Happy Thursday, everyone! It's gross, colder and wet here in Virginia (thankfully, we're not getting the pretty terrible weather in the lot of the South, just some cold rain). Christmas is about a week away, and for those who celebrate here's hoping the season is going well for you and isn't that stressful. So let's see what I found recently!
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I recently discovered that movie poster artist Robert Tanenbaum, who has painted a lot of movie posters you love, has an active internet site were he sells prints of his work.* And lo and behold, I didn't know he had done of my favorite horror movie posters, for the original Black Christmas in 1974!
So I ordered a print of it (really, his prices are quite reasonable, especially since he's apparently signing these things and then sending them out himself). It was shipped quite quickly, I received it on Tuesday from California and opened it to....
Yes, he also did the poster for The Christmas Story and accidentally sent that! And to his absolute credit, I emailed him about it and he had a good laugh and is sending me the correct one right away and told me to just keep this one as well. And man, can this guy paint a movie poster. I always like seeing original art, before the title and the credits are laid on, and I love how absolutely Norman Rockwell crossed with insanity this is, perfectly in-line with the tone of this movie. In particular, I like how he did his artist credit in the style of Rockwell for this:
I remember my grandmother Eleanor having a huge coffee-table book of Norman's work and I would spend hours poring over his lovely, sometimes surprisingly shocking work and I have that artist signature emblazoned on my brain.
So after all this, I'm waiting for Black Christmas to show up and then I'm going to have our local art shop properly frame it for my office. I'm not a huge movie poster guy as wall art guy but this is one I can't wait to have hung in a place of honor.
*Yes, I have opinions on movie poster artists and Tanenbaum is up there with Drew Struzan, who among many other things painted the original poster for Raiders of the Lost Ark and though is sadly retired as Hollywood has moved to terrible Photoshopped giant head montages for all the posters, is still very much worth a follow on the hell-hole that is Twitter and the documentary Drew: The Man Behind the Poster (which is free on Kanopy and on Vudu with ads) is very much worth your time.
Also, my essay on Black Christmas over at The Solute is maybe one of my favorite pieces of my own writing. It think it's a fantastic piece of work, a great piece of director Bob Clark's career. And of course, the punchline of all of this is that Bob Clark also directed...A Christmas Story.
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I feel like we've started to forget how good of an actor Burt Lancaster was. What a long, excellent career he had, from the scam artist preacher in Elmer Gantry to a Resistance fighter trying to stop Germans from stealing a ton of French art during WWII in The Train and ending with his lovely performance in Field Of Dreams, but somehow it feels like he's fading from the collective consciousness a bit. So I was quite happy to find this, his performance as a chillingly cold gossip columnist in 1950s New York City based on Walter Winchell who uses his influence to ruin his sister's boyfriend. And also, I absolutely love this cover art by Sean Phillips, who has done several covers for Criterion and is also an excellent comic book artist, mostly doing moody crime dramas with Ed Brubaker.
Their collaborations (and I would also recommend Reckless) are very much worth your time if you like a a good crime drama.
Sweet Smell Of Success is on Pluto TV with ads and also for sale/rent at the usual places.
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