Category: Photoshop

  • Retro Movie Adventures: Dogma (1999) (25th Anniversary release)

    Mat Damon and Ben Affleck in Dogma.
    The cast of Dogma looking serious.

    I’m glad this movie was as good as I remembered it. Serious topics buried in New Jersey stoner humor; it’s Kevin Smith at his peak.

    Today’s fake poster is a spiritual successor to the one for Frida (but that one looks better).

    A poster for Dogama mimicking the poster for Dog Man
    Fediverse reactions

  • San Francisco Movie Pass Adventures: The Phoenician Scheme and The Life of Chuck

    The Phoenician Scheme

    Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston on The Phoenician Scheme. They are rendered in muted cyans and oranges
    movie bar for The Phoenician Scheme

    Wes Anderson certainly has a style, doesn’t he?

    My fake poster for this is pretty weak, but I enjoyed trying to push Anderson’s color grading into superhero territory.

    A poster for The Phoenician Scheme poorly mimicking the poster for Deadpool

    The Life of Chuck

    Tom Hiddleston as Chuck, smiling and wearing glasses
    movie bar for The Life of Chuck

    This is more like three related short films than a single movie. Some of it works well, and some of it is trying far too hard to look like deep wisdom. But that’s also how Stephen King writes, so that makes sense.

    This fake poster also isn’t particularly great, but I thought the tagline at the top was pretty funny.

    A poster for The Life of Chuck poorly mimicking the poster for The Secret Life of Pets
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  • Streaming Slightly Older Movie Adventures: MacGruber (2010)

    Stylized image of MacGruber on a colorful fake LEGO background for some reason.
    MacGruber & Vicki in MacGruber

    Would Ethan Hunt ever put celery in his butt as a distraction? I think not!

    Today’s source poster is about as unrelated to this movie as it could be.

    A poster for MacGruber mimicking the poster for High Fidelity.
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  • Movie (no) Pass Adventures: Caught by the Tides

    Tao Zhao smiling in Caught by the Tides. She is rendered in simplified shapes of orange, red, green, and black.
    Tao Zhao, arms above head, wearing sunglasses, looking to the right. Part of her face and arms are visible.

    I imagine Jia Zhangke in 2014 watching Boyhood and thinking “I like the idea of a movie shot over decades with the same actors. I’d like to do it with my favorite actress (who is also my wife), but I want to start with her twenty years ago. Maybe I’ll recycle old footage of her I shot for other movies. And I’ll throw in some random experimental videos I shot along the way.” No one should be able to make that work, but Jia somehow pulls it off.

    Today’s poster is about getting caught. I didn’t have the right pictures of the cast to make it work, but I decided they were blurry enough to fake with substitutes. Please pretend they look vaguely like the real characters.

    A poster for Caught by the Tides mimicking the poster for Catch Me If You Can.
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  • Streaming Movie Adventures: Mission Impossible: Fallout

    An impressionistic rendering of Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt hanging onto the side of a cliff.
    The top half of an image of Tom Cruise riding a motorcycle toward the camera.

    I’m not sure why the Mission: Impossible movies don’t do much for me. Yeah, they’re preposterous and predictable, but so is pretty much every superhero movie and I generally like those. I don’t know if it’s the direction or the stars, but they just feel soulless.

    For today’s fake poster I went with the opposite of Impossible: Easy.

    A poster for Mission impossible: Fallout mimicking the poster for Easy Rider
    …or is the opposite of impossible “unavoidable?” Whatever… close enough.
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  • Retro Movie Adventures: Hellzapoppin (1941)

    Chic Johnson and Ole Olsen mugging in a scene from Hellzapoppin. They are rendered in shades of red, orange and yellow. The background is unidentifiable blue and purple shapes.
    Martha Raye standing in front of a target, mouth wide open, surrounded by arrows.

    Great- now I’ve got a crush on 1941 Martha Raye. Thanks, Hellzapoppin.

    I love that they realized the stage show of Hellzapoppin would never work as a movie, so they didn’t even bother to try and make a direct translation of the show. It’s 84 minutes packed with topical (at the time) jokes, music, and special effects strung together by a plot that Olsen & Johnson are actively mocking.

    Hellzapoppin isn’t streaming anywhere, but there’s a really good restoration on YouTube.

    Today’s fake poster was inspired by the “poppin” part of “Hellzapoppin,” and features a secret link to They Might Be Giants.

    A poster for Hellzapoppin mimicking the poster for Mary Poppins.

  • Retro Movie Pass Adventures: Jaws (1975)

    Roy Scheider tosses his chum at a shark.
    Roy Scheider hangs onto the mast of a sinking boat and fights a shark.

    I think this Spielberg guy is a pretty good director.

    Today’s fake poster is based on Spielberg’s second-greatest film.

    A poster for Jaws mimicking the poster for Hook.
    Of course, the greatest is 1941.
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  • Retro Movie Adventures: Cooley High (1975)

    Sherman Smith, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, and Glynn Turman freaking out while riding in a car in Cooley High.
    Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs and Glynn Turman as Cochise and Preach in Cooley High.

    Why wasn’t Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs ten times as active as an actor? I wouldn’t have minded if we got less Boom Boom Washington if it meant more big movie roles.

    It was good to see a pre-SNL Garrett Morris in a more serious role. Another guy who should have had a much larger career.

    Oh, and Robert Townsend is in this (uncredited) for about ten seconds!

    My first thought for today’s fake poster was a riff on Vanilla Ice’s “Cool As Ice,” but copying the title design would have meant writing it like this:

    COOL
    EY
    HIGH

    and that looked dumb. Then I thought about using a different high school movie like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, but that seemed too similar. So I went with a movie that takes place in the same city, but in a different decade.

    A poster for Cooley High mimicking the poster for Chicago.
    Posters that use the “the name on the left is lower than the name on the right so everybody can claim they got top billing” thing crack me up.

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  • Movie Pass Adventures: The Accountant 2

    Jon Bernthal and Ben Affleck in The Accountant 2
    Altered image of Ben Affleck in The Accountant 2. A profile picture, high contrast, in four colors (red, blue, green, and yellow). The background is dark purple screenprint-style dots on a lighter purple field.

    When I watched the original Accountant movie earlier this week I wasn’t surprised that Affleck’s character has Hollywood Magic Autism that makes him a super genius who sometimes does unexpected things. The sequel beats that by giving him a squad of kids who also have super-autism that they can use to control any device connected to the internet to help Affleck’s character solve a mystery- or murder people, if that’s the job.

    It’s not very good.

    Today’s poster would work better if I had better Ralph Steadman-style custom Photoshop brushes.

    A poster for The Accountant 2 mimicking the poster for Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas.
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  • Movie Pass Adventures: Thunderbolts*

    Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine at an impeachment hearing in Thunderbolts*.
    Stylized image of The Thunderbolts* (Ghost, Taskmaster, US Agent, Bucky, Red Guardian, and White Widow) in red and yellow, with a blue background

    It turns out Marvel can still make fun movies with Captain America characters (as long as they aren’t actually Captain America). Let’s see if they can get two in a row with Fantastic Four.

    Today’s poster was an excuse to try out a Photoshop trick I saw in a Youtube tutorial.

    A poster for Thunderbolts* mimicking the poster for The Exorcist.

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