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Monday, May 2, 2011

Good poster, crap poster #2: Bank heists

GOOD BANK HEIST FILM POSTERS:


You don't get much cooler than this. It's simple, eye-catching and effective, and evocative of Michael Mann's ultra-blue-tinged masterpiece. Plus you have Pacino and DeNiro together, which adds extra cred (until Righteous Kill came along, anyway). I'm not a huge fan of Val Kilmer being shoved in the middle there, but I reckon this still works quite nicely.



One of a few posters for Ben Affleck's excellent The Town, this one is probably the best of the bunch, even though I'm personally not mad keen on it (this is about GOOD posters, not brilliant ones). The shot from the film is intriguing, and the tagline is a strong one. Like the Heat poster, not so stunning you'd want to frame it, but it captures the mood of the film well.




This second one for The Town has the old "floating head" cliche, but the mood and lighting work well enough in its favour so that you don't mind so much.


CRAP BANK HEIST FILM POSTERS:




I'm not sure if this third one for The Town is part of the studio's official marketing strategy or just a "teaser" poster, but either way it doesn't work. It's going for an "Angelina Jolie moody side shot from Wanted" look, but unfortunately ol' Ben can't carry it off, and the whole thing looks like it's been pasted together in a few minutes.


But, of course, that's a masterpiece compared to...




This one is particularly notorious around Photoshop "FAIL" circles, and it's clear to see why. Pretty much horrid on every level, from the lame tagline, the way the lighting falls on the actors' faces from all directions, the fact that the designer has obviously pasted heads onto other people's bodies (and in most cases, such as with Paul Walker, not very well) to the general crumminess of the concept. And that line down the bottom - "taking theaters soon"? Absolutely awful. They should stop doing that sort of thing: "hitting cinemas soon" and "smashing its way into theaters this fall" and all that. It's not clever, it's irritating.


By the way, I have no idea if this reflects the general quality or mood of the film itself, but based on this poster I have no desire to see it, and if it does, then I would assume the film Takers is a Heat-wannabe with actors' heads CGI-ed onto other actors' bodies, with a script that is a humongous pile of shit.


This second one for Takers is somewhat better, but that's like saying stomach cancer is better than bone cancer. And it still has Hayden Christiansen's awful headwear:




And what are those cops aiming at? Why does one look like he's taking a dump in his pants?

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