Author: Ga2so

  • Very Retro Movie Adventures: The Cocoanuts (1929)

    Groucho Marx and Margaret Dumont in The Cocoanuts.
    Zeppo, Groucho, Chico, and Harp Marx in a stylized image from The Cocoanuts. THe Marx Brothers are rendered in shades of red and yellow. The background is a hotel lobby in shades of blue.

    “Hey, movies have sound now! We should make one!”

    “Do you know how?”

    “No, but neither does anyone else, so I’m technically the best at it!”

    Pretty happy with the fake poster.

    A poster for The Cocoanuts in the style of the poster for The Brutalist.
    If Groucho won an Oscar he’d give a speech as long and rambling as Adrien Brody’s, but it would be a lot more entertaining.

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  • Streaming Movie Adventures: Soundtrack of a Coup d’Etat

    A long thin image. Black and white, with a cyan overtone. A woman's face is partially visible; you can see her eyes, nose, some hair, and the top of her right ear. She is on the left side of the image,looking to her right.
    A stylized image of Patrice Lumumba shown from the chest up. He is rendered in green and pink pastels. The background is deep red, and words are partially visible.

    The story of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba by the CIA, told through the lens of jazz. I’m sure glad our government hasn’t done anything shady since then.

    It took me a while to get into the rhythm of this- probably because it’s pretty frenetic and I’m running on about four hours of sleep- but even before I locked it I appreciated the look and sound used to make old newsreels, memos, and TV recordings work tell an eventually cohesive story.

    I’ve now seen 40 of the 50 2024 Oscar nominees. I’m mostly missing documentaries: two full length, and all five shorts. The other three are Maria (cinematography), Elton John: Never Too Late (song), and The Six Triple Eight (also song). I might get one or two in before the show tomorrow, but I’ll probably go for a bike ride instead.

    It’s weird to make silly posters for documentaries about serious subjects, but the energy of the film makes it feel a bit more comfortable. I think the only thing I really like about this poster is the title design. It’s not exactly the right base font to match the original, but it’s pretty darn close.

    A poster for Soundtrack of a Coup d'Etat that references the poster for The Sound of Music.
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  • Streaming Movie Adventures: They Came Together (2014)

    Paul Rudd and Amy Pohler looking at the camera in They Came Together
    Stylized image of Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd each dressed as Ben Franklin in They Came Together. They are four colors- black and shades of red and pink. The background is horizontal cyan stripes and blocks.

    It must be hard to make a parody of a generic light romantic comedy since even the real ones are right on the edge of self-parody. This one works when it pushes into absurdity and takes rom-com cliches to their extremes, but the large number of times where the characters just explicitly describe those cliches fall pretty flat.

    Here’s a fake poster for you, inspired by verb tenses:

    A fake poster for They Came Together based on the poster for A Hard Day's Night.
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  • Movie Pass Adventures: Universal Language

    A child dressed as Grouch Marx in Universal Language.
    Matthew from Universal Language on the phone, rendered in shades of gray and beige.

    The second half of my Unplanned Surreal Film Festival Weekend. Also my second film of the year in Farsi, but this one is much lighter than the last one.

    I didn’t remember anything I knew about this before I watched it, and I think that’s probably the best way to go into something as gloriously absurd as this. Without giving anything away, it feels a little like Wes Anderson directing Airplane (with second unit by David Lynch).

    For the fake poster, I did a riff on the title. It doesn’t quite have the images available to balance out the same way as the original.

    A poster for Universal Language sort-of matching the poster for Universal Soldier.
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  • Retro Movie Adventures: Head (1968)

    Mike looks shocked. Micky looks at Mike. Peter looks at Micky. The top of Davy's head just sits there.
    The Monkees, looking at the camera, standing around a small Civil War era cannon. the cannon is pointed toward the camera. The Monkees are colored normally, but everything around them is blue and bright green.

    It must have been wild to be one of the half-dozen fans of The Monkees’ TV show who managed to find a showing of this movie, went in expecting a long-form version of the show, and getting this wild experimental film. It doesn’t always work, but that’s why they call them experiments.

    Fun fact: This movie uses footage from TV and movies including the film The Black Cat, which I recently watched! EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED.

    Sometimes it’s hard to pick a source for the fake poster, and sometimes I watch a movie called The Monkey a day before I watch a movie starring The Monkees. And yes, Jack Nicholson really was the top-listed writer for Head. Easy Rider was funded by Monkee movie money.

    A custom movie poster for Head parodying the poster for The Monkey. A black background. Text in the top left reads: STARRING THE MONKEES WRITTEN BY JACK NICHOLSON DIRECTED BY BOB RAFELSON Across the center the word HEAD (the title of the movie) is written in large red letters. Two-thirds of the way down the left side , text reads: NOBODY EVER LENDS MONEY TO A MAN WITH A SENSE OF HUMOR The bottom right corner, partially obscured by the title of the movie, Mike Nesmith head looks out at the camera. His right shoulder is visible. He is wearing a pink work shirt.
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  • Movie Pass Adventures: The Monkey

    A long, thin image taken from a scene in The Monkey. Theo James' face, covered in blood except for two rings around his eyes, is in the center. Most of the image is the curtains behind him, also covered with blood.

