Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

[Nordic]

Oh I freely admit I'm in full-blown speculation mode!

Just throwing ideas out there.

The placement of the fingers is quite deliberate, though, based on working in this industry, especially commercials, ad people get extremely obsessed with these kinds of details, even when they're basically innocent just-trying-to-sell-more-widgets endeavors.

I really sense something subliminal in the hands and finger placement of this but can't put my finger (heh heh) on it.

Although my first impression is pretty simple -- that the three fingers on each hand. Erect and symmetrical, represent the Twin Towers, and the eyes the two planes in the sky.

[JackRiddler]

The placement of the fingers is quite deliberate, though, based on working in this industry, especially commercials, ad people get extremely obsessed with these kinds of details, even when they're basically innocent just-trying-to-sell-more-widgets endeavors.

Oh sure. All details are deliberate, but that doesn't mean all details signify a message. I just don't imagine this detail signifies what you're thinking. I don't even consider it "pinkies crossed" and if I did it still wouldn't have a necessary signification.

[Nordic]

Well I wondered if there was a scene in the movie where father and son make some kind of "pinky promise". If so that would explain it innocently enough, but I'd have to actually see the movie to find that out. And ... uh that's not gonna happen.

[thatsmystory]

If anyone can find the illustrator's, or at least the agency's, name, I can do some snooping around.

The poster was designed by BLT & Associates. It seems to suggest shock and grief as the plot revolves around the kid coping with his dad's sudden death.

Anything 9/11 related will feel like manipulation on this board because people are aware of all the exploitation and cover up. This movie will come across much differently for people who still trust mainstream news.

[MacCruiskeen]

Kitsch is not inevitable. For an antidote to Foer's sentimental-escapist-manipulative response to 9/11, see Art Spiegelman's graphic novel In the Shadow of No Towers. It's witty, astringent and honest, even if it doesn't explicitly cast doubt on the Official Yarn.

his July-August 2003 installment of the “No Towers” series dedicates itself to the profit others have reaped off the backs of citizens thrown into chaos by a national tragedy. In one of two vertical strips (as with everything Spiegelman, the arrangement and construction of his comics deviate from standard convention whenever possible), one of the artist’s doppelgangers holds up a garish tourist trap clock emblazoned with the twin towers, a looming American eagle, FDNY figurines and a United States flag, confessing that he was an eyewitness and even a participant in “the bombardment of kitsch” that hit the U.S. after 9/11 like an X-rated Xtina video on Kazaa.

In the second strip, the same clock blows up like a bomb in Spiegelman’s face, as cowboy boots branded with dollar signs fall from the sky on a fleeing populace filled with cartoon legends like Annie, Wimpy, Hapless Hooligan (who repeatedly serves, as do the meek mice from “Maus,” as a Spiegelman alter ego), Charlie Brown and many more. Even this summer’s Republican National Convention — the capitalization on misfortune to end all capitalizations on misfortune — is identified by the author as an example of tragedy “transformed into travesty.”

http://www.salon.com/2004/09/10/spiegelman/

^
the best & most succinct summary I've seen of the world after 9/11: the old apathy plus The New Fear.

[IanEye]

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[JackRiddler]

Associative memejacking heads may have days of fun with the following.



"The Third Jihad," war on terror Islamophobia movie used in NYPD training and now in the news because the police chief Kelly gave a 90-minute interview for it and made it part of the NYPD curriculum, and has been lying in his attempts to weasel out of responsbility for it. This still appears in a lot of the promotional material.

[Forgetting2]

that's good, Cuda. Also just realized it could be this:



Speak no evil.

Don't tell the truth about this. It will upset the children. We owe it to them to stick with the myth. You know, like Santa Clause. Makes their childhood happier that way.

Actually, if I were to try and interpret it this way, it would be the see no evil pose, with the hands slipped down. He was supposed to see no evil, but he did see 'evil'.

It almost looks to have been photoshopped to within a hair's breadth of the uncanny valley. And I'm sure there's a rather famous painting or two centered upon that pose, but at the moment I'm at a loss to find them.

Just talked to a friend of mine at BLT, where they did the poster, and he said he'd ask for me, where they got that image and why they picked it (my friend is on the A/V side, not the print side.) I'll post if he get's back to me.

Most of the time the movie posters in this business come from people combing thru art books looking for an image that 'feels' right. There might be some discussion of meaning, but it usually isn't very deep. A lot of times it's as simple as 'make the star's head bigger damnit!' Though they will get anal about the details, to be sure, usually it's just a matter of conforming to the conventions which are currently acceptable.

As for Tom Hanks, I think he really sees himself as a defender of the faith, meaning the American Dream that's been so good to him, and that he's taken on the role of father figure to America in defense of the reality he needs to believe, perhaps petulantly so. (I met him once, but don't really know him, so that's just my personal impression.)

[MinM]

Associative memejacking heads may have days of fun with the following.



"The Third Jihad," war on terror Islamophobia movie used in NYPD training and now in the news because the police chief Kelly gave a 90-minute interview for it and made it part of the NYPD curriculum, and has been lying in his attempts to weasel out of responsbility for it. This still appears in a lot of the promotional material.

I've noticed ads for a few others in this genre recently:

Also something by Alex Jones and someone named Stansberry. That one is not in the Islamophobic category, but pure fearmongering.

viewtopic.php?p=444779#p444779

[Nordic]

That poster is almost so stupid as to be funny.

It's like "movies for the trailer-park Zionists" or something.

[Nordic]

From here:

http://www.theshiznit.co.uk/feature/if- ... -truth.php

[Luther Blissett]

I wrote on this thread that BLT & Associations also did the "why so serious?" Dark Kight posters, but also the great Jane Eyre stuff.

I'm sure the studio provided the key art to the agency. We'll never know the answers we're looking for, but someone who had posted on this thread knew someone who worked there.

Edit: Forgetting2! The post was not lost.

[kelley]

Most of the time the movie posters in this business come from people combing thru art books looking for an image that 'feels' right. There might be some discussion of meaning, but it usually isn't very deep.

this comment led me to remember a description of of synedoche, as a subclass of metonymy, and how it functions in gustav klucis's famous constructivist agitprop of the outstretched hand composed of dozens of smaller outstretched hands. in the case of the film poster, it appears to me the overall tonality of the image is suggestive of the buildings themselves, silvery cladding reflecting the blue of the sky, etc. the two hands subtly reinforce this association. the figure of the boy represents the enforced silence or dismissal of 'conspiracy' to which the body politic must accede if the official story is to maintain credence. it's also a veiled pastiche of the 'hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil' trio of comic monkeys. the collapse of the towers was a visual event par excellence accompanied by the auditory hallucination embodied by mainstream media etc. it's the speaking that could complicate matters. this must not be allowed to happen. i can't go much farther with this than i have, but it's just a general feeling, nothing too specific. assigning any type of complexity to this image might actually be a mistake, even if its message is a subconscious one.