The Adam Hughes Corollary to the Gene Siskel Movie Test - “Before making a movie based on a licensed property, ask yourself: is this movie going to be less entertaining than just Googling for Adam Hughes drawings of these same characters?” [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Aug 10, 2009 - 113 comments

Pauline Kael called it "a huge, jerry-built, crumbling ruin of a movie". Roger Ebert called it "such a silly and stupid movie... our immediate reaction is pity". Few directors of Michelangelo Antonioni's stature have followed a film as acclaimed as Blowup (1966) with one as reviled as Zabriskie Point (1970). [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese on Jun 25, 2009 - 30 comments

The Oscar-nominated "Mysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello" is an "adventurous tale of a navigator’s journey to save his ailing wife set in a beautiful world of Victorian science-fiction" and one the many fine film shorts and videos available to watch at shortof theweek.com - a site dedicated to "finding those few [video] gems amongst the enormous heap of garbage they're buried in..." [more inside]
posted by taz on Mar 9, 2009 - 7 comments

Concept art for the Alien 3 that never was - Before the Walter Hill version was shot, entirely in brown, by David Fincher there were many iterations of the Alien 3 script. One of the more exotic ones was the Vincent Ward & John Fasano "monks in space" script, illustrated here. [via io9]
posted by Artw on Feb 4, 2009 - 46 comments

Take Me Back - The Series
posted by Manhasset on Jan 1, 2009 - 6 comments

In defense of suburbs: "Revolutionary Road," based on Richard Yates's 1961 novel of the same name, is the latest entry in a long stream of art that portrays the American suburbs as the physical correlative to spiritual and mental death.
posted by kliuless on Dec 29, 2008 - 172 comments

The Eye and the Fly is a video advert (for what, I don't really know) that I think is very well done. On first viewing, it immediately reminded me of Zbig Rybczynski's classic short, Tango, which has been linked on MeFi before.
posted by Manhasset on Dec 8, 2008 - 8 comments

The Art of the Title Sequence [more inside]
posted by anastasiav on Dec 3, 2008 - 19 comments

The Auteurs is a new web site (in beta) for film lovers--and, for those film lovers, Criterion has relaunched their site. Now with the ability to watch (some of) their films online for $5 (good for a week's worth of watching one title). The viewing cost is also applicable to the cost of buying the same title on DVD.
posted by Manhasset on Nov 25, 2008 - 22 comments

The Star Wars illustrations and posters of Noriyoshi Ohrai.
posted by nthdegx on Jan 12, 2008 - 4 comments

Antonio de Felipe is a Spanish pop artist whose work is heavily influenced by pop culture, Hollywood, classic art and movies, animation, advertising, and simply growing up in Spain. Among the actresses he frequently depicts are Audrey Hepburn (as well as melding different sources) and Marilyn Monroe. He has also recreated some international masterpieces in pop art form. Some may be familiar with his work from the art he created for Pedro Almodóvar's film Live Flesh. Altogether, his work transcends national boundaries while still maintaining a distinct Spanish flavor. [more inside]
posted by cmgonzalez on Dec 4, 2007 - 7 comments

Top 10 Most Disturbing Movies of All Time. [more inside]
posted by KevinSkomsvold on Nov 7, 2007 - 216 comments

The Color of Top Grossing Movies. A movie’s theatrical poster is only a very small part of the larger marketing and hype machine that turns movies into spectacular blockbusters, but as part of a whole, they are fairly representative of the “image” of any given movie. So, as an exercise in color trends, and to see if any significant pattern emerged, I decided to break down the colors of 25 posters — the top 5 of each MPAA category.
posted by brain_drain on Sep 12, 2007 - 35 comments

Crazy 4 Cult is a new exhibit coming to Gallery 1988, the Los Angeles art gallery that hosts the annual (and always great) IAm8Bit exhibit. Just as IAm8Bit uses videogames of the 1980s as the theme for the artists, Crazy 4 Cult is using Cult movies. For fun, the exhbit poster features a huge number of movie references - can you catch them all? Via.
posted by jonson on Jul 16, 2007 - 12 comments

Edward Gorey is coming to the big screen! You may know him from his animations on PBS. You may even be familiar with his poem on child mortality. And if you’re a particularly avid fan, you may have purchased his raccoon fur coat.
posted by gueneverey on Jun 13, 2007 - 30 comments

Abnormal Behavior Child's got some interesting things to look at and watch or play with. Site self-describes as "visual poetry". {second link's got flash/sound}
posted by dobbs on Apr 17, 2007 - 6 comments

