Friday Flickage: Soderbergh the Posternerd

By Sarah Lazarovic

If you can get past our egregrious attempt at a sic rhyme, then we’ll tell you why we went there in the first place. The posters for Ocean’s Twelve are like a cool breath of fresh air. Your eye spies one at the Paramount, and suddenly you forget the confetti-themed carpet beneath your feet, and the silver excesses all around you. You’re alone in the company of the elegant simplicity of a brilliant movie poster, a rarity in these days of graphics without seatbelts. Will the movie be good? We really can’t say. (if you haven’t figured it out by now, TOist doesn’t yet attend screenings. Instead, we distill the transcendental cinematic buzz that precedes the Friday night opening) And if we look out for good posters, we often find good movies. To that extent, the twelve poster, a variation upon the theme of the first one (and the original before that), reflect that much more polish and restraint. If the poster proviso holds true, the sequel should be slick and simple. Let us hope.

Of course, the reverse also holds true. And to continue with our Soderberghian graphic analysis, we’ll look at Solaris. Clean but shmaltzy poster, clean but shmaltzy movie.
Low Culture discusses the clever homage that is The Life Aquatic poster, and if our supposition holds true, the movie will rock. Gothamist’s excellent bar phoner with the director himself only confirms as much. Milton Glaser equals I Possibly Heart This Movie.