I am duly impressed.
Rightly or wrongly, most people have an impression of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), the august body behind the Academy Awards (this year’s event is on Sunday 24 February US time, hosted by Seth MacFarlane) as a staid body that values conservative expression over daring, clever artistic statements.
But whatever the merits of that perception of the organisation, this new poster they have released to commemorate this year’s Academy Awards, pretty much blows it out of the water.
It is a fresh, inventive and visually beguiling way of marking the Best Picture winners from 1927 to the present – just for the record 1927’s Best Picture winner was Wings while The Artist carried the golden trophy home in 2012 – with each of the Oscar statuette designed to reflect the winning movie from that year.
Designed by Englishman Ollie Moss, who the Academy’s press release describes as “[a man who] is best known for such works as the Thor cast poster for Marvel Entertainment, the cover artwork for the Resistance 3 video game, and his recent book Silhouettes from Popular Culture.”
They go on to say that he is “one of the most sought-after screen print artists working today, [and] has created illustrations for The New York Times and The Guardian, and is commissioned by Empire magazine to design a new movie poster illustration every month.”
Clearly an enormously talented man who has produced a poster that is a worthy companion to the most celebrated movie awards on earth.
You can see each statuette up close at the Oscars website.
