Last year I organised a Filmblog Get Together event for Dutch movie bloggers and I’m planning to do a second one this year. I’ll be renting a cinema as a meeting place and of course with such a location watching a movie needs to be part of the program. But which movie will I show this year. Last year I happened to read about It’s Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong over at Flixchatter. It turned out to be a movie I loved and it was the perfect choice for the event. Most bloggers shared that opinion, but that also leads to expectations for this year. Which surprise will I bring this time? I kind of feel like a musician who has released a successful first album and who has to at least meet expectations. It makes you even more critical. A while ago I read about this documentary and I decided to contact the director, who was helpful in getting me to talk to the right people. A movie with this subject sounded like the perfect film to show to a cinema filled with cinephiles. But was it was I was looking for?
Movie posters have a rich history, which started early. They were of course used to sell the movie, making the posters often look better that the actual film. Through the year the look of posters changed as well. First they were very interesting visually, but at the start of the nineties the focus started to change to showing famous faces, preferably as big as possible and graphic design was replaced by photos as well. Unfortunately things haven’t really changed after that, which doesn’t mean that there aren’t any interesting poster being made anymore. Companies like Mondo have succeeded in making new posters collectible again by creating special designs.
Does the title of this film cover the subject matter? It kind of depends on the expectations you have before you start watching it. The biggest amount of time is spent on the market that has developed of custom posters, which aren’t used to promote the movies. My movie heart started beating faster when it was looking into history and told stories about original posters, like how the creators tried to hide their name in the artwork or what inspired them to make them (for example with the Jaws poster). It’s a shame that this is such a small part of the running time. If you are a fan of the new market of custom posters though it has a lot of information. How the market came into existence, how people within this niche operate. For me it wasn’t what I was expecting and because of that 24×36 felt disappointing, the amount of fanboys was very high. Reason enough for me to not select it for my event.
