My response to Eric D. Snider of Cinematical’s The Lazy, Misleading DVD Covers for ‘Amelia’ and ‘Love Happens’

I don’t think that they’re as lazy as they are the careful (albeit
unoriginal) design of the marketing team trying to get the videos to
sell at Best Buy and rent in Blockbuster (or on Netflix’s website ?
Red Box’s display).

The little time I worked at a video store was very educational in
this regard.

If you compare the Blockbuster case art to even the regular release
DVD case, you’ll find the same big star faces and layout as you have
on these, on almost every case.

Video box art is as far from a movie poster or album cover as you can
get.  Even those two “art forms” need to sell their product, but most
of them at least have a bit more decency than this.  But the DVD
cases are all about those people wandering the aisles (now more
virtually than physically), looking for something to rent Friday
afternoon to watch that weekend.

It will be interesting to see if the cases change given that the
video stores are dying around the country.