Modern Hollywood Hates Real Colour!

Frequent commenter, Ricardo Cantoral, pointed this Blu-Ray box art out to me in the comments on my last post. I am likewise appalled by how lackluster (and plain ugly) the art direction is on this box cover. Especially when you consider how rich the colour was in the original version of True Grit, as evidenced by the still I've included below.

Unfortunately, a lot of recent Blu-Ray releases of classic films from that era are suffering the same fate when it comes to the way the idiots in the various home video departments are choosing to market them to the consumer. It's quite obvious from the way recent films look that Hollywood has turned its collective back on real colour, preferring to sap it all out through digital desaturation technology and replacing it with what amounts to a blue, brown or gold monochrome with a few key areas pumped up with a complementary colour for contrast. I personally find the process ugly and maddening, resulting in me shunning most films released today.

Therefore, I think it's terribly ignorant of modern Hollywood to foist their tasteless choices onto older movie buffs, by way of marketing classic colour films of the glorious past with this repugnant box art. Here are some more examples of this obnoxious trend:

Not only is this devoid of the movie's colour, but look at the lousy composition, with the image cut off in the middle of Ratso Rizzo's right eye!

Though Hitchcock shot this classic caper in vivid Technicolor, it appears that Cary Grant and Grace Kelly are consoling each other over having both been stricken with jaundice!

Judging by what they've done to poor Popeye Doyle here, I think there is more likely a French's Mustard Connection.

And finally, here's one that I find unforgivable. This new seven disc set on Blu-Ray of the films of Marilyn Monroe is being marketed with this washed out black and white still (against a sterile white background), slightly accented with very muted colours, when most of the films in this collection are some of the most gorgeous Technicolor films of all time! I'll probably end up purchasing it for the (presumably) sharp, vivid colour  prints of these great films, but I'll be doing so DESPITE this awful marketing decision on the box art. Seriously, why couldn't they take a cue from the box art of the DVD collection pictured below and present Marilyn in all her Technicolor beauty?

I think I need to clear my mind of all this modern Hollywood tastelessness by watching Marilyn's iconic Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend number from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes:

"Happy New Year, Pilgrim."

I did this caricature of John Wayne just recently so that I could give a print of it as a Christmas gift to my stepfather, as he's a huge fan of The Duke. Originally I was going to do it in my usual approach: inked line art, then coloured up in Photoshop. However, I was rather pleased with the way it looked in the pencil sketch (which I also rendered a bit more than usual), so I thought I'd treat the finished art as more painterly, still colouring it in Photoshop, yet with a looser treatment overall. Anyway, it was certainly a fun piece to work on. The film I viewed as reference to sketch from was Rio Bravo, in which John Wayne stars alongside Dean Martin and Angie Dickinson.

So, that's it for my posts of 2010 - See you all in the New Year!