Any movie that includes a fictional star as a character invariably gives us a glimpse of the star’s work. Think of the “Inglourious Basterds” posters hyping “Stolz der Nation” and its star, Nazi war hero Fredrick Zoller (no relation, I hope), or the one-sheets collected by Adam Sandler’s alter ego in “Funny People.” “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” offers a similarly impressive array of fake movie posters hyping its nonexistent superstar, Lucas Lee (Chris Evans). Writer-director Edgar Wright showed a knack for affectionately skewering trash culture in “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz,” and his art department serves him well here. “Let’s Hope There’s a Heaven,” “You Just Don’t Exist” and “Thrilled to Be Here” are among the posters showcased in the sequence where the film’s title character challenges Lee, one of heroine Ramona Flowers’ evil exes, to a gravity-defying kung fu battle (the posters are stapled to stakes and held aloft by Lucas Lee fans like sloganeering signs at a political rally). Best of show goes to “Action Doctor,” with its head-scratcher tag line: “The good news is … you are going to live. The bad news is, he is going to kill you.”

The title of Brian Ring’s blog is as plain-spoken as can be: “My Fake Posters.” And the artwork isn’t as sophisticated as that of most of the other entries on this list. But I like Ring’s humor. His fake posters are truly loopy, in part because the concepts are so oddly personal. That the images are so obviously pasted together somehow enhances the jokes. “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kong” is self-explanatory and deeply goofy. “Luther King Jr.” walks the line between obvious and surreal (a line you might not have known existed). If I still lived in a dorm, Ring’s poster for the nonexistent Clint Eastwood movie “Forced Perspective” would be hanging on my wall right now (with thumbtacks). But my favorite Ring piece isn’t a poster per se; it’s the vaguely “Gladiator”-themed image pictured here, which mocks the Pavlovian drooling over new Apple gadgets better than any editorial I’ve read.

Last month, New York-area comics fans got excited over the appearance of teaser posters for “Deadpool,” a 2011 release from 20th Century Fox, starring Ryan Reynolds as the mutant mercenary first showcased in “New Mutants” and “X-Force.” Turns out the posters weren’t legit; the prospect of a 2011 “Deadpool” film is highly unlikely given that Reynolds is currently playing the title role in two, possibly three back-to-back films about another comic hero, the Green Lantern. (“Deadpool” creator Rob Liefeld speculated via Twitter that the “Green Lantern” releasing studio, Warner Bros., was deliberately trying to sabotage a rival comics property by tying up Reynolds’ schedule.) Plus, the phony teasers contained a fine-print plug for a local design firm, a credit that actual studio-sanctioned teaser posters are notoriously stingy about allowing. We’re listing the images here because they are striking, and because they do what teaser images are supposed to do: generate excitement for a project that doesn’t yet exist. “Fake or not,” wrote BeyondHollywood.com, “these ‘Deadpool’ movie posters make me happy.”

ustin van Genderen’s travel posters promoting planets in the “Star Wars” saga have an analog look, as though they were silk-screened in someone’s garage. They do what old-school travel posters once did: reduce a place to its unique geographical distinctions, with a sparseness that invites you to project yourself into the image and dream a bit. (Van Genderen cites Simon Page’s stunning “International Year of Astronomy” series as an influence.) The images advertising Hoth, Endor, Tattooine, Yavin IV and Dagobah are so lovely that they momentarily make you forget the worlds in question rank among the least desirable addresses in George Lucas’ galaxy, which is why the rebels go there to hide out. My favorite is the poster promoting the gas planet Bespin (pictured). Who knew Cloud City had as iconic a silhouette as the Space Needle?

Josh Cooley is gainfully employed as an illustrator for Pixar Animation, but apparently there were itches he couldn’t scratch there, such as his compulsion to render dialogue scenes from R-rated films in the cloying, simplistic style of Golden Books, complete with bloodless declamatory prose. (“‘Your clothes … give them to me now,’ said the Terminator.’” “‘Would you like me to seduce you?’ asked Mrs. Robinson.”) Cooley created these illustrations as one-offs over a span of two years, drawing enough attention from film bloggers that he was inspired to print a collection, “Movies R Fun,” and sell it through his online store.

