A Question of Art

It's been quite a while since I've felt the need to complain about anything on here. In fact I think the only other instance was my post about the lack of Triple-Play feature on Blu-Rays, so I'm going to ask that you to indulge me another rant.

Something has been irritating me quite a bit recently, something that can be best illustrated through a little comparison:

On the left is the poster for The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a poster that I fell a little bit in love with during the films marketing campaign. On the right it the cover art for the Blu-Ray release of the film.
Seriously, what the hell is that?

I finally caved in and bought the film. Mainly because I really wanted to own it but also because I finally gave up on my hopes that maybe the distributors would realise their mistake and recall all copies to change the artwork.

Unfortunately the, for want of a better term, f*cking up of DVD and Blu-Ray release artwork isn't limited to just Perks. This has been a problem that I've been noticing time and time again.

I've spent a good deal of my academic career studying art and would like to think I know a little something about what looks good and what doesn't. While I'm aware that this is all a matter of taste, it genuinely drives me mad when a perfectly good poster fails to make it beyond the cinema wall or IMDb page. I've built up quite an extensive film collection over the years, and am not ashamed to admit that I've bought quite a few of my DVDs based on the cover art, and so the consistent release of ugly cover art makes buying the film quite off-putting. I know the poster doesn't effect the actual film in any way but it does effect the look of my collection.

To prove illustrate my frustration further, here are six more examples, all from films that have either been released recently or are due for release soon.

Again the left is the cinematic release poster and the right is the home release. I initially tried to justify all of this as a way of maybe toning down gaudy posters which would explain Perks and Seven Psychopaths getting massacred. However the people behind the release of Savages and Silver Linings Playbook seemed to think the opposite, taking two of my favourite posters and uglying them up with the addition of colour. Pitch Perfect got overhauled for absolutely no apparent reason and whoever designed the art for Zero Dark Thirty clearly couldn't decide what the films selling point was, they should have just stuck with Chastain.

I realise this rant will probably not achieve anything, and outside of using a shedload of time and money to print and re-cover my films I'm not likely to ever get these posters in DVD form. However I would like to know if this bothers anyone else? Are there any DVD posters you know of that do an even worse job than these?

Please, let me know.

...but I want to watch it three times!

I have a confession to make. I'm slightly addicted to purchasing Blu-ray DVDs. This past week I bought three more, The Help, My Week With Marilyn and Martha Marcy May Marlene, and I noticed, once again, something that has been bugging me for a while now. None of these DVDs had a triple play feature.

When Blu-ray was just beginning to become popular it was full of inviting special features, crisp high definition, tons of disc space for extras, and the triple play function. Considering you need a specific player to watch a Blu-ray disc, the prospect of receiving a standard DVD, aswell as a digital copy of your film, is particularly inviting, making the heightened price less of an eye-sore. Unfortunately it's become apparent through recent releases that this feature does not seem likely to become the permanent feature of Blu-ray DVDs that it should be.

The lack of triple play might be forgivable if some other aspect of the product warranted the price tag it carries. Across the three films I purchased, a combined £56, there is a total of 14 bonus features. Eclipsed, in comparison, by the 20+ extras on the Extended Edition of Avatar. A release which also sports triple play. While some may argue that a film like Avatar is much more suited to the bonus features section of a DVD, I don't feel that justifies why we should have to pay such high prices to get less content on other releases.

The fact that two Oscar Nominated films and a critical darling are not deemed suitable to benefit from the full extent of the Blu-ray format astounds me. Taken to an extreme it's borderline victimisation of anyone who doesn't exclusively watch CGI-filled blockbusters. I love my Blu-ray's, but I'm going to need a lot more incentive to carry on paying the high prices for them than a pretty HD picture and underlying fear that standard DVD is going to pull a VHS and soon go extinct.