“Duel” by Billy Goldenberg

A few weeks ago a frequent visitor asked me to do a custom covers set for Duel by Billy Goldenberg. This 1971 score for Steven Spielberg’s directing debut is held in high esteem by Soundtrack afficionados and was recently released – for the first time! – by Intrada as a Special Collection Edition. And while they generously opted for a flip cover art, they went with two lackluster designs from the DVD release. I think we all agree, that this artwork makes the film look like a cheap tv movie. And even though it initially was a tv movie, it’s also a Steven Spielberg film and it deserves…

“Mad Max: Fury Road” by Tom Holkenborg

Movie-wise the month of May is usually the annual kick-off into Blockbuster season. The time when Hollywood really gets the ball rolling. Last year Godzilla was fueling the hype machine and this year Joss Whedon seems to be demanding the spotlight with his highly anticipated Avengers sequel. And for whatever reason I thought Mad Max: Fury Road might play a big part as well. While that may very well be true for George Miller’s film, I Initially wanted my custom covers entry to be a really big thing as well. But unlike the spectacular teaser trailer, the whole poster campaign left me badly…

“Enemy” by Danny Bensi, Saunder Jurriaans

The only reason why I wanted to feature Enemy by Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans on my blog, is the stunning cover artwork from the official soundtrack (#1). The pale colours together with the vintage font choice (ITC Benguiat) create a great retro vibe. Overall there’s lots of interesting font design going on in these covers. From the retro touch of “ITC Benguiat” (#1) to the simple aesthetics of “Alternate Gothic” and “Bodoni” (#2, #3) the official album artworks take full advantage of the different typefaces. The same is true for another retro font called “ITC Cheltenham” (#4), while the clean cuts of “Gill Sans MT Pro” go down another…

“Escape From Tomorrow” by Abel Korzeniowski

“If you look, the whole world’s happy Feel the beat, it’s us inside of you Through your body, now your ear is clear Have you found the hidden clue? Imaginate what we can do, when tomorrow there’s another view? On the other side, you will realize, Wishes really do come true, come true.” If you haven’t heard the infamous story about Randy Moore’s guerilla style shot genre mix Escape From Tomorrow, I suggest you first head over to Wikipedia and then afterwards give the film itself a try. Because only after you’ve seen it, you may be able to appreciate Abel Korzeniowski’s brilliant little score…

“Alien Resurrection” by John Frizzell

Alien Resurrection may be the most laughed off entry in the Alien franchise. Rightly so, but it also did a few things right. Here’s a short listing in no particular order: The visuals, with cinematograper Darius Khondji in his heydays, the film gave us some great visual shots of the Xenomorphs. Some setups seemed to be there just to give Khondji an exclusive to create amazingly choreographed scenes. This is partly also due to… The writing, which may be the spiritual predecessor to Joss Whedon’s Firefly, using the smugglers crew as a rough cut of what years later became the crew of the Serenity. That’s a pretty…