

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.

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.
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.
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…
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
This feels like a different movie every time I see it. I don’t mean “Golly, I just figured out a new interpretation”; I mean like they keep shooting other scenes and sneaking them into the film.
Also: Alamo Drafthouse played a clip of Lynch before the film where he said that no one else interpreted the film the way he did, which means all non-Lynch interpretations are equally valid. Personally, I think it’s the origin of Pencilhead from Mystery Men.
I had a hard time finding a tangentially related poster to parody for this. The end result doesn’t look much like the original, and the original is hardly iconic. I’d be surprised if you can figure it out without looking at the alternate text.
This movie is a Jack Quaid Charm Delivery Device. Also: I look forward to the upcoming “Is this a Christmas movie?” arguments.
My fake poster is an argument for pro-Christmas. The only reason I wish this was already on video is that I’d be able to get better source images.
Part two of my Unplanned Walter Matthau Film Festival. It’s a little jarring to go from Matthau as a schubbly transit cop in a gritty suspense story to Matthau as a high society fop in an arch farce.
…and this movie is on video, but I still couldn’t get decent images. Maybe I just like making excuses for the declining quality of these posters.