Category: Movie Pass Adventures

  • Retro Movie Adventures: Princess Mononoke (1997)

    San, masked, in Princess Mononoke.
    Ashitaka & San in Princess Mononoke.

    Princess Mononoke was one of those “I hear it’s great but somehow I’ve never seen it” films. The last Studio Ghibli movie I saw was My Neighbor Totoro, which has significantly fewer flying body parts and worm-covered demons. This movie is a prime evidence that “animated” doesn’t mean “for kids.”

    The film is lovely, and the 4K transfer is stunning. I’m glad my first experience seeing it was on the main screen at the Chinese Theatre.

    Today’s parody poster is dumb, but after the first scene with San, her mouth ringed with blood, this terrible idea came into my head and I had to go with it. It doesn’t quite work unless I explain it, which means it doesn’t really work at all.

    A poster for Princess Mononoke that just barely resembles the poster for Joker.
    “Why so serious?”

    Today’s bit of working too hard on a part of the poster that no one will notice: While trying to find a font that closely matched the title on the original poster, I found a reddit post from the person who designed the original logo. They said they used wood blocks to hand print the original, but they also suggested a very similar digital typeface. I slightly re-scaled each of the letters individually, and gave each one its own texture. You can’t tell.

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  • Retro Streaming Movie Adventures: Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1982)

    Terry Jones in Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl.
    The singing waiters from the opening of Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl.

    Some of this still feels brilliant, and some of this feels like stilted, racist schlock.

    Figuring out which poster to parody took forever, but when I figured it out it seemed obvious.

    A poster for Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl in the style of the poster for Trainspotting.

  • Movie Pass Adventures: Ash

    Eiza González as Riya in Ash.
    Eiza González as Riya in Ash.

    This movie isn’t exactly Alien with extra gore and a big spoonful of David Lynch, but it isn’t far from that either. Not a movie for me, but space horror isn’t usually my jam.

    Another rushed poster, but that’s okay; I didn’t really feel much motivation to do something better.

    A poster for Ash that's a lazy ripoff of the poster for Alien. Seems appropriate.
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  • Retro Movie Pass Adventures: Lost Highway (1997)

    Patricia Arquette and Balthazar Getty in Lost Highway
    Robert Blake as Mystery Man in Lost Highway

    Somehow, David Lynch’s Lost Highway is both more and less realistic than Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Body doubles, body switches, a Mystery Man who appears in multiple places at once, and a linear story told in non-linear time, but it’s still not as weird as a guy dressing up a woman to look like the woman who thought she was possessed by her ancestor and killed herself but then two or three other layers of unlikely weirdness happen.

    Also: it was fun to see Robert Loggia beat up a guy on the closed road I use to ride my bike to Griffith Observatory.

    Today’s poster was such an clear choice that I almost avoided it for being too obvious. Fun fact: The original poster featured an early example of computer graphics. Vertigo was actually the first movie to use computer graphics; Saul Bass used them in the title sequence and on the original version of this poster. They probably took days to render. I made my low resolution substitute in about five minutes with an online programming language for kids called Scratch. The part that took the longest was all the hand drawn lettering. There are Saul Bass homage fonts out there, but I wanted all the letters to be unique.

    A poster for Lost Highway in the style of the poster for Vertigo.
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  • Movie Pass Adventures: Opus

    John Malkovich and Ayo Edibiri in Opus
    Ayo Edibiri in Opus. She is shades of red; the background is yellow and brown stirpes.

    Before I saw Opus I read an article that called it a spiritual sequel to another movie. Even though that wasn’t exactly correct, it was enough to suck most of the mystery out of the film. Also, the other film was better.

    One major difference between the two: the plot here requires all of the unknowing participants to act in very specific ways or the whole plan fails. It’s not exactly a brilliant plan if it could get wrecked by someone deciding to hide in a different room.

    Tonight’s fake poster is a bit of a rush job, but I think it references the original pretty well. Malkovich’s eyes don’t hold quite the same kind of menace as the originals, though…

    A poster for Opus parodying the poster for Amadeus
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  • Retro Movie Adventures: Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

    Lee Remick wearing sunglasses in Anatomy of a Murde.
    Jimmy Stewart in Anatomy of a Murder. Just his head and shoulders. He is looking slightly to his right. He is rendered in shades of blue and cyan. The background is faint portraits of Lee Remick and George C. Scott, rendered in magentas and yellows.

    Man, trials in the fifties sure had a lot of joking around. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about murder and rape; just saying the word “panties” is enough to get the whole courtroom giggling.

