Friday One Sheet: EMA
After a wee bit of a dry spell, it has been a good week for poster designs released online. There was the "Lone Wolf & Pug" key art from the Fantasia Film Festival, as well as Zhang Yimou's 1930s set...
Friday One Sheet: IN THE EARTH
Seeming to take inspiration in equal measure from the red-eyed creature in Horror Express and John Boorman's floating visage in Zardoz, this eye grabbing key art from Empire Design is for the new Ben Wheatley horror picture, In The Earth....
Friday One Sheet: THE MOHEL
Here is the key art for a Canadian short playing at SXSW that at first glance evokes the iconic poster imagery of The Exorcist. Charles Wahl's The Mohel, however, is about a Jewish doctor arriving to do the circumcision of...
Woche der Kritik 2021 Review: HORSE TAIL (Kuthiraivaal)
Saravanan is having a strange morning. He wakes up from a technicolour dream of a verdant field that is both night and day simultaneously, with an itch in his tailbone. It turns out that overnight he has somehow grown a...
Friday One Sheet: DRACULA SEX TAPE
Olivier Godin's short film, Dracula Sex Tape, is a 5-minute burst of high-energy dialogue and smoking. It is like inhaling Richard Linklater's Slacker, in a single intense drag that leaves one light-headed and satisfied simultaneously. The short, which debuted at Woche...
Friday One Sheet: THE AMUSEMENT PARK
This surreal poster from designer Aleksander Walijewski echoes the strange feeling of getting a 'new' George A. Romero film nearly four years after the maestro's passing. The film is, of course, not 'new' in the sense that it was made...
Friday One Sheet: SHIVA BABY
A good poster finds an iconic image or idea, and removes all the clutter to focus on that. Design company High Council has settled on a mountain of food as a bridal dress, for Emma Seligman's bisexual funeral drama Shiva...
Friday One Sheet: DEATH TRIP
One of my favourite movie posters of the last 20 years is Akiko Stehrenberger's design for Michael Haneke's FUNNY GAMES U.S. (yes, the remake). I have spoken at length about the many imitators and homages to this power of this...
Friday One Sheet: ME YOU MADNESS
This key art for Louise Linton's high-camp bisexual thriller, Me You Madness, has all the brash hallmarks of 'stuff I like' in a poster: Super saturated colour, minimal design elements, pink and neon, and unabashed absurdity. The lime green squirt...
Friday One Sheet: GREEN
Why is it that you do not often see green movie posters? I could not tell you for certain, other than the colour is rather neutral and blends into the landscape of most multiplex aisles where these types of one...
Friday One Sheet: PREPARATIONS TO BE TOGETHER FOR AN UNKNOWN PERIOD OF TIME
Lili Horvát's mystery-drama has been selected for Hungary's submission to the best foreign language Oscar this year. The original title, Felkészülés meghatározatlan ideig tartó együttlétre, and its English translation, Preparations To Be Together For An Unknown Period Of Time, present...
Friday One Sheet: THE WANTING MARE
It is rare that a director designs the key art for their film, even in the indie filmmaking world. The last time that I can recall this was P.T. Anderson's design for Magnolia over 20 years ago. This striking poster...
Now Streaming: SING ME A SONG, A Document of Fantasy Crashing Into Reality
"Have the Monks stopped meditating? They all seem to be tweeting." Werner Herzog made this potent (and pithy) observation in his 2016 documentary on the origins and effects of the internet, Lo And Behold. A few years later, French director...
Friday One Sheet: DIE HARD
Because we cannot come down to the coast, get together and have a few laughs, ahem 2020. Because along with It's A Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story, Die Hard has become an American holiday traditional Christmas movie. Because designer Paul...
Friday One Sheet: The Best Posters of 2020
So we approach the end to a strange year. And particularly, a stranger year to cinema and cinema-going (at least here in North America) than any year in my lifetime. I hope you have enjoyed this column (almost) every Friday...
Review: ANOTHER ROUND, Bottoms Up, Says Mads Mikkelsen
Thomas Vinterberg's latest comedy of manners is as bourgeoisie-punk as ever. He leaped onto the global stage, along with Lars von Trier, with the collaborative manifesto Dogme95, and its first film Festen (The Celebration), which re-wrote the design rules of...
Friday One Sheet: A Tale Of Two Posters
Consider this column, one of the last before the year-end round up of 2020s key art designs, a lesson on what to do, and what not to do in all things One Sheet. Here, we have two posters for a...
Friday