Monday 29 April 2013

Evil Dead



Confession time. I really do not see the huge 'Cult Classic' appeal of The Evil Dead (1981). Everybody looks for something different in a horror film and for me, I need to be scared. I've been watching horror films since I was far too young to be and as a result I've become desensitised to much of what is supposed to make them effective. The Evil Dead, to me, is a horrible mess of horror and comedy (a combination that I very rarely enjoy) with so-so effects and horrible acting. While I'm aware that all this stuff is supposedly the 'charm' of the film, it has never won me over and I doubt it ever really will. So when marketing began for a remake that promised to be 'The scariest film you will ever experience', my attention was caught.

Saturday 27 April 2013

A Question of Art

It's been quite a while since I've felt the need to complain about anything on here. In fact I think the only other instance was my post about the lack of Triple-Play feature on Blu-Rays, so I'm going to ask that you to indulge me another rant.

Something has been irritating me quite a bit recently, something that can be best illustrated through a little comparison:

On the left is the poster for The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a poster that I fell a little bit in love with during the films marketing campaign. On the right it the cover art for the Blu-Ray release of the film.
Seriously, what the hell is that?

I finally caved in and bought the film. Mainly because I really wanted to own it but also because I finally gave up on my hopes that maybe the distributors would realise their mistake and recall all copies to change the artwork.

Unfortunately the, for want of a better term, f*cking up of DVD and Blu-Ray release artwork isn't limited to just Perks. This has been a problem that I've been noticing time and time again.

I've spent a good deal of my academic career studying art and would like to think I know a little something about what looks good and what doesn't. While I'm aware that this is all a matter of taste, it genuinely drives me mad when a perfectly good poster fails to make it beyond the cinema wall or IMDb page. I've built up quite an extensive film collection over the years, and am not ashamed to admit that I've bought quite a few of my DVDs based on the cover art, and so the consistent release of ugly cover art makes buying the film quite off-putting. I know the poster doesn't effect the actual film in any way but it does effect the look of my collection.

To prove illustrate my frustration further, here are six more examples, all from films that have either been released recently or are due for release soon.


Again the left is the cinematic release poster and the right is the home release. I initially tried to justify all of this as a way of maybe toning down gaudy posters which would explain Perks and Seven Psychopaths getting massacred. However the people behind the release of Savages and Silver Linings Playbook seemed to think the opposite, taking two of my favourite posters and uglying them up with the addition of colour. Pitch Perfect got overhauled for absolutely no apparent reason and whoever designed the art for Zero Dark Thirty clearly couldn't decide what the films selling point was, they should have just stuck with Chastain.

I realise this rant will probably not achieve anything, and outside of using a shedload of time and money to print and re-cover my films I'm not likely to ever get these posters in DVD form. However I would like to know if this bothers anyone else? Are there any DVD posters you know of that do an even worse job than these?

Please, let me know.

Wednesday 24 April 2013

My Life This Week.

The last few days have been some of the most surreal that I've experienced in a long time, if ever. Rather than go into anything in too much depth I'll just give you a brief animated tour of the state of my emotions during a period of 62 hours, which contained just under 6 hours of sleep. 

Friday 12 April 2013

Tim Walker and Neal's Yard


The blog has been a little neglected lately, simply because my Dissertation is due in ten days. That terrifying fact has been dominating much of my time. Except for the half hour periods that seem to crop up during my manic writing sessions where Pinterest takes over. I think that I've pinned more this week than any other since I got it, and so this weeks post is a double whammy, with twice the number of pins as usual.