Cloned Disney cels: page 1 [Russian, bad English], page 2 [Russian, bad English]
posted by thirteenkiller on Apr 10, 2007 - 25 comments

Linking to someone's store usually isn't kosher, but Etsy user elloh's work is pretty unique. Featuring prints of her watercolor work for fairly low prices, her paintings focus on pop culture. There are moments from Office Space, Little Miss Sunshine, and Bob Ross immortalized in her art. But the cream of the crop is her series of portraits from The Office. Kevin, Creed, and Stanley are my faves and she even includes the UK version players as well.
posted by mathowie on Apr 9, 2007 - 15 comments

From extra sheep and mountains in Brokeback Mountain, to flipping around shops and removing a leg in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Buzz Image provides an extensive portfolio of their CG and FX work. And plenty of beavers.
posted by divabat on Dec 20, 2006 - 23 comments

CON-CAN Movie Festival is an online international short film festival connecting creators and viewers all around the world. (Win/Mac compatible)." Thirty international short films available in the screening room.
posted by dobbs on Jul 12, 2006 - 1 comment

Andrey Kuznetsov makes delightful lubki (sing. lubok), a form of Russian folk art, out of some well-known modern movies. Some information (in English) about the medium and its origins with many examples can be seen here (warning: Java). Shamelessly ganked from AskMe. Thanks jonson!
posted by Gator on Jul 5, 2006 - 15 comments

"Ten Favorite Offbeat Musicals" by Jonathan Rosenbaum
posted by matteo on Apr 4, 2006 - 30 comments

Three new ways of thinking about David Cronenberg (director of Videodrome, Dead Ringers, etc.). A documentary filmmaker, an avant-garde filmmaker, or maybe just a guy who looks at couples and probably wonders what they look like having sex. Kind of par for the course.
posted by Joe Hutch on Mar 20, 2006 - 45 comments

"He was someone who acted out our psyches ... He somehow got into the shadows inside our bodies; he was able to nail down some of our secret fears and put them on-screen... the history of Lon Chaney is the history of unrequited loves. He brings that part of you out into the open, because you fear that you are not loved, you fear that you never will be loved, you fear there is some part of you that's grotesque, that the world will turn away from."
A Valentine for Lon Chaney, the Man of a Thousand Faces. (BugMeNot for the first link; more inside)
posted by matteo on Feb 18, 2006 - 14 comments

Using fine-art images to promote movies: "But it was Mr. Kessell's "Florilegium" (or "collection of floral images") daguerrotypes that caught Mr. Palen's eye: each image is close-up of a surgical instrument, so poetically rendered that it seems almost organic. Some of the macabre implements resemble exotic flowers. One, from a distance, could be mistaken for the horns of a gazelle. "We were sort of blocked, and all the pieces fell into place once I saw that image," Mr. Palen explained. A deal was made to use that daguerreotype [to promote the upcoming Tarantino-produced film "Hostel"], which actually shows a surgical clamp. [The poster] now appears in theaters and on widespread promotions. [Side: direct WMV link of Tarantino spazing out while introducing "Hostel's" director Eli Roth at a festival.]
posted by JPowers on Jan 4, 2006 - 12 comments

The Emperor's Bunker. "The Japanese, with sadness and irony, stressed that Hirohito couldn't even speak properly. This was partly to do with the fact that he didn't have to speak - people spoke in his name and he was isolated from real life". "The Sun", the third part in Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov's 'Men of Power' tetralogy after the gloom of Moloch (1999), about Hitler and Eva Braun, and the despairing tones of "Taurus" (2001), focused on the wheelchair-bound Lenin in his death throes, "The Sun" seems almost upbeat. This, after all, is a film about reconciliation. More inside.
posted by matteo on Sep 13, 2005 - 21 comments

Vintage & Retro Posters
French/Italian
Marc Chagall
Old Movie Posters via
posted by peacay on Jul 12, 2005 - 8 comments

I first saw Chel White's Photocopy Cha Cha (mpg excerpt - can't find whole thing online) in 1996 and I thought it was fantastic. In 2002 I saw Virgil Widrich's Copy Shop, which impressed me even more. Yesterday, thanks to Kottke, I saw Wildrich's phenomenal Fast Film. Wow. From Channel 4's page on the film: "Director Virgil Widrich captured stills from ... 300 movies, and made over 65,000 photocopies of these, then folded them into a variety of shapes and animated them." {the two VW films are unfortunately in Real format but definitely worth putting up with the format for}
posted by dobbs on Jun 7, 2005 - 8 comments

