The Friday Harvest: This Week's Best Pictures, Posters, and Video

Picture Gallery of the Week:
Alice in
Wonderland

Tim Burton tackling the Alice in Wonderland story, one of the more
psychedelic and aggressively weird stories in our classic lit canon? And
then hiring Johnny Depp, wife Helena Bonham Carter, and composer Danny
Elfman? This project is a really comfortable fit for Burton. But when
“comfortable” produces the freakiest make-up and costume design we’ve seen
all year, who are we to complain?
Browse the gallery.

Poster of the Week:
Youth in Revolt

Ah, another season, another Michael Cera movie added to his growing
catalog of nice hipster kid cinema. Youth in Revolt, an adaptation of
the C.D. Payne novel directed by Miguel Arteta (Chuck and Buck,
The Good Girl), stars Cera as Nick Twisp, a 14-year old obsessed with
losing his virginity to his dream girl. The poster captures the book’s tone:
its hyper-realistic art is funny, ridiculous, and suitably camp.
View the poster.

Video of the Week:


The Hurt Locker exclusive clips

We had amazing string of Certified Fresh wide releases that were also
embraced by audiences (Star Trek, The Hangover, Up), and now we’re back to
business as usual: Rotten wide releases, and some very Fresh limiteds.
Fortunately, one of those Fresh limiteds isn’t stuffy art house, but the
first great Iraq war movie: The Hurt Locker, which we’re offering exclusive
clips for.
Watch the videos.

Picture Gallery of the Week:

Blood: The Last Vampire

Based on the popular anime of the same name, this live-action adaptation
is set in post-war Japan, telling the story of a vampiric,
government-contracted demon hunter whose next target is one of her
classmates. That’s a lot
of plot for a movie that most of us, presuming from the pictures, would’ve settled
with 90 minutes of cute girls with swords killing things.
Browse the gallery.

Poster of the Week:
Inglourious Basterds Italian poster

Among the plethora of teaser and character posters for Inglourious
Basterds, it’s only fitting that art to trump them all should come from
Italy, land of spaghetti Westerns filmmakers and that movie that’s also
called Inglorious Bastards (though otherwise unrelated to this movie). The Italian poster is a slick combination of modern design and
B-movie, destined-for-late-night-cable schlock sensibilities. And only in QT’s universe would we see Eli Roth get equal billing with Brad Pitt.
View the poster.

Video of the Week:


Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen exclusive clip

Hey. So there’s this movie coming out (it’s a sequel, did anyone even see
the first one?), about this dork and his
inexplicably hot girlfriend and a bunch of talking robots. It’s based on a
freaking line of toys of all things. Well, anyways, Rotten Tomatoes is
offering this
exclusive clip. We’re just trying to drum up
some interest in the movie.

Watch the video.

Picture Gallery of the Week:

Iron Man 2,
featuring Mickey Rourke

Only one new addition to the Iron Man 2 gallery this week, but it’s a big one. Marvel and Paramount have issued the first
picture of Mickey Rourke as Ivan Vanko aka Whiplash, one of the villains in
the May 2010 superhero epic.
Browse the
gallery. And then read

the excellent /film post detailing how the first official Iron Man 2
photo might relate to this new Rourke one.

Poster(s) of the Week:
District 9 outside art

I think advertisers overestimate how much we enjoy being subjected to viral marketing (it
really needs to be backed up with a better-than-average movie), but I’m
digging the District 9 propaganda bus ads and billboards. We added three of them
to the District 9 gallery this week and you’ve probably seen them around
your neck of the woods. They’re eye-grabbing, cool, creepy, and funny, while
effectively communicating the film’s premise of a world uneasily co-existing with
aliens.
View the posters.

Video of the Week:

Toy Story 3
teaser trailer

Toy Story came out in 1995. Think about that for a second. In a time when
studios are churning out disposable family entertainment that loses its
relevance even before DVD release, Pixar has the gall to presume we’re still
caught up in these characters 15 years after the fact. And you know what? I
guess we are. The way the bloggers and critics have heralded this
delightful, charming teaser is testament to Pixar’s unparalleled knack in maintaining
our interest in their art year after year.
Watch the video.