In this miniature Cannes of parasitic movie art, the designer known as Giant Hamburger takes the Grand Prix for Audacity for the colored-pencil masterworks “Alien vs. Pooh” and “The Poohing.” The former is a Winnie the Pooh-themed sendup of … well, I started to write, “Alien,” but as this still-frame mash-up of A.A. Milne and H.R. Giger unfolds, the artist manages to work in references to “Aliens,” “Alien 3″ and “Alien vs. Predator” as well, plus an extended Luis Bu

The Criterion Collection is acclaimed for original DVD cover art that ignores preexisting posters and DVD box art and finds a new way to express the essence of a film. The cinephilia website MUBI (formerly known as The Auteurs, a name I much prefer) has a thriving comments thread wherein regular visitors post fantasy mock-ups of Criterion covers. Some of my favorites include Alex K’s soul-rattling cover for David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me”; Armands’ mock-up for the classic horror film “The Innocents”; Jason Cryer’s poster for the Hitler biopic “Downfall”; Drew’s hand-drawn “The Shining” cover, spotlighting those skin-crawlingly creepy twin girls; Charles Newland’s black-and-white “Goodfellas” cover, with Henry Hill’s eyes covered by an identity-obscuring black strip; the silhouette-style images for “Zombie Lake,” “Kill Squad” and “Manos: The Hands of Fate,” by KJetil; Daniel A’s aqua-and-tan, newsprint-textured “Bonnie and Clyde” cover; and Luke Boyce’s covers for the original “Star Wars” trilogy spotlighting the terrain of key planets (a concept likewise explored in an earlier slide). And that’s just a short list. You could spend hours scrolling through this thread, and if you’re a movie fan or a graphic arts buff, I highly recommend doing so.

This is an omnibus entry. It had to be; there’s been so much minimalist, hypothetical movie-poster art on the Internet recently that I could have filled 10 slots just with representative work in this vein. The work showcased here is a good indicator that the Hollywood studio-mandated sense of graphic design is deadly dull, and that there is, in fact, a yearning for poster art with a human touch and with real wit — art you can engage with and think about, as opposed to the “floating heads” style that has drained the excitement from poster art over the last couple decades. It should also be admitted, however, that these posters have zero value as advertising tools for as-yet-unseen motion pictures. In fact, their imagery can seem random and baffling unless you’ve seen the films they reference and are intimately familiar with their plotlines, set pieces, design elements and visual motifs. Jaime Bolton‘s poster for “The Shining,” for example, plays off the interlocking hexagonal pattern on the Overlook Hotel carpeting in the hallways where little Danny rides his Big Wheel. (Yes, I know, Kubrick is all over this slide show — and how could he not be? The man had one hell of an eye.) Bolton’s poster for “Jurassic Park,” pictured here, references one of director Steven Spielberg’s niftier suspense-generating flourishes: a close-up of a half-filled drinking glass, its water trembling each time an approaching T-Rex takes a step. Ibraheen Youssef’s “Scarface” tribute print compresses that gangster epic’s narrative into one bold image: an hourglass that turns white powder into red blood. And although this slide show is dedicated to movie-inspired fan art, I would be remiss if I ignored the TV-themed minimalist posters by Albert Exergian, whose “Sex and the City” tribute poster, pictured here, requires no elaboration. Wandering even further afield, Harry Potter fans will appreciate these spare works by M.S. Corley, reimagining the jackets of the original novels. And if you want to kill an entire afternoon or evening with this sort of art, visit Worth 1000, where you’ll find 120 works by various artists collected in one online gallery.

These phony covers for novelized scripts constitute a genre unto themselves. They seem to be of a piece with the minimalist poster art showcased in slide No. 3. But Spacesick is a cut above because he augments his already sharp visual sense — check out the graphic play on the “Highlander” slogan “There can be only one” — with sly text-based jokes. The cover for the novelization of John Woo’s identity-switching action picture “Face/Off” is built around a yin-yang graphic, and promises, “Forward by John Travolta. Backward by Nicolas Cage.” The “Ghostbusters” cover plays on the title team’s first rule, “Never cross the streams,” and boasts that this is a novelization of “a major motion picture starring Ernie Hudson.” Best of all is “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” — a Japanese version of an American novelization that translates the film’s title as, “Mr Wonka! Just punisher of coddled children.”

Now it’s your turn. This website offers standard movie poster templates — some generic, others modeled on the one-sheets for well-known movies. You just drop in your own image, type a bit of text into the relevant boxes, and voil