Poster - The Cat Returns the Favor (Japan)

One of the great things I love about the Ghibli films are their terrific posters. These are created by the studio themselves, and not some faceless marketing team hired by the suits. The artists remain in complete control of everything - the production, the trailers, and the posters.

For the last few years, Ghibli's Japanese DVDs were also adorned with their movie posters, which just looks terrific. Here is a perfect example, from Ghibli's 2002 production Neko no Ongaeshi, which translates as, "The Cat Returns the Favor." We know it better by its shorter international title, The Cat Returns.

Even though Cat Returns remains one of the minor studio works, I think the poster is just superb. It's one of my favorite Studio Ghibli posters, in fact. Now compare this to the Disney DVD that's available here in North America. It's probably not a fair comparison, since one is a full-scale movie poster, and the other is a cover for a direct-to-video DVD. There are different markets and different concerns. But it's not secret that Hollywood has lost the knack of making classic movie posters. Now it's all so bland and lifeless. It all just screams, "Photoshop."

Ah, well. You can still find good movie posters here and there, usually for the indie films. I still wish I had my Waking Life poster. I scored that from the pre-release screening here in Minneapolis back in 2001, and it remains a favorite movie to this day.