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Above: 1980 Japanese poster for Apocalypse Now. Design by Eiko Ishioka, artwork by Haruo Takino.With Francis Ford Coppola’s long-gestated Megalopolis having premiered yesterday at Cannes, it's a good time to look back at the posters from his 60-year-long career. The only problem is that many posters for his films are either too well known or nothing to write home about. Like Coppola’s career itself, there are peaks and valleys—one of my very first posts for Notebook, almost exactly fifteen years ago, was about the gorgeous design for The Rain People (1969)—but a career retrospective of his posters seems like it might result in less than the sum of its parts. Yet of all his posters there are three rare Japanese designs that have always stood out as utterly extraordinary: two for Apocalypse Now (1979) and one for Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992).I’ve always seen these posters attributed to Eiko Ishioka,...

Following the financial failure of “Dodes’kaden” and the completion of the Soviet-Japanese feature “Dersu Uzala,” Akira Kurosawa would return to the familiar world of jidaigeki. His samurai epic “Kagemusha” would be a successful return to form, wowing audiences with its striking visuals and compelling story. While experimental with the scope as the director’s most ambitious feature at the time was, budget finances were more comfortably assembled than with previous projects. On top of that, the production would also receive additional funds. This other aid was thanks to the help of admirers George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, who worked as co-producers, along with international financial support and distribution by 20th Century Fox. At this point, Kurosawa was getting older, yet he was still motivated to create art. A few years later, he would do just that again and went on to release his grand masterpiece “Ran.