4 comments about More Cowboy Movie Posters (The Illustrated History of Movies Through Posters, Vol 6).

1. Excellent book for the western enthusiast. was a little disappointed that posters were not full page but guess I'm being a bit picky.No text apart from the introduction, many memories came flooding back of favourites such as Charles Starrett, Allan Lane, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry etc.
   These books will end up collectors items so strike while the iron is hot.



2. More Cowboy Movie Posters is a fabulous art book and truly invaluable, offering the highest quality images from good and bad westerns. As someone who collects western posters, I have used this book as an important aid to purchasing posters illustrated within. Without such a quality reference I would have needed to peruse a stack of catalogs to find the same amount of images. For the non collector movie buff, the book is equally a delight and tremendous value at the low price.



3. This review can easily apply to any of the books in the Bruce Hershenson edited series of film poster history. Hershenson rightly treats film graphics not just as pop culture artifacts but true works of art. His books are filled with a curator's eye for superior choice and reproduction, each poster in striking color and with a clarity of printing that rivals most any coffee table art book. Somewhere between advertising and illustration, film posters, like book jackets and record covers, inhabit that imaginative and atmospheric zone where one art reflects another. It's not just the history of film or the history of film design, it's a history of twentieth century Saturday afternoons and Saturday nights. How often we would go into the dark theatre armed only with the ideas and ideals of the posters outside, and then return to them afterward, perhaps with nodding affirmation or smirking disillusionment, but still a vision of what could be. This series of books should be subtitiled: THE FINE ART OF ANTICIPATION,for no matter if expectation was filled or emptied by the films behind them, their posters kept on shining.



4. All the great heroes of Hollywood westerns are represented in a book that's a delight to flip through. It's packed with the colorful, dramatic, enticing art that made movie posters even more appealing than the movies, themselves.

1 comments about Angura: Posters of the Japanese Avant-Garde.

1. This is a good collection of hard to find imagery. The book is good size with large images. Nice reference.

1 comments about Exploitation Poster Art.

1. Another great release from Tony Nourmand. I just received this one today in the mail, and it was hard to put it down. If you are a fan of movies you should look into all of the collection from Nourmand. I have discovered many movies i had never heard of just by seeing the poster in these books. This book covers a great part of cinema, Exploitation movies. Next time you are in a book store you should check these titles out if not just go ahead and make a blind purchase from Amazon, you will not be disappointed.

3 comments about Picture Show: Classic Movie Posters from the TCM Archives.

1. Another reasonably priced addition to the slowly expanding library of movie poster books. Because it is based on the TCM archives it is very generalised and basically covers movies of the thirties, forties and fifties. The chapters are dictated by what is available in the archive so there is no collection of comedy classics, 'Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House', for instance and other light-hearted titles are included in the chapter called Battle of the sexes.
   
   The posters are presented in various sizes and mostly you'll be able to read all the text, especially the percentage credits that usually appear at the bottom of each poster. Some of this is quite interesting because plenty of people named are complete nobodies now. Rather annoyingly the whole page posters have been enlarged a bit too much so that bottom credits are missing.
   
   I think it is fair to say that there is not a well designed poster in the book, so no stunning Saul Bass work or Bob Peak graphics but you'll get to see the best portraits that Hollywood marketing departments could offer.
   
   Overall a good title to have if you like poster art and if you have an interest in the thirties have a look at Reel Art: Great Posters From The Golden Age Of The Silver Screen, a huge, beautifully produced coffee-table book showing three hundred posters. A lot of MGM productions are in the TCM Archive and probably the most complete showing of this studio is in Mgm Posters: The Golden Years, with 260 posters in a very nicely designed book. My favorite genre is Film Noir, unfortunately hardly represented in 'Picture Show' but you'll find the definitive poster collection in Art of Noir: The Posters And Graphics From The Classic Era Of Film Noir.



