It started out as a simple thing – just a poster to advertise a throwaway thing. Until the 1960’s, no one even cared, it was like something you plastered on a telephone pole to peel off next week … but then people noticed that it was art … (the three sheet of “Attack of the 50′ Woman” below sold for $14,000). BTW, these are known as one-sheets (about 27×41″ in the US) up to 10-sheets which used to be billboard sized.

And don’t they all seem vaguely familiar now?

BTW, If you love movie posters, here’s a great place to look & buy – MoviePoster.com.

The new posters for Hollywood are nice but there are just that – nice, bland – probably because every credit listed is fought over and every person is airbrushed and every image must meet with the approval of not just the actor but their manager, their agent and their entourage – so what do you end up with?

One great place to look is Poland – yes, Poland – frankly, their movie posters are just art. Whether they actually got to see the movies before drawing the poster or just looking at some stills and the movie poster, they went off in another entirely different and sometimes spooky direction – but always intriguing and always art.

From Bergman’s “Summer with Monika”

See if you can guess the American films …

The last one, wouldn’t you actually want to see one of the crappiest films of all time – “Short Circuit 2”?

I’m sure there are 3 Fisher Stevens fans in this world who would prefer to hang up this poster instead?

Or the flat out most brilliant one of all (from Poland):

A great place to view and buy Polish posters includes here and here.

Of course, different places use different artists … Ghana?

Via PosterPage.

Or India with its own thriving and huge film community, how about your most favorite old school Bollywood movie posters with a reproduction on canvas for the vacation house?

Or Belarus?

I think you can figure what the first film is – the second is “Shallow Hal,” No wonder the rest of the world hates us 🙂

Or Fun at SOMETHING AWFUL – if all our posters were “grindhouse’ style …

Brilliant Stuff!

And of course, fun contests at Worth1000 – Pre-Remakes?, Movie/TV Mixup, Movies Mashed, or Mis-casting (though some of their ideas are better than the current).

Starwars Posters From Around the World (Weird Navigation WARNING).