Movie Poster a Day with JayDee

Well we've got the Academy Awards coming up at the end of the month so I thought I'd dedicate the rest of February to the Oscars; films that have been nominated this year, some of the classic winners etc.

The Academy Awards have been running for almost 90 years now. And in all that time only three films have managed to scoop 'The Big Five'; the awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay. The most recent came in the form of The Silence of the Lambs. And to represent it I've gone with this terrifically intense poster which has the genius design idea of marrying the mouth of Hannibal Lecter's iconic mask with the bars that hold him

The 27th Academy Awards were absolutely dominated by On the Waterfront which picked up 8 wins from 12 nominations. Now amongst movie poster afficionados the On the Waterfront poster by Anselmo Ballester seems to be considered one of the absolute classics. Now I haven't actually seen the film so don't know how well it represents the film but it is certainly a beautiful piece of art





And as a little bonus here's an additional design he came up with.for the film. As I said I've not seen it but from the looks of this poster it features a giant, city-sized being bent on complete destruction. Forget Brando I think we need to be calling in the Avengers!

Today's Oscar-themed film was inspired by Miss Vicky writing about it in her movie diary. Following on from On the Waterfront we're sticking with films regarded as real classics; it's Casablanca. At the 16th Academy Awards it was nominated in 8 categories but rather surprisingly only won 3 times. Those were the statues for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay.

I've decided to go with two posters again, one retro and one modern. For the retro poster there's this rather unique effort from Belgium. It's not often you see a largely black-and-white poster but I think this is very stylish and despite its age I think it still feels very modern actually. In fact this one is a pretty perfect fit for @Cobpyth given his love for the film and his nationality (I'm sure he's Belgian)




And the modern offering is this lovely landscape print courtesy of Jonathan Burton

In the entire history of the Oscars only two sequels have ever taken home the Best Picture prize. In fact only a total of eight sequels have even been nominated. The first sequel to take home the ceremony's biggest award was The Godfather Part II, which in total took home 6 statues from 9 nominations. That followed on from its predecessor winning 3 times from 11 nominations two years previously.

And to represent this incredibly successful pair of films we once again turn to Laurent Durieux whose work has already featured on numerous occasions. He's pretty much the mascot for this thread; in fact you could almost say he was the thread's poster boy! Here all week ladies and gentlemen! His posters tend to fall into two categories. There are some that rely on a really clever, often symbolic design idea. And then there are those that are just gorgeous pieces of art. These two fall into the latter category. I think that the first poster in particular is beautiful

Only one man has ever won the Best Actor Oscar on three separate occasions. That man is of course Daniel Day-Lewis who triumphed for his performances in My Left Foot, Lincoln and today's film, There Will Be Blood. The film itself was nominated in 8 categories but only won twice. Alongside Day-Lewis' victory it won the prize for Best Cinematography.

Today we have something old and something new. I'll try for something borrowed and something blue for tomorrow! To cover the old criteria I'm going with the Best Picture winner at the 38th Academy Awards - The Sound of Music. Now the reason why I've chosen this particular film is as a welcome back to @Funny Face. In total the film was nominated for 10 Oscars, winning 5 of them.

Time to jump into the Delorean boys and girls as today we're going way, way back. To be more specific we're heading back to the 1930s and some of the big winners in the ceremony's early days. First up is this unusual, but very powerful poster for All Quiet on the Western Front. War films have had a long history of faring well with the Academy, with All Quiet... being just one of many to have taken home the Best Picture prize.