Don't Miss This vol. 2A

I have often said that the first thing I would do if I won the lottery would be to buy movie posters. And, although I am frequently sarcastic, on this topic I am very serious (as a heart attack, you might say).

My current obsessions are the alternate Black Swan posters, which are breathtakingly exquisite. Before I saw (and loved) the movie, I had to have these posters. They're beautiful and devilishly smart, which is not to say that the standard poster is not also quite incredible, just that these are wholly remarkable. I would have been shattered if the movie had been so offensive to my tastes that I could not bring myself to purchase the posters. If anyone is looking to buy me a birthday present (March 3rd, just sayin'), a gift of any of these posters would be met with tears of joy and speechlessness. I've said enough, here they are:

In other poster news, I bought the poster for The Warriors today after the snow acted as catalyst for a screening with my roommate. I enjoyed it the first time I saw it and this most recent screening. My roommate was similarly enthralled and, upon learning that it was based on the Greek myth Anabasis, has decided to write an action movie screenplay based on the Norse myth of Ragnarok. I can't wait. Either way, here is the poster that I purchased today:

It's simple, and I'm not sure whether it was given a lot of thought (although the painting is quite detailed). I just find the style to be very appealing in that it's much cleaner and less flashy than today's movie posters. The tag at the top reads, "These are the armies of the night. They are 100,000 strong. They outnumber the cops five to one. They could run New York City. Tonight they're all out to get the Warriors." It's a brilliantly succinct summary of a brilliant premise for a movie. It isn't done up with bells and whistles (e.g. "You just killed a helicopter ... with a car!"), but it works very well for what it tries to accomplish. We gave it five stars on Netflix.

At the poster sale, I asked the cashier if they had the one-sheet French Lolita poster that they used to sell. I have one in my apartment, but Lando (Catrissian), my roommate's cat, tore off the corner. The cashier said they didn't carry it anymore, but commented that my Warriors poster was a similar time period. Historically, culturally and certainly cinematically, 1962 and 1979 are dramatically different time periods. The same holds true for design, but that's another blog post for another day. That said, it's a good segue into my other most coveted movie poster at the moment: the Italian Lolita poster. The French version I have is the standard "How did they ever make a film out of Lolita?" poster with the heart-shaped sunglasses and the red lollipop. The Italian one, however, is dramatically different and enthralling.

The text is the first line of the first chapter (as I recall). In Italian, it reads:

Era Lo,

Null'altro che Lo

Al mattino

Dritta nella sua statura

Di un metro e cinquantotto

Con un calzino soltanto.

Era Dolly

A scuola.

Era Dolores

Sulla linea punteggiata

Dei documenti.

Ma nelle mie braccia

Fu sempre Lolita.

For whatever reason, the poetry of the Italian language (as my old Italian professor described it) makes this line much more dramatic than the English version of Nabakov's words (which is obviously a hard feat).

I'm done gushing over posters for now. Check in later for more.