December is a great time of the year to be a cinephile. Distributers open the floodgates of quality international cinema, the titles that tend to be gunning for Academy Award statues, and big Hollywood releases aimed at large packs of cinemagoers wishing to escape the mad Christmas hoopla for a couple of hours. The quality of the smaller films has been so far beyond the quality of the larger movies (Gulliver’s Travels, for instance, is a disaster), but let’s see how the posters fared.
Love and Other Drugs
The best poster of the month and – just quietly – of the year belongs, quite humorously, to one of the very worst films of 2010. The movie turned out to be neither comedic nor romantic, but the idea behind this poster is fantastic. When I first saw it I thought, “now here is a romantic comedy that actually looks like it’s selling the comedy and the romance.” It had neither, but at least with the poster we don’t have to listen to these retched characters speak; instead we can just look at their attractive mugs and pretend we’re the pillows for a few minutes.
Devil
The local design was a much more obvious one with, ahem, devilish light filtering out from the cracks on an elevator door. It is this teaser concept that is, in my opinion, far better. Ominous without being obvious and clever without being distancing, it is simply a really fine piece of key art design.
Somewhere
Like every other poster for Sofia Coppola’s films – and, come to the think of it, like the films themselves – this design is a slightly hypnotic piece of work that has a beguiling use of light and composition, creatively framing its stars Stephen Dorff and Elle Fanning alongside the coolness of the swimming pool and the hipness of the Chateau Marmont in the background, emerging out from the greenery, which is apt since its shadow looms large over the characters of Somewhere and its very existence is indeed the third character of the movie.
Life During Wartime
Whether you love or loathe Todd Solondz’ style of offensively bravura filmmaking – and everyone has an opinion – you simply cannot deny that the work that goes into the marketing is something altogether captivating. That Life During Wartime is a quasi-sequel to Happiness – owner of a truly classic poster – it makes sense to ape its visual style. This one is so sunny and innocent that it flips around and becomes dark and sinister, which is appropriate considering the potentially disturbing subject matter.
Lebanon
Juxtaposition so obvious you would be forgiven for thinking the entirety of this Israeli war movie, set inside the tank seen right there on the poster, was going to be another one of those dire films like The Counterfeiters that screams “I am about war and therefore brilliant. Love me?” That’s not the case and having seen the film I actually think it says something rather interesting about war and beauty and the destruction of a country’s image. It helps that the colours are eye-catching and the width provided by this British quad design really give the landscape a striking potency.
Blue Valentine
It’s curious to note that the American design (right) is dark and plays up the quote unquote erotic nature of the story (it’s erotic all right, but not in the ways the poster suggests), whereas the local design (left) is all sun-kissed and golden, revelling in the blossoming love of its cast-members. Neither poster truly represents Derek Cianfrance’s bruising drama, but I think I prefer the American design purely because it has a grunginess that suits the film better. The golden hues of the Australian poster seem to be advertising a completely different movie to the one showing in cinemas.
Heartbreaker
This poster features Romain Duris so does it really matter that the design is boring and generic? Romain Duris would get me into a movie theatre and if that’s the case then I guess the poster works after all!
The King’s Speech
Perhaps the most infamous movie poster of the year is the original American design (above) for sure-fire Oscar contender The King’s Speech. It must take a really bad poster for the film’s director to come out against it, but that’s exactly what British filmmaker Tom Hooper did when he blasted the poster in November, saying, “I hate it. I hate it. … It’s a train smash.” Not one to mince words is Mr Hooper. He also said that it would be replaced and replaced it was.
You’d be hard-pressed to conjure up a worse design by outsourcing the project to the local day care centre after naptime, but thankfully they came up with something that’s at least not terrible. It’s entirely generic and uninspiring – and unlike the movies rent-a-quote the poster does not “fill me with joy” – but, well, doesn’t anything look like a masterpiece in comparison to that first discombobulating design?
