“The Dark Knight Rises” and the art of the teaser poster

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 21:05:00 +0000

Today the Web is buzzing about just one image. It's a pretty cool picture -- looking up at a crumbing city skyline that is falling away into the shape of a bat -- but without knowing the context of the photo, most people would be left wondering why the Internet is in an uproar over the pic.

Of course, the teaser poster for Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight Rises" (the second of its kind, after the Bane photo) is obvious to anyone who hasn't been living under a rock for the last year. Teaser posters, which often come out way ahead of the film itself, can be self-explanatory, or totally baffling. They're like puzzle pieces leading up to the movie itself, and with the hyper-aware Web culture that grabs on to every leak and spoiler, they can be used to raise a film's buzz to a near-deafening screech.

“X-Men: First Class”: Slick, dumb big-screen candy

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 00:30:00 +0000

I don't necessarily want to be the guy who tries to hang a discount-store T.S. Eliot essay about the Death of Culture on yet another mediocre Hollywood sequel, but there's something a little depressing about all the hype and excitement surrounding "X-Men: First Class," the new Marvel-Fox product that's expected to be among the summer's biggest hits. Are zillions of people genuinely psyched about an Anakin Skywalker-style back story prequel to a comics-based movie franchise that almost everyone agrees had run out of juice after four installments? (Just from inspecting cast lists and plot synopses, I can't even tell you for sure whether I've seen all of them.) And if so, why?

Salon.com > X-Men: First Class

“The Dark Knight Rises” and the art of the teaser poster

“X-Men: First Class”: Slick, dumb big-screen candy