    I can’t imagine anyone wanting to live in Stephen King’s Maine. That place is scary… but it does give us some wacky movies. This is one of those movies that’s so violent and gory and goofy that it moves past horror and straight into cartoon. It’s not great, and it kind of fizzles at the end, but it’s a pretty fun ride. BONUS: features an Adam Scott cameo!

    The titular monkey from The Monkey, shown in three tones. Black with red highlights, with white teeth and eyes. His right arm is raised and his right hand holds a drumstick. The background is solid black.
    Turn the key and see what happens.

    This is my second simian-themed movie of the year. I thought about basing the parody poster on one for Better Man, but those are all pretty boring so I went a different way.

    A parody poster for The Monkey based on the original poster for Toy Story.
    I guess I also could have used the poster for The Tin Drum.
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  • Movie Pass Adventures: Companion

    A long thin image with the top half of Sophie Thatcher's face visible in the middle. The background is out of focus blue and black shapes.

    WARNING: One of the big twists in this movie is spoiled by the ad campaign, so my alternate poster below may also spoil that same twist. I think I’ll stick the featured image here to add some spoiler space (though I’m probably not going to spoil anything):

    Sophie Thatcher as Iris in Companion. She is rendered in pinks and purples. The background is out of focus reds, yellows, and greens.

    The good thing about this movie: spoiling one twist still leaves a bunch of fun ones unspoiled. The end is pretty predictable (especially given the voiceover at the start) but the ride to get there is a lot of fun.

    I struggle to find images and a poster that wouldn’t spoil anything. In the end I sort-of copied the poster for a film that doesn’t exactly give away the twist that Warner Bros decided to spoil, but it’s in the same ballpark.

    Poster for Companion (barely) parodying the poster for Robocop

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  • Retro Movie Adventures: The Man in the White Suit (1951)

    Movie bar for The Man in the White Suit.

    I thought I was going to watch the Oscar nominated animated shorts, but it turns out that theaters don’t honor tickets for a Monday show on a Tuesday. Weird.

    So I watched this instead, and it was a heap of fun. I enjoyed playing “Hey, that’s that old guy I know… but young!”

    This was the obvious fake poster for a movie about a guy wearing a white suit:

    A poster for The Man in the White Suit parodying the poster for Scarface. One side is black, the other white. A high contrast image of Alec Guiness as Sidney covers the line between them. Text across says "THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT." Other text says "In the spring of 1951, textile manufacturers and workers fought to keep businesses running and to protect workers from unfair conditions. One of them found a way to create a new type of fabric... one that would never get dirty or damaged. He was Sidney Stratton. The world will remember him by another name ...THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT. He loved synthetic fibers. And inventions.
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  • Academy Award Adventures: 2025 Live Action Shorts

    Last year I learned that there are special screenings of all the nominated short film categories. I went again this year, and… these didn’t do much for me, especially compared to last year’s nominees. Shorts should be the place where people make unexpected decisions, and these really don’t do that.

    Mastodon has stopped showing the front page featured image, so I’m sticking it here so it shows up:

    A collage of images from the 2025 Academy Awards Live Action Short Film nominees.

    The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent

    The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent movie bar

    There is a man in this movie who does not remain silent. The main character watches him and nervously smokes cigarettes. Look, I know short films by design are exercises in eliminating as many details as possible without breaking the story, but this cuts out important details and then gives them back in the synopsis. If your movie requires specific research to make sense, you’ve probably cut too much.

    Anuja

    Anuja movie bar

    I’m also aware that short films thrive on ambiguous endings, but this one ends like it’s the first episode of a TV series.

    I’m Not a Robot

    I'm Nt a Robot movie bar

    This movie also has an ambiguous ending, but it works. My favorite of the five; it won’t win. Note to self: go see Companion.

    A Lien

    A Lien movie bar

    This felt like the successor to last year’s Red, White and Blue; a serious and important subject told in a forced and melodramatic way. It’s the better of the two shorts, though.

    The Last Ranger

    The Last Ranger movie bar.

    Another important story told generically. You’ll know so much of the story ahead f time you’ll wonder if you’re clairvoyant.

    Since this is a collection of five unrelated shorts I didn’t make a parody poster, but I did throw together this:

    a stacked set of images from the 2025 Academy Awards Live Action Short Film nominees. Each one is a different color.
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  • Monsterdon Movie Adventures: The Gorgon (1964)

    Peter Cushing's eyes in The Gorgon.

    There’s a thing on the Mastodon decentralized social network called Monsterdon, where people choose a cheesy old monster movie , watch it at the same time, and live comment on it. I don’t participate that often, but after the heaviness of No Other Land , the Hammer Films movie The Gorgon was exactly what I needed.

    In a small European city that seems to exist in both the 1750s and the 1960s, a series of mysterious deaths has been occurring over the previous five years, The coroner declares they are all caused by heart failure, even though there’s a subtle clue that it might be something else: the bodies have all turned to stone. Could it be related to the mysterious woman who had a strange affliction around the same time the deaths started? I’ll never tell. Also: I learned that turning to stone starts with gray pimples on your forehead. Maybe it could be prevented with a little benzoyl peroxide.

    This movie’s poster is a classic example of “You’ll get it if you see the reference poster.”

    A poster for The Gorgon copying the look of the poster for Rocky. Get it? Rocky? Man, I sure am clever.
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