“Can I copy your homework?” “Okay, but don’t make it too obvious.”
January 23, 2020 3:53 AM   Subscribe

There are only 10 types of movies. Twitter or Thread reader (Source).
posted by ellieBOA (39 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
Mondrian Romcom Scourge is a band name and album title waiting to be taken.

Have you heard Mondrian Romcom's Scourge?
posted by chavenet at 4:21 AM on January 23, 2020 [3 favorites]


🏗 🏘 🏙 🏚 6
posted by flabdablet at 4:42 AM on January 23, 2020


I see that Red Dress is the most common type of movie.
posted by medusa at 4:44 AM on January 23, 2020 [1 favorite]


The link to Les affiches de Christophe Courtois has more.
posted by pracowity at 4:44 AM on January 23, 2020 [4 favorites]


That's the source link in the post pracowity, an abundance!
posted by ellieBOA at 4:53 AM on January 23, 2020 [2 favorites]


But what about this thread of painted film posters from Africa? Especially E.T.
posted by medusa at 5:02 AM on January 23, 2020 [10 favorites]


I am unsure why people are surprised by this. I guess because if you see a bunch of film posters for different kinds of films next to each other they seem really different and it is only tracking similarities over time that reveals the sameness. But it shouldn't be surprising that movie posters share a common visual language with each other - they're meant to tell us quickly whether we will be interested in something and the easiest way to do that is to invite comparison with other, similar things.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:25 AM on January 23, 2020 [5 favorites]


The Mass Effect videogame has somehow snuck in with the "Orange and Blue Action" films, and the thing is, that's not even wrong.
posted by Eleven at 5:53 AM on January 23, 2020 [6 favorites]


A little annoyed this dude on Twitter just stole some stuff someone else put together, but, yeah, this is funny.
posted by gwint at 6:00 AM on January 23, 2020 [5 favorites]


Sort of interesting but more or less unsurprising, how gendered each category is.
posted by greenish at 6:01 AM on January 23, 2020 [1 favorite]


Yeah pretty much stole all this content then when called out, a day later: " I pulled most of these images from different places, but was just made aware of the one group that put this all together." Yeah right. He got caught.

The original blog not only has a lot more but also nuanced posts on early poster designers. In particular many of the early British posters for foreign films were similar because they were all designed by the same man.

Of course the blog is in French, which might as well be Nahuatl I suppose.
posted by vacapinta at 6:08 AM on January 23, 2020 [12 favorites]


adjacently reminds me of @insta_repeat
posted by bl1nk at 6:14 AM on January 23, 2020 [1 favorite]


There is a profound irony in a thread pointing out how much poster artists borrow from earlier sources is itself borrowed from an earlier source.
posted by Merus at 6:19 AM on January 23, 2020 [6 favorites]


I'm getting too old for this shit!
posted by thelonius at 6:20 AM on January 23, 2020 [2 favorites]


The Mass Effect videogame has somehow snuck in with the "Orange and Blue Action" films, and the thing is, that's not even wrong.

The funny thing is that it applies both to the user interface for the game trilogy (blue in the first and third games, orange in the second) and the UI within the games' world (about the same, plus the wrist-mounted omni-tools are orange).
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:23 AM on January 23, 2020


One weird modern thing is that Netflix is screwing with this shared visual language by altering what image/thumbnail you see for movies/shows when you browse in their app based on their profile of you.

It's kind of like how I got messed up when I moved from Canada to the UK and accidentally bought a couple of books I had already read because the cover art, titles and publication dates were different because it was a different market (and no it wasn't Harry Potter).
posted by srboisvert at 6:56 AM on January 23, 2020 [6 favorites]


vacapinta: "The original blog not only has a lot more but also nuanced posts on early poster designers."

And also this brilliant mashup of classic film posters with Star Wars.

I'd willingly stand in line to see Out of Africa with C3PO and R2D2 in the lead roles.
posted by chavenet at 7:26 AM on January 23, 2020 [6 favorites]


I'd willingly stand in line to see Out of Africa with C3PO and R2D2 in the lead roles.

So which one is Robert Redford and which is Meryl Streep?

Also, it seems that “black and orange” and “blue and orange’ are basically the same genre.
posted by TedW at 7:30 AM on January 23, 2020


somehow in this particular instance it seems perfectly appropriate that it's plagiarized
posted by sammyo at 7:32 AM on January 23, 2020 [1 favorite]


Somewhat related, previously on the teal-and-orange Hollywood obsession.
posted by fings at 8:07 AM on January 23, 2020 [2 favorites]


There is a profound irony in a thread pointing out how much poster artists borrow from earlier sources is itself borrowed from an earlier source.

