Books
Alternative Movie Posters – Film Art From The Underground Review
Author: Matthew Chojnacki
We have covered a wide plethora of books based on the movie poster. We are lovers of the art form itself – whether down through the decades it has been aware of itself or not. The movie poster is an indelible thing. Often when reviewing and rating these books we tend to look for depth and breadth where it is possible. The more focused the book, the more in depth it can go. Books based on actual artists (Like John Alvin and Drew Struzan in recent years are good examples of that). But we also covered franchises like the Bond series which itself has 50 years of poster art history.
Here we are pleased to be looking at a book that covers a specific subject area which also allows expansion through literally any age and era of poster art. This is poster art as reconceived by modern artists working today. There are over 200 poster images, and over 100 artists explored in this book. Each with their own take on a well known movie or franchise.
Designs are cleverly minimalist, some are overly complicated, some are designed like arcade games, others like cereal box covers, some like comic book covers, dot matrix effect, art deco, propaganda posters, Vs match posters, grindhouse and various other designs to wrap your eyes round.
You will come away wanting to buy a book of this length solely on at least half of the artists alone. The good news there is that with each design you are not only given the artists name, but also their website that you can go and look up further examples of their work. And you can believe that this is what we did after putting this book down.
Each artist also provides a short paragraph about their inspirations and also a few words on the design(s) presented.
This is a full colour beautifully presented book that will really get the creative enthusiasm flowing in everyone. This is what makes for a truly great and collaborative effort that will just keep on giving the more you look at it.
Steven Hurst