    I saw this at the Vista, which only shows movies on film. Last time I was there I saw a great 70mm print of Vertigo. This time, it was a 35mm print that looked looked like it had been stored in the basement of a truck stop. It was watchable, but mighty rough.

    Went with an easy, mostly text poster for today’s parody. The picture of Jimmy Stewart is pretty rough, so it matches well with the film print I saw.

    A poster fr Anatomy of a Murder in the style of the poster for Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
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  • Movie Pass Adventures: Eephus

    Members of the Riverdogs baseball team sitting in the dugout in Eephus.
    Franny at his scoring table in Eephus. He is rendered in greens and golds. The background is a pixelated image of Soldiers Field and players from both teams.

    I don’t know anything about baseball, so you might think a whole movie about two small town teams playing a game wouldn’t work for me, but it’s a perfect example of how showing hyper-specific situations somehow makes stories more universal. I’m sure there are fans who could follow all the technical talk about playing, and who know what all of the symbols Franny marks in his playbook mean, but I don’t think actually knowing any of that makes the movie more enjoyable- which is weird, because I think including all of that stuff is crucial for making this movie work. My favorite detail is the team uniforms: everyone wears one, but none of them quite match. I mean, look at theseguys:

    And you know there were HUGE arguments over every new uniform design.

    This isn’t a movie about winning a game. It’s a movie about playing a game, living a game, and knowing that the game is going to end. It’s very bittersweet, but the sweetness is definitely there.

    Today’s poster challenge: Find a poster that somehow connects to a movie with a unique one word baseball-themed title, but isn’t a baseball movie. I ended up leaning into the single word title and the symbols in Franny’s scorebook.

    A poster for Eephus in the style of the poster for The Matrix
    Today’s thing I spent too much time on: creating the glitchy title letters. There are a few different “Matrix” fonts out there, but if I’d used them both of the E letters would have looked the same. And I wish I could have used two players from each team, but there weren’t many images of the Adler’s Paint team standing.
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  • Movie Pass Adventures: Black Bag

    Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender almost kissing in Black Bag
    Brightly colored image of Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett looking at each other in Black Bag.

    Soderbergh released two movies in the same year? Who does he think he is, Luca Guadagnino? This is a lot more traditionally constructed than Presence, but it does have some fun playing with spy movie conventions. Bonus points for getting a former James Bond as the spy version of a cranky middle manager.

    Today’s poster parody came pretty easily, but a romantic comedy probably would have been funnier.

    A poster for Black Bag that pretty closely matches the poster for Men in Black.
    Also: whoever did the original Men in Black poster didn’t spend a lot of time picking fonts. The text on top is Eurostile. And the title? Eurostile BLACK. I bet they just looked for fonts with “black” in the name and picked the cleanest one.
    Sure made my work easy!
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  • VERY Retro Movie Adventures: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

    Friedrich Feher as Francis in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, staring out as two policemen stare at him.
    Dr. Caligari in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. He is shades of orange. The background is concentric white, cyan, and black rings.

    There’s a lot they hadn’t learned how to do in movies in 1920, but this movie pushes to do the most it can with the available tools and knowledge. No color? Tint the whole frame! No fades? Use oddly-shaped irises! Continuity between shots in a scene? We’ll do that next time and trust the audience to figure it out!

    It’s also pretty amazing to see that so many foundational elements of modern horror movies are in here. Mysterious characters, plot twists, multiple suspects, a surprise ending: they’re all there!

    Is this movie good by today’s standards? Not really. Is it a revolutionary movie for its time? Absolutely.

    And was it funny for me to watch this for the first time decades after watching Forbidden Zone? Oh, so funny.

    This may shock you, but there aren’t great photos available from this movie. But I did manage to pull one that sort-of matched the style of the posters I decided to parody.

    A poster for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari sort-of in the style of the posters for the Twilight films, with Cesare standing in for Edward.
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  • Retro Streaming Movie Adventures: The Italian Job (1969)

    Michael Caine and Noel Coward looking eye to eye in The Italian Job. Only the middle thirds of their heads are visible.
    Graphic of Michael Caine in The Italian Job. He is shown in shades of yellow and gold. The background is red and magenta.

    My second old school heist movie in a week. This one’s a lot lighter than The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. Cracking good fun!

    Things I learned:

    • Noel Coward could play a convincing crime boss.
    • Benny Hill used to actually act, and was pretty good at it.
    • Benny Hill could play a convincing sex pest. Wait, I knew that one.

    The whole movie is about stealing gold, so this seemed like a natural pairing.

    A poster for The Italian Job parodying the poster for Goldfinger.
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