The photographs of Gregory Crewdson are variably described as disturbing (nsfw,) otherworldly, filmic and sometimes just technically stunning. He readily acknowledges the influence of David Lynch and Steven Spielberg, so it's no surprise that some of Hollywood's finest are queuing up to appear in his big budget images of skewed suburbia.
posted by fire&wings on Apr 24, 2005 - 25 comments

What is it? It's Crispin Glover's feature film. (NSFW)
posted by mr.marx on Jan 27, 2005 - 35 comments

Gen Art.
posted by hama7 on Jul 2, 2004 - 3 comments

BadAssMovieImages.com features rare stills and artwork for viewing, with a healthy (but not exclusive) emphasis on cult cinema, and only occasional reviews and comments to compete with the goodness and/or bad-assedness. A movie fan shares his wealth with the world.
posted by LinusMines on May 3, 2004 - 9 comments

Images is a webzine devoted to pop culture new and old, particularly dealing with film and television. Along with their reviews of current releases is a growing archive of essays on varying topics such as blaxploitation films from the seventies, or film from throughout the world. Dare I post their list of The 30 Best Westerns?
posted by Evstar on Apr 27, 2004 - 6 comments

Guernica. Take a stroll through some famous works of art (larger version here.) More Pocket Movies. [Via The Cartoonist.]
posted by homunculus on Mar 29, 2004 - 1 comment

The Movie Posters of Bob Peak. From the famous to the ridiculous.
posted by gwint on Mar 12, 2004 - 5 comments

Like many of us, I enjoy the bad women, from your garden variety betrayed women to the problem girls, the untamed youth running wild. An all too brief gallery of documentary films about this fascinating subculture is up over at retrocrush.
posted by jonson on Jul 24, 2003 - 10 comments

"The Day The Clown Cried." Even unfinished, the breathtaking scope of it's...awfulness has for thirty years both attracted and repelled would-be producers and distributors. (script, zipped Word doc) Just the concept is startling, like some kind of hellish Sad Lib -- Jerry Lewis plays a clown in Auschwitz who leads children to the gas chambers. Harry Shearer, one of the few to see the film: "You are rarely in the presence of a perfect object. This was a perfect object. This movie is so drastically wrong, its pathos and its comedy are so wildly misplaced, that you could not, in your fantasy of what it might be like, improve on what it really is. 'Oh my God!' -- that's all you can say." Can this movie ever be made?
posted by stupidsexyFlanders on Jul 16, 2003 - 39 comments

Posters of Toei Yakuza Movies.
posted by hama7 on Mar 4, 2003 - 4 comments

The Tulse Luper Suitcases is an extravagantly ambitious (and typically pretentious) multimedia work-in-progress by idiosyncratic writer/director Peter Greenaway. The contents of the 92 suitcases are summarised here. (Originally via memepool).
posted by misteraitch on Nov 20, 2002 - 3 comments

Polish movie posters. The Polish Poster Gallery has a fascinating collection of artist renditions of american movie posters. The collection compares favorably with the 50 Greatest Movie Posters, as listed by Premiere magazine.
(via fark)
posted by patrickje on May 16, 2002 - 8 comments

DVD covers that stink! [Via Kottke]
posted by riffola on Apr 30, 2002 - 13 comments

Real Cinephiles Prefer Reading "Cahiers du Cinema" to Going to the Movies: I stopped reading Cahiers du Cinema - the famously dogmatic French film journal where Godard, Truffaut, Resnais and Rohmer cut their teeth - a few years ago, when it got too arty-farty for its own good. Well, it's slowly becoming essential again. Their website is trés chic, intelectually challenging and a welcome antidote to the usual online movie-reviewing clowns. Or is it still a load of pretentious rubbish? (In French, but with a lovely intro, lots of cool stills and a Quicktime interview, in English, with underrated director Paul Verhoeven)
posted by MiguelCardoso on Dec 5, 2001 - 22 comments

Will a changing world change film? Will the Sept. 11th tragedy instill a new social or political significance to contempoary art? Does this mark the end of irony? How do you think these recent events are going to shape film, art and comedy?
posted by crog on Oct 4, 2001 - 21 comments

The man behind Woman in the Dunes has passed away. Filmmaker Hiroshi Teshigahara died on Saturday with nary a press announcement. I haven't been this pissed off about a media blackout since Sam Fuller passed on (or, to some extent, the recent death of Joey Ramone). Is the only way for an obscure artist to gain that long-neglected recognition for their works to kick the bucket? It would seem that, even then, there are no guarantees.
posted by ed on Apr 18, 2001 - 4 comments