Infographics are just plain fucking cool.

A little graphic design can go a long way, and a good infographic can be a pleasant way to put hard facts into perspective. Today /Film caught wind of this wonderful infographic at LocateTV that focuses on interesting facts about the Oscars. There isn’t anything particularly revelatory to be found, but it’s fun way to spend a few minutes, and it’s a very well made chart.  

(click to see the full chart)

Might be worth printing out and hanging at your Oscar party!

Seeing this piece reminded me of some of my other favorite movie-related infographics that I thought I’d share with you.

Best Movies of All Time Map

While the film choices are not always 100% stellar (they’re based off of IMDB’s Top 250 as of June 2009), David Honnorat’s subway map-style chart of the best movies of all time in all genres is a sublime piece of graphic design that incorporates classics and modern films with skilled hand. You could easily spend hours making connections and plotting courses across the genre-defined tracks.

I’ve never encountered anyone selling this graphic as a print, but you can freely download an extremely high-resolution copy right here and print it yourself (or just scroll around the piece in a broswer, as I just spent 15 minutes doing).

XKCD’s Movie Narrative Chart

XKCD may be the best web-comic on these here tubes (where else are you going to find the DVORAK vs. QWERTY jokes that you need in your life?) and, from a film geek’s perspective, this chart is the comic’s greatest accomplishment.

Dutifully mapping the enormous amount of character interactions/travel in both The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy and the original Star Wars trilogy, the chart also handily provides reference for Jurassic Park, 12 Angry Men, and Primer. Hilarious, useful, and beautiful in equal measure, I am pleased to say this poster is now available for purchase, as of this week. While not unexpected, I was extremely gratified to see this offered for sale, since I was among those demanding via email that it be added to the store.

New York Times Box Office Interactive Flowchart

This awesome interactive graphic from The New York Times charts weekly box office receipts from 1986 to 2008. A great study in the differing dynamics of front-loaded films vs films with legs, you can spotlight specific movies to see how their returns played out. There’s a truly staggering amount of data that can be perused here, in a way that really puts the box office of the last two decades into perspective. As you slide along the graph, there is a noticeable change in the general form of a film’s shape from short and wide, to tall and narrow as the trend of short, front-loaded theatrical runs took over.

Also, try not to laugh at how much like a sperm the shape for Top Gun looks.

I’m having a lot of fun putting this together, so UPDATED WITH MORE!

Time Travel Film Timelines

(click to large it up)

Not only is this a pretty incredible piece of graphic design work that puts over a dozen time-traveling films on the same curve, but there is also a nice blog available that covers it’s development. The chart went through 36 drafts, and as you can see almost every concept or approach would have made for a great graphic on its own.

 

As it is, the piece that resulted points out film collisions such as the Time Bandits meeting Evan from The Butterfly Effect. You have The Terminator, Star Trek, Back To The Future, Planet of The Apes, Bill & Ted, and even Austin Powers all laid out together in another piece that is easily worth a ten minute stare.

Thanks to Jake for pointing this one out to me.

Movie Monster Size Comparison

You may remember this chart floating around the film websites and blogs, but it is still an awesome piece of work. While it’s a little sad to see the T-Rex so emasculated, it certainly makes one salivate over the idea of a Cloverfield, Rubber Suit Godzilla brawl (hell, toss some WotW Tripod in there too).

Besides the UK t-shirt company, I can’t seem to find anyone selling this in any form, or even a particularly high-resolution version of the graphic. This adequately-sized copy from GeekStir.com is the best I could rustle up.