Tuesday, May 29, 2007

From Russia, With Laughs

There was a time in my life when I collected film posters and travel postcards. Well, I still enjoy postcards, though my collection has evolved from images of sunny beaches to vintage French pornography, but I lost interest in movie posters a long time ago.

There are a few exceptions, but today's movie posters are shamefully stupid and poorly crafted compared to the phenomenal artwork produced in the golden age between the 1940s and the 1970s, when the majority of film posters and title sequences were hand-drawn by the most respected illustrators and designers in the world. Fast-forward to 2007, and now these posters are made by some art school hack with Adobe CS2. Has the film got Tom Hanks in it? Okay! Let's superimpose a faded but poignant shot of his big fat melon right over a gritty sunset and sprinkle some more disembodied bobbleheads of his co-stars around him. Sweet!

But today I received an e-mail from a friend that might just re-ignite my love of marquee art -- from other countries! The following images are REAL film posters and wall murals, created by local artists (seemingly the same untalented local artist) in Minsk, Belarus for American-made Hollywood blockbusters playing in Minsk theatres. Now, I cannot explain why the parent studio wouldn't just supply professionally printed and translated posters of their films to the overseas market, but this is Belarus, so maybe they had to burn the entire shipment for warmth. I'm glad they did, because these are hilarious.

Let's make a little game out of this.... can you guess which film these posters are advertising?

Click on images to enlarge




I know what you're saying! "HOW LIFE-LIKE!"

14 comments:

pistols at dawn said...

Ah, a return to the old, Czech-dominated design era of movie posterdom.

I'm hopeless except for the obvious ones of Scooby-Doo, Spy Kids 3-D, Freaky Friday, and one of the Bridget Jones movies (since Renee Z. appears to be over 100 pounds in the picture). Oh, and that 23 one's got to be Jack Black and Gwyneth Paltrow in...Shallow Hal, right? Is 10 maybe Punch-Drunk Love?

And then the last two are Breakin' and Breakin' 2: Electric Bugaloo.

katrocket said...

You're very good at this, Pistols. # 10 is "50 First Dates" with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore - you get half points for that one. "Breakin'" and "Breakin' 2" are incorrect, but much funnier than the real answers.

pistols at dawn said...

You know what should have given 50 First Dates away? The huge 50 behind the title. I find it funny that they used the mopey Adam Sandler look from Punch Drunk Love for a romantic comedy.

That one with the two women makes me angry, as does the young back to back couple movie. The Notebook? What movie do people who go on dates go see? I may have to find a woman who speaks Russian - either to translate these titles, or because she doesn't know enough English to say "no."

Bert Bananas said...

The first one was undoubtedly "Brokeback Mountain."

The one with the 15 in it was Kill Bill, Vol II.

Even without the big 50 in the background, 50 First Dates was easy because of how eerily the artist captured Drew Barrymore's essence.

17 was Thelma & Louise.

I'm ashamed to say that I thought the last one was a Lassie movie.

Rob McCleary said...

I'd love to know what the titles end up as after the translation...

CoffeeDog said...

Scooby Doo!

T said...

1. "3-D Kids Turn 18" and she's holding a new sex toy for outer space.
2. "Hillary Clinton's New Boy-Toy for the White House"
3. "How Not to Want to See 50-First Dates"
4. "How to Cop a Feel and Keep a Straight Face" starring Keanu Reeves and Lucy Lui
5. "Donnie Osmond Does Britney"
6. "Hillary Clinton's New Girl-Toy for the White House"
7. "Hillary in the White House III - Post Toy-Play"
8. "Scoobie Gets a Little Too Intimate" A modified storyline once Sarah Michelle Gellar refused the original script with her getting humped by the dog.

All of the posters are the exact opposite of what the porn industry does with their movie posters and DVD covers.

pistols at dawn said...

What? Oh, I get it...

Dear T's 14-year-old son,

First of all, you shouldn't play with Daddy's account. That's what the "My" in "MySpace" is for: you!

Secondly, I was 14 once, and also thought saying childish things about sex toys in every other sentence would make me popular. But really, it just makes you look 14. And on the internet, it makes you look like a creepy 14-year-old, like that kid who carved Metallica graffitti into school desks with a compass and never cut his hair. That kid needed porn, because he kept talking about sex toys and creeped all the women out. It's sort of a Zen thing - to get to the point where women will ask you to engage in that sort of activity, you've got to not mention that sort of activity. Very difficult to understand, I know - especially at 14. You're just going to have to trust me there.

T said...

OK, -I sorry...

Chris said...

Oddly enough, my aunt and uncle just got back from a two-year Peace Corps stint in the Ukraine. They didn't mention movie posters, though, when they told us about their trip...

pistols at dawn said...

Chris, apparently they didn't tell you about the hullaballoo over dropping "the" from the country's name in the mid-90s, so it's just "Ukraine." After all, you wouldn't say, "They just got back from the Italy."

The only reason I know this: my best friend met his wife while studying in Ukraine. Odessa truly is the city of romance.

T said...

Don't worry Chris. It's a good thing that in THE United States of America we don't worry too much how we refer to THE Ukraine...

PAD - Is THE Ukrainian chick hot or just an average-looking Ukrainian Ukrainian-language teacher or official?

Chris said...

Heck, I still refer to it as "The Soviet Union" half the time.

pistols at dawn said...

Oddly enough, the woman in question is Polish. It's THAT old story, where an Argentine/American boy goes to Ukraine, where he meets a Polish girl born in Mexico. Yawn.

Oh, and she's pretty, though the pastiness of some Slavs doesn't really do it for me.

And Chris, you are wise, because this "breakup of the Soviet Union" thing is just a ruse. Latvia et al v. Russia is what political theorists call "the Jessica Simpson and John Mayer of world politics."