Selling the Movie: The Art of the Film Poster

I love my poster books - each is different and offers something new. I have most of the Tony Nourmand ones and a few others ( including the Struzan and Alvin books) and am always on the lookout for a new entry. When I came across this it just seemed to be an essential purchase and I have to say when it arrived it was instantly evident that this was a high quality product. The hard cover feels premium, the pages are glossy and thick and it has a reasonable thickness of pages. The images presented here are crisp and clear and the general coverage of posters through the various decades is sensible ,you will most likely find ones that you like.However the book is not without omissions, accepting that one book can never presume to cover an area as large as that of movie posters. The omissions are major and avoidable and partly this is down to the author maybe trying to cover too much material but then having to reduce down on content ( something which is not uncommon with books covering this subject material).Some words of wisdom based on observation - as the subject material is too extensive it makes obvious sense to avoid repetition - however the author falls at this first hurdle. Why have posters adjourning the heading page for each decade that you are then going to reproduce a few pages down? Unforgivable.Then there are the omissions - as I mentioned above this is inevitable, however to include brief 2 page summaries for some poster artists ( which in itself is way too brief for such talented individuals ) and not include Drew Struzan ( one of the major contributors to movie poster art for over three decades) is something I failed to understand. And there are some significant omissions - so no posters from any of the Terminator or Back To The Future films or the Dirty Harry series, Star Wars is quickly glossed over as are the Indiana Jones films.So on first impressions this book seems very impressive, however spend some time with it and the gaps become large and difficult to overcome. I found myself comparing this to Emily King's Movie Poster book and the latter offers a far more balanced, insightful overview of movie poster history than this volume.However it is difficult not to recommend a great looking book such as this despite all of the above and the price point is perfectly pitched so anyone interested should pick it up for their collection, just be prepared for some glaring omissions.

Great book for reduced price... good for a tenner, not twenty five.Quite a few posters, and a lot of text. Very few actual full page posters though, most have the text somewhere around it.Informative and accessible though.