New York illustrator Dan Meth has created a Trilogy Meter, that is, a graphic representation of the varying quality of movie trilogies. Before you get angry, remember that this is only his opinion, even so, I’m going to have to have a word with him about the Back to the Future one…

via ffffound!

In the words of Ian and Alex who run The Art of the Title Sequence website: “Remember when your heart sank just a little when you realized the Pink Panther movie wasn’t a cartoon?” Check out their site for examples of great typographic, illustrative and imaginatively composed film and television title sequences. You can watch them in good quality too and then stick around to discuss in a suitably highbrow fashion…

In the meantime here are some of my favourites from the site…

…the obligatory Hitchcock, this time it’s Vertigo:

The haunting typographic treat which is Alien:

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Less of a film review and more of an excuse to post this image which made me laugh. I did actually go and see The Dark Knight last week and enjoyed it immensely. Heath Ledger was bloody brilliant as The Joker, really very frightening. His pencil-disappearing trick was certainly not from the Paul Daniels school of magic. Michael Caine was great too.

I wish they’d resisted the temptation to ladle plot twists over plot twists as it ramped up though, and we’d got a bit more of Ledger with a cleaner narrative. I remember Batman Begins rambling a bit like that towards the end, but overall it was great and if you’re a fan of this sort of thing get down to the cinema and see it. Then read The Killing Joke.

Also, do yourself a favour and catch the Watchmen trailer…

I’d noticed a few lovely classic film title screens cropping up on Ffffound! in recent weeks, then all of a sudden I stumble across this website, an archive of great (and not so great) film title screens lovingly compiled over a number of years by Steven Hill.

I could spend hours looking through these, the old ones are particularly lovely. Reminds me of watching classic afternoon films staying at my Nan’s house when I was little. No, we didn’t watch Battle Royale!

Thanks to Sean for the link…

I’m getting a bit carried away with posts today, but I was reminded of the classic business card scene in American Psycho and thought I’d share. Funny how everything gets immediately more frightening when you preceed it with ‘American’. American Psycho, American Idol, American Airlines. I saw a programme called American Inventor last night and it terrified me to my very soul.

…the most frightening part of the business card clip though, was that I was most distressed by the fact that none of them measured 85x55mm…

Ever wondered what the title sequence to Star Wars would have been like if Saul Bass had done it? No? Well here’s the answer anyway:

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