonde bombshell Veronica Lake in this otherwise seriocomic Preston Sturges film. Kallis had previously worked on The Lady Eve one-sheet for Sturges and Paramount advertising head Robert M. Gillham, and though the classic Lake image is the one that’s remembered, the studio also commissioned a less abstract take for their marketing campaign.
18:
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
You don’t need to go to great lengths to make an appealing poster when Audrey Hepburn’s playing the lead. Yet the image of the actress with a figure as slight as the cigarette that dangles from her mouth cemented Hepburn’s iconic status and helped forge the reputation of the now-classic 1961 romantic comedy based on Truman Capote’s hit novel.
17:
This Gun for Hire
Maurice Kallis, who learned the craft of making posters as an assistant to Paramount art director Vincent Trotta, styled the poster for this 1942 Graham Greene potboiler about a hit man who takes money from the wrong man. The presence of Veronica Lake renders the most of the plot irrelevant as far as the poster’s concerned; despite the top billing, Robert Preston isn’t even part of the image. (That’s actually fourth-billed Alan Ladd.)
16:
The Silence of The Lambs
The poster for 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs, designed by the ad agency Dazu, is as simple and disturbing as they come. Look very closely at the death’s head moth covering star Jodie Foster’s mouth, there appears to be an image of humans forming a skull on its back. Inspired by the famous Salvador Dali photograph of several naked women posed like a skull, the film’s director Jonathan Demme is said to have suggested the surreal augmentation to the moth’s natural skull-like markings.
15:
The Mummy
The poster for 1932’s The Mummy remains an auction champ: it once sold for $453,500. P.D. Cochrane was the advertising director at Universal who commissioned the work of illustrator Karoly Grosz which features sultry Zita Johann backed up against a tomb and a mummified Boris Karloff at rest above her.
14:
The Man With the Golden Arm
The stark simplicity of Bass’s poster for 1955’s The Man With the Golden Arm was perhaps the designer’s most daring work. The poster for the film, which stars Frank Sinatra as a man in the throes of drug addiction, conveys the essence of the main character’s struggle without being preachy. Other posters were commissioned that featured the faces of Sinatra and Kim Novak, but the twisted arm remains timeless.
13:
The Gold Rush
The shivering Tramp of 1925’s The Gold Rush immediately entered the pantheon of iconic images. As with many of Chaplin’s posters, it relied more on Chaplin’s bowler hat, mustache and facial expression to grab audiences than a suggestion of the film’s comic elements.
12:
Straw Dogs
The shattering violence of Sam Peckinpah’s 1971 Straw Dogs is disturbingly foreshadowed in this cleverly layered image. While the poster does have a closeup of one of the 1970s most famous leading men, the controversial Dustin Hoffman-Sam Peckinpah collaboration about a man forced to his breaking point is perfectly captured.
11:
King Kong
Star power being what it is, 1933’s King Kong merely needed a big ape to sell itself. Yet S. Barret McCormick and Bob Sisk did the artwork for the iconic ape, based on the production sketches of Mario Larrinaga and Byron Crabbe. The image of the creature terrorizing humans against the backdrop of the New York skyline represented nature versus the machine age at its most extreme.
10:
2001: A Space Odyssey
Originally designed, but discarded as a less prominent image to promote the film, this poster for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey became the main focus of the advertising campaign when it was decided that audiences weren’t as excited by traditional space age images as they had been during the 1950s. The image of an embryo embaced the film’s theme of human evolution and Kubrick had complete authority over the film’s marketing.
9:
The Thief of Baghdad
Douglas Fairbanks never looked better than he did in this one-sheet for the 1924 swashbuckler. But as the producer of The Thief of Baghdad, Fairbanks ensured his image would look good by asking illustrator Adrian Gill Spear to create the poster for the United Artists film.
8:
Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman
1958’s Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman is an awful movie — but the poster is memorable. Reynolds Brown, frequently employed by the studios to create horror one-sheets, designed this Cold War-era flick that was intended to lure teens away from their television sets.
7:
42nd Street
The deco-ish cascade of legs for 42nd Street (1933) brings to mind skyscrapers as well as dancing feet. Hubbard G. Robinson and Joseph Tisman, who also created the poster for Busby Berkeley’s other 1933 film Footlight Parade, captured the off-kilter attraction of Berkeley’s bubbly choreography with the poster’s use of sharp angles and an image from the film’s most famous (or infamous) under the legs sequence. The result was one of the top ten grossing films of the year for Warner Bros.
6:
Gilda
The image of Rita Hayworth in the title role of Gilda (1946) epitomizes the femme fatale. Robert Coburn took the picture and art director Jack Kerness did the rest with this sultry image of Hayworth in a Jean Louis gown. This poster touches on the scene that comes after the film’s most famous sequence in which Hayworth’s character does a striptease.
5:
Forbidden Planet
The Forbidden Planet artwork (1956), with its decidedly menacing robot and definitely-not-Anne Francis damsel-in-distress, evokes and entire ethos of pulp sci-fi. The prominence of Robbie the Robot also tapped into 1950s hysteria by appearing like some piece of domestic gadgetry.
4:
Downhill Racer
Downhill Racer’s breathtaking 1969 one-sheet is, among other things, a testimonial to just how freewheeling the ’60s were — only then were the studios daring enough to advertise a Robert Redford picture without showing Redford on the poster. Steve Frankfurt did the design and while the film was mostly ignored by audiences, the one-sheet is seen as a touchstone for future film posters.
3:
Vertigo
The image that Saul Bass — who also created the opening credit sequence of the film itself — designed for Hitchcock’s 1958 Vertigo is as classic as the movie itself. Perhaps because of his good work or merely because of his growth into one of film’s most gifted poster creators, Bass was given a credit on the film, which at the time wasn’t customary.
2:
The Sin of Nora Moran
Some great posters are from movies you may never have heard of — 1933’s The Sin of Nora Moran is a fairly inconsequential B picture, but its poster is an unforgettable image of ravishment. (As for truth in advertising, the film’s lead actress was not a blond.) Alberto Vargas, an artist who was a go-to guy for the studios during the 1930s, did the artwork on this Majestic release.
1:
Anatomy of a Murder
Mark Rothko meets the chalk outline. Artist Saul Bass (also an acclaimed title designer and visual consultant) brought poster design out of the golden age with a bold mix of the abstract and the figurative, of which this poster for the controversial 1959 Otto Preminger thriller is a prime example.
