Some of us are waiting with bated breath for the Academy Awards (and some of us are waiting for them to be over so we can get back to more important things, like new episodes of The Daily Show), but it’s a time of year when movies become a topic of discussion.
Movie Poster Addict, a blog with the nice subtitle “Because we all like pretty pictures”, has posted 79 years of Best Picture Winners in Posters, featuring a series of the posters that accompanied the past Academy Award winners for Best Picture from 1927 up to last year.
These aren’t the best movie posters ever (by any means), simply the ones associated with the Best Picture winners, but some of them are pretty good, and it’s fascinating to see the mish-mash of quality between the posters and the movies; some of each are classic, and some of each are eminently forgettable.
If you click on most of the images in the blog post you’ll get an larger version. The links underneath lead to the source for the poster image which sometimes includes an even larger version and some information about the movie.
Unfortunately, many of them don’t include credits for the poster artist or designer, though some do. Some of them are the work of well known illustrators, like Bob Peak’s poster for My Fair Lady, John Van Hamersveld’s Amadeus poster and Richard Amsel doing his best to emulate J.C. Leyendecker in his poster for The Sting.
Credits for some of the older illustrations are apparently lost in the mists of time, or at least out of the reach of a quick Google.
For some more interesting posters, see Movie Poster Addict’s post on the 2007 Key Art Awards, which actually are awards for artwork associated with movie promotional materials.
[Link via Neatorama]
Okay, I appreciate the opportunity the different kinds of art used in movie posters over the decades and think about the bridge between art and advertising… but in my head I am still hanging onto those beautiful fruit still-lifes from two days ago! :)
I love old movie posters – there is so much nice illustrative work to be found on them, especially compared to what is being produced these days.