2. The "Picture Show" is a vibrant and eclectic collection of movie posters culled from Turner Classic Movie's library of over 3500 vintage films. The book is an over-sized, soft cover reprinting hundreds of movie posters. Lesser known films may appear two or three to a page while greater classics are reprinted in full page glory. The book begins with a short history of movie posters and the explanation of "One-sheets" "Half-Sheets", "Three Sheets" etc...before breaking down the posters into several different chapters.
   
   We lead off with "Bad Girls" and movies like "The Mask of Fu-Manchu", "The Outlaw", and "Born to be Bad". These are some of the more sexy and seductive posters found and highlight screen vamps such as Bette Davis, Myrna Loy, Joan Fontaine, and Jane Russell. From there the next chapter features the Battle of the Sexes, featuring classic films like the Thin Man movies, and the various Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn films.
   
   The chapter on Fancy Footwork highlights those great musicals of the 30's and 40's such as "Footlight Parade" with James Cagney, "Girl Crazy" with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, and "An American in Paris" with Gene Kelly. Forward March reprints posters from great war films. "Back to Bataan" and "Flying Leathernecks" with John Wayne, musicals like "Anchors Aweigh" and "Follow the Fleet" and one of my favorites "The Dirty Dozen"
   
   Since Warner Bros is one of the prominent studios featured we naturally get to see many of their great adventure film posters included: "The Adventures of Robin Hood", "Captain Blood", and "The Sea Hawk" as well as "The Three Musketeer" and "The Prisoner of Zenda" There are also chapters devoted to westerns and to tough guys like Cagney, Mitchum, Bogart and McQueen.
   
   The last chapter is devoted to sci-fi and horror films including the Val Lewton flicks "I Walked with a Zombie" and "Cat People" along with sci-fi's "The Thing" and "Them!" Movie posters are very underrated as an art form and interest in collecting posters is at an all-time high. Even the reproduction market is extremely busy reproducing these posters for those of us who can't afford the originals. This is a well diversified sampling of both high-profile classics as and "B" movies. The only short-coming of the book is that it only features the posters of three studios: MGM, Warner Bros., and RKO. Classic horror fans will no doubt be a little let down that Universal's films are not included. I'm not sure why but it's a serious oversight. The horror/sci-fi section is quite skimpy overall. It would have been nice to see "Mark of the Vampire" or "Doctor X". That little caveat aside this is a wonderful book for any fan of classic films.



3. What a fabulous delight. Posters from American movie archives at my finger tips. Each poster brought back a memory of another day and time. The author's vibrant storytelling recalls the golden era of motion pictures. Everyone in the family has enjoyed the beautiful visual adventure and the excellent commentary. It is a book filled with a thousand memories. Enjoy, I promise it will make you smile.

3 comments about The Silmarillion Poster Collection: Six Paintings by Ted Nasmith.

1. First of all, I'd like to say that anyone who gives this book less than 5 stars doesn't fully understand or appreciate how monumentally amazing it trully is. Second, those who gave it only one obviously can only read on a second grade level (that means a eight year old can out read you.) I will admit that the beginning is difficult, but it's like riding a bike. At first it's a little rough, but once you get into it you'll never stop. This book is filled with many wonderful and emotional stories. The words and mental illustrations used are phenomenal, and most of the best parts made me want to cry and shout to the world how ingenious Professor Tolkien was! Not only were the climaxes so awesome, but they were filled with emotion and power. And since this book is a history and therefore filled with many stories of great battles, heroes, and mighty deeds, the climaxes are many and never get dull. Trust me, when you really get into this book you will feel sorry for every person who gave this book one star because they aren't intelligent enough to appreciate the awesome power of this piece of literature. This is one of those books that you buy in the finest hardcover available and hire ten guards to keep it safe day and night! Don't be daunted by the vast number of names: they are important but memorization isn't crucial, and if you so wish you can use the 50 page glossary in the back. This book is a rare gem and should be read by every human being on the earth! I give it 100 stars out of 5!



