The two most similar  of the movies n the list are Juno and Knocked Up. Both comedies and both knee-slapping funny. See my review of Juno on IMDB.com. Hopefully you can see the obvious story similarities just from the poster comparison. In a nutshell, so to speak, Ellen Page (X-Men: The Last Stand) stars as 16-year-old Juno, who tries out her sexual side with her geeky virgin friend and classmate Paulie Bleeker played wonderfully by Michael Cera (Superbad). This attraction results in an unwanted pregnancy.  After considering and rejecting the abortion route, she has no choice but to tell her family about the pregnancy and of her plans to give her baby up for adoption to a nearby wealthy couple that cannot have children of their own. Cue the hilarity. This is a very funny movie from director Jason Reitman. • Posters for this comedy are really limited to the giant orange stripes but the juxtaposition of the two main characters makes it visually appealing. 

Knocked Up is all about Seth Rogen. He is clearly a fresh voice in Hollywood for the X-Generation and below. His comedy instincts and his timing are reminicient of the great Albert Brooks (see Modern Romance). This is about Rogen’s third or forth time out playing virtually the same character. But it worked for Albert Brooks for 40 years so I guess Rogen has some more time to perfect the character which he already does a brilliant job with. What happens here is Ben Stone, played by Rogen, has a one-night stand with Alison Scott (the ever hot Katherine Heigl). She is an assistant on the E! cable show who rises to reporter just as she discovers she is pregnant so she chooses to hide that fact. The secret isn’t easy and isn’t helped much by Rogen’s character whose out of control life and lack of maturity provide us with consistent laughter. Heigl plays this character to perfection and easily holds he own against Rogen’s nuttiness. This is a warm, sweet and very funny film that definitely has its share of comedy moments. While many of these moments seem familiar from some of the last few movies these guys have done together, it doesn’t make the film any less enjoyable. Clearly they were out to make a funny movie with a hot pregnant chick in the lead that was knocked up by some geek and they did a great job. • Posters for the movie consist of the two main characters in the same mood. We see them sitting and we see close up face shots. Again, nothing new here. 

I don’t want to do it but I have to talk about Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. That is the 5th highest grossing movie on our list coming in at $292 million. I think we all know why Harry Potter was able to hit such a high number for 2007. Two words…Harry Potter. That’s right. The franchise has now hit such dizzying levels that now no matter what author J.K. Rowling hands out it will be bought up and sought out in such high numbers so quickly that there is no stopping its success. This time out in the story we find Harry wrongly accused by the Ministry of Magic. Harry is coming into his teenage years and with that comes angst which even manifests against Dumbledore. Voldemort is stronger than ever and in an effort to squash him out again Harry and his posse of wizards form Dumbledore’s Army. Well this leads to conflict as you can well imagine and does not sit well with Dolores Umbridge, the new Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts. With all this conflict around in combination with a 14 year standoff with Lord Voldemort it should be no surprise that all of this leads to a giant wizard face off of good and evil with loads of special effects. Daniel Radcliffe along with his companions Emma Watson and Rupert Grint as the three main characters know this material well and their performances are right on par with what is expected. This is also not Ralph Fiennes first time in the ballpark as evil Lord Voldemort and along with the rest of the cast of characters, they all play their parts with ease and comfort. They all look very comfortable in their skins this 5th time around. A shinning spot is actress Imelda Staunton as the Dark Arts Professor Dolores Umbridge. She is fresh and fascinating to watch. Where the movie lets us down is the script. There are some of our favorite characters that don’t get a single word in the film. And shockingly some of the special effects, the ones over London especially, seem like 1970s film making. I don’t blame Rowling at all as she has given the screen writers more than enough material to work with. Because of them the movie is stale and it feels like most of the film is just filling us in on their series rather than making it new for us like the first time. • Poster fans will love all the variations of the characters and we’re even treated to an IMAX 3D version of the film and a poster.

Number 6 on the numbers list for 2007 is I Am Legend. The Wil Smith apocalypse movie raked in $256 million in ‘07. See my review of I Am Legend on TW or IMDB. Legend gives us Wil Smith, New York, special effects, lots of zombies, virus killing mankind and some alone time. This is about 5 other movies put together in one geared to Wil Smith’s save the world scenario doing his Tom Hanks impression from Cast Away. And that’s me sort of liking the movie. Aside from some major suspension of disbelief comes a really bad rewrite of the original material. I understand that test audiences did not like the first ending the editors came up with and so the movie was reshot and recut. WHY!!??! Ultimately the producers were afraid that the first and better ending would garner them a lower spot than number 6 on the money making list for 2007. If you have a chance to download the director’s cut online, do so. If you have to watch the normal version try to make it to an IMAX showing. • As for the poster of this movie? Well there are so many versions that I don’t know how many. There are also some special banner editions depicting destruction from other cities like Tokyo, London, Hong Kong. All of the posters are very pretty and I’d like to see a collector with the entire series. 

Stay tuned for part III – the conclusion.

Does the movie look good? Well, yeah. The film is full of rich, sweeping cinematography and more CG than I shake a stick at. I Am Legend is a spectacular film that you can see again and a again which is a lot to say of a 2007 film. On a side note here: the movie you see at the theater or on HBO is not the movie the Wil and the director wanted you to see. The original adaptation of the movie can be downloaded and I think seen on the limited edition DVD. And, as usual, the movie is not the book the material is based on. The script adaptation gets a bad c- but the film is just too cool to pass by just for that. **/****.

It is not possible to pass this movie by without noting the incredible marketing machine behind Wil Smith. There were many many versions of the movie poster that was released in various countries for this film. Equally cool was some of the banner posters released showing different cities around the world in ruins. Pictured here is the banner for London. There were others developed for Honk Kong, Paris, Sydney and Bejing. No less than 20 different versions of banner alone. In some respects the poster memorabilia alone is as cool as watching the movie. There is some fabulous artwork that developed from this movie.