Thursday, December 16, 2010

Oscar's Gonna Have His Way Toniiiiiight.

Jose here.

The brand new poster for the 83rd Academy Awards was released today.
Here it is if you have yet to see it...



The main poster (which seems to be yet another variation of the "Oscar as superhero" theme AMPAS always seems to recur to) is accompanied by three other posters which all include iconic images of Oscar night.


He will leave someone speechless tonight.

Reads the one accompanying the envelope we all love to hate.
And as cute as the tagline is, it truly should've been followed by "unless your name is Julia Roberts".


He will change someone's life tonight.

...when I saw the one with the spotlights I realized I was reading the taglines to the melody of West Side Story's fantastic "Tonight Quintet".
Try it yourself for some extra fun!
Oh and also, does Oscar still change lives? Did it ever for that matter?


He will make the stars shine tonight.

This one is perhaps my favorite because it highlights the one thing all of us love about Oscar night: the red carpet.
Even if we all want to slap each other the day after people we dislike beat Meryl Streep or Martin Scorsese loses Best Director for the umpteenth time, we all have a jolly time discussing who we loved and loathed during the red carpet show.

The classy, simple design of the accompanying posters also reminded me of something else:



Of course Black Swan might as well have the most brilliant poster campaign of the year and poor Oscar's posters look like they were designed on Paint after seeing the magnificent work graphic design company La Boca did with Darren Aronofsky's film.

Anyway, do you like what you see or would you have preferred to see Anne and James on top of a giant statuette like last year's strange design?

17 comments:

Glenn Dunks said...

Anne and James.

I like them!

James said...

I hope that the poster is correct and they go back to saying "And the Oscar goes to..." as opposed to "..and the winner is."

Anonymous said...

I agree. "And the winner is..." just makes it all sound like some cheap game show.

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Fernando Moss said...

James and Anne (both naked preferably) on TOP (of each other of course) would have been the perfect poster...

Lucky said...

I find it a bit inappropriate to have a pic from 127 Hours appear in the poster for the 2 hosts:

http://www.awardsdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/209092954.jpg

Bryan said...

"tonight, tonight, it all begaaaaaaaan tonight..."

NATHANIEL R said...

jose -- i lol'ed about the "unless you're julia roberts"

I like the posters in concept but agree it's a bit "Paint" ish.

Fernando -- maybe they could have recreated the love & other drugs poster? Oscar and other drugs? with just statues covering their naughty bits.

NATHANIEL R said...

jose -- i lol'ed about the "unless you're julia roberts"

I like the posters in concept but agree it's a bit "Paint" ish.

Fernando -- maybe they could have recreated the love & other drugs poster? Oscar and other drugs? with just statues covering their naughty bits.

Volvagia said...

I agree wholeheartedly on that. (If they really wanted an in-film example of James Franco, couldn't they have posted a picture of him as Saul Silver looking to the right and called it a day.)

NATHANIEL R said...

lucky / volvag -- that one is obviously a fan creation rather than an official poster. it's just photoshopped with an opacity fade.

Janice said...

Now I can't get "Tonight" out of my head, Jose: "The Jets are gunna have their day tonight. The Sharks are gunna have their way tonight..."

Then again, I also can't get "one of your own kind, stick to your own kind..." out of my head, either.

But yes to the official posters. Way cooler than we've seen in a while, even if they are derivative of art deco and Metropolis, etc. (Better good poster design from the past than bad design that is entirely "contemporary" and "original".)

Cinesnatch said...

Melissa will get her kicks toniiiiiiight!

Lee said...

Classy looking but boring posters. Definitely a step up from Baldwin and Martin sitting on Oscar's shoulders.

Anonymous said...

The Black Swan poster is hot. I would put that stuff on my wall.

Anonymous said...

Sweet Film, I totally agree. That reminds me of a film I saw on Lucky-Hat.com.
Thanks!

Andrew K. said...

I love this post, weird that you can churn out something funny from their very bland poster. It's so weird that they keep promising, "Oscar like you've never seen him", and the poster is subconsciously telling us Nah, just a variation on the same-old, same-old.