2. The crowning masterpiece of the greatest author of the 20th century, The Silmarillion can alternately break one's heart and stir it to excitement unlike any other literary work. The themes are familiar: courage, love, loyalty, obsession, greed, treachery, et al, but it feels to the reader as if one was encountering them for the first time in literature, by a master of the language, and the effect can be almost overwhelming: many are the passages that will effectively halt a reading until your tears are dried: Yavanna lamenting over the Trees, Fingolfin's hopeless duel with Morgoth, Finrod Felagund's "First Contact" with the Fathers of Men and subsequent death saving Beren, and Hurin's last stand at the Fen of Serech are just a few. I have owned this book since it was first published in the 1970s, and with each reading, my appreciation grows deeper, and my thanks to Tolkien more heartfelt. No one should be without this treasure.



3. I love it! I love it! I love, love, love it! Ted Nasmith's pictures are simply great and really capture the mood of the scenes described in Tolkien's "Silmarillion". These pictures are now decorating my walls and I hardly ever had anything nicer to watch at.

2 comments about The Lord of the Rings Poster Collection 2.

1. In the world of Tolkien artwork, two artists sit at the top of the heap: Alan Lee and John Howe. These two artists have devoted a lot of ink to sketching scenes from J.R.R. Tolkien's masterworks, and in the "Lord of the Rings Poster Collection 2," we get to see some of Lee's best work.
   
   "The Halls of Moria" is one of the most stirring pieces of artwork -- an enormous dark hall full of pillars and vaulted ceilings, with a beam of light shining over the Fellowship. "Tol Brandir" shows a tangle of leafless branches, mossy rocks and stone steps. And then there's the "Golden Hall," a beautiful landscape crowned by a hill, on top of which is Theoden's home. Lee's painted clouds look as if they are glowing.
   
   "Orthanc" shifts the focus to grimmer subjects -- Saruman's stronghold is immense, menacing, vaguely insectile with its black shiny look. And, of course, it's surrounded by floodwater. "The Siege of Gondor" is tightly packed with grinning, creepy orcs with spears, and a few human warriors, one of whom is dead. And "Two Orcs" has a pair of suitably creepy-looking orcs, not doing much.
   
   Of the two poster collections of Lee's work, the second is obviously superior. We get a range of subjects, from all three books, and it shows the different kinds of artwork that Lee can do. The posters themselves are lovely -- high quality paper, clear reproduction. As for the pictures themselves....
   
   Alan Lee does "still work" the best -- even when his subjects are in motion, they look very quiet and almost dreamlike. There's a lot of detail poured into these, since even small twigs, cracks and stains make their way into his artwork. They also tend to have muted, faded colours, lots of soft greys, browns and greens. Some of them look like sepia photographs.
   
   Looking at these beautiful posters, it's easy to see why Lee was one of the designers for the "Lord of the Rings" movies' exquisite sets. A wonderful collection of fantasy artwork.



2. This collection features six works of Alan Lee who, along with John Howe, was one of the principle conceptual artists for Peter Jackson's films based on J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings".
   
   The six works featured in this collection are:
   
   1. The Mines of Moria
   2. Tol Brandir
   3. The Golden Hall
   4. Orthanc
   5. The Siege of Gondor
   6. Two Orcs in the Land of Shadow
   
   The six works are large, stand alone posters on heavy stock contained within an attractive folder featuring "Orthanc" on the front cover. The prints--the originals were done in watercolor--have a black border with the name of the work and the artist at the bottom in small print.
   
   These prints are an excellent addition to any Tolkien fan's collection.

No comments about Selling Chemical Warfare: CWS Posters 1918 - 1945.

No comments about For a Better World: Posters from the United Nations.

No comments about World War I Posters (Schiffer Book for Collectors with Price Guide).

No comments about The Hobbit Poster Collection: Six Paintings by Alan Lee.