Category: Photoshop

  • 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.
    Fediverse reactions

  • 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.
    Fediverse reactions

  • 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.
    Fediverse reactions

  • 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.

    Fediverse reactions

  • 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.
    Fediverse reactions

  • 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.

    Fediverse reactions

  • Streaming Movie Adventures: The Accountant (2016)

    Ben Affleck as The Accountant, writing on a window like all geniuses do.
    Ben Affleck in The Accountant thinking "Remember: autism makes you stand like a robot"

    “Hey, y’know how Matt Damon’s first big role was as a math genius, and then he did a bunch of action spy movies? What if we had a movie where the lead guy was both, and also a secret philanthropist?”

    “How would we make that believable?”

    “Easy- let’s make him autistic!”

    “Does autism give people super math/killing/philanthropy powers?”

    “No idea!”

    “Good enough for me!”

    “Should we also include a nonsense plot?”

    “I think that’s practically a requirement.”

    “If people like it, we can do a sequel in ten years.”

    “But after all that time people will forget the first movie!”

    “You’re right. Let’s do it in nine.”

    Today’s poster is so, so, so dumb. But so is the movie, so that works out.

    A poster for The Accountant mimicking the poster for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. I had to stop myself from adding "Into the Accountant-Verse."

    Fediverse reactions

  • Retro Movie Adventures: Amazon Women on the Moon (1987)

    Michelle Pfeiffer looking shocked as she realizes she's in Amazon Women on the Moon.
    Alpha Beta (yeah, that's the moon girl's name) and Butch in Amazon Women on the Moon.

    1987 was a huge year for movies. Full Metal Jacket, The Princess Bride, The Untouchables, Predator, Lethal Weapon, Robocop, Three Men and a Baby, Good Morning Vietnam, and The Last Emperor all came out that year. So many great films came out that a lot of smaller films got buried- films like Hollywood Shuffle, Swimming to Cambodia, and River’s Edge.

    There also was this turd. It’s like someone said “Let’s make a new Kentucky Fried Movie, but lose a lot of the racism and sexism (but we’ll still keep a healthy serving of both). But let’s make sure we stick to the real spirit of Kentucky Fried Movie by avoiding humor as much as possible.”

    Here’s the best sketch from the movie. You can skip the rest.

    Kind of an obvious parody poster today.

    A poster for Amazon Women on the Moon mimicking the poster for Moon.
    I should rewatch Moon, and pretend I don’t recognize the robot’s voice.

  • Movie Pass Adventures: Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie

    Cheech & Chong smiling and looking at the camera.
    Early Cheech & Chong, shirtless and making bodybuilder poses & silly faces.

    The story of how a Chinese Canadian soul musician and a Mexican American with a love of pot(tery) became comedy superstars. Very watchable. A little too forced at times, but that’s about right for these guys.

    I went with a different last movie for the parody poster.

    A poster for Cheech and Chong's Last Movie mimicking the poster for The Last Picture Show.
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