That's just the foundation of civilization at work. Citing credits is always arbitrarily cut off. If I wanted to give credit to all of the idea, concepts, tools, people, history, etc. involved in the writing and posting of this very comment, it would far exceed the total character limit of the internet. We're all a bunch of copiers and it fucking rules. I'm not arguing that proper, sensible attribution isn't important, but I am using this as more fodder to argue in favour of my position to eliminate all laws pertaining to copyright, patents, or intellectual property along with a minor complete restructuring of global economic systems.
posted by GoblinHoney at 8:17 AM on January 23, 2020 [4 favorites]


I guiltily enjoy the crossover film Sexy Dress Red Legs.
posted by SonInLawOfSam at 8:26 AM on January 23, 2020 [1 favorite]


My spouse has a sunrise alarm clock with a nice sunset effect for evening. As his is getting dimmer and oranger, I often turn on my teal Ikea lamp. He says it makes him feel like we're in a poster for a science fiction movie. Nice to have the confirmation.
posted by Margalo Epps at 8:33 AM on January 23, 2020 [7 favorites]


It's kind of like how I got messed up when I moved from Canada to the UK and accidentally bought a couple of books I had already read

On a similar point, it always annoys me that any particular issue of a given comic book may now carry half a dozen or more alternate covers, despite the fact that every copy has exactly the same content inside.

Scroll down to Dynamite Entertainment's planned releases for Jan 29 here and you'll see what I mean: 13 different Bettie Page covers on the same issue and 12 Kiss ones. I realise some obsessive fans will want to collect them all, and that this boosts the publisher's profits, but it's a habit that's got way out of hand.
posted by Paul Slade at 9:10 AM on January 23, 2020 [1 favorite]


This is why every Indie spy thriller on Amazon has a cover with a silhouette of a guy with a gun walking away from the viewer into a vaguely ominous setting beneath a big sans-serif title, except for mine.

And that is why mine don't sell as well. That, and I'm not releasing them anywhere near fast enough.
posted by Naberius at 9:14 AM on January 23, 2020 [2 favorites]


Letterboxd users make a lot of lists just to do things with the posters that might interest anyone that likes the art of poster arrangement. Some examples: color, body meet legs, how i take snapchats, you better be my goddamn neighbor, and /\.
posted by forbiddencabinet at 9:30 AM on January 23, 2020 [1 favorite]


medusa's comment But what about this thread of painted film posters from Africa? contains this image and my life is complete
posted by supermedusa at 9:43 AM on January 23, 2020 [2 favorites]


GoblinHoney: "If I wanted to give credit to all of the idea, concepts, tools, people, history, etc. involved in the writing and posting of this very comment, it would far exceed the total character limit of the internet."

I have discovered a truly remarkable proof of this theorem which this margin is too small to contain.
posted by chavenet at 9:46 AM on January 23, 2020 [3 favorites]


The Mass Effect videogame has somehow snuck in with the "Orange and Blue Action" films, and the thing is, that's not even wrong.

I saw that and thought, "Huh, there was a Mass Effect movie that I never heard about? That tracks." If I hadn't seen your comment, I would have gone on with my life assuming there was a terrible Mass Effect movie made that no one ever talks about.
posted by brook horse at 9:54 AM on January 23, 2020 [1 favorite]


One weird modern thing is that Netflix is screwing with this shared visual language by altering what image/thumbnail you see for movies/shows when you browse in their app based on their profile of you.

Damn yes, I hadn't thought of that but of course they would.

For a platform that large, it'd be like live A/B testing on steroids, using machine learning to pick which of many thumbnails to serve up to you, then tweak according to click & view rates.

It's logically not far different from Netflix, Spotify, Amazon etc. serving up "other stuff you might like" but with images as a second dimension alongside titles.
posted by UbuRoivas at 9:59 AM on January 23, 2020


One weird modern thing is that Netflix is screwing with this shared visual language by altering what image/thumbnail you see for movies/shows when you browse in their app based on their profile of you.

Somehow, every image I ever see seems to be a closeup of someone's face with no context. Which, given my undiagnosed and moderate facial blindness, is shockingly useless. At least show me something that might indicate in what genre the film is! That isn't worth much, but it's a lot better than, "this film stars a person." My spouse tells me they're all famous people. It's pretty clear their algorithm isn't working well.
posted by eotvos at 10:17 AM on January 23, 2020 [6 favorites]


There is a profound irony in a thread pointing out how much poster artists borrow from earlier sources is itself borrowed from an earlier source.
posted by condour75 at 10:43 AM on January 23, 2020 [3 favorites]


Letterboxd users make a lot of lists just to do things with the posters that might interest anyone that likes the art of poster arrangement.

You may also like these two Aesthetic and Deja vu
posted by gusottertrout at 11:01 AM on January 23, 2020 [1 favorite]


The same is true of book covers. Library workers have commented more than once about how the covers of books I return are all coordinated and asked if it was intentional. I don't know how publishers decide every book I'm interested in should have a light blue and red cover with blocky type and some sort of cartoon drawing. I'm not present at their meetings.
posted by Former Congressional Representative Lenny Lemming at 11:26 AM on January 23, 2020 [2 favorites]


They missed one: comedies with bold, red fonts should probably be avoided.
posted by zardoz at 12:58 PM on January 23, 2020


eotvos: " It's pretty clear their algorithm isn't working well."

They've got your spouse down cold, tho.
posted by chavenet at 3:20 PM on January 23, 2020 [2 favorites]


Needs more Trajan
posted by farlukar at 3:31 PM on January 23, 2020


George Nelson wep..., well, actually he prolly sorta chuckled.
posted by Chitownfats at 3:08 AM on January 24, 2020


There is a profound irony in a thread pointing out how much poster artists borrow from earlier sources is itself borrowed from an earlier source.
posted by Cookiebastard at 8:13 AM on January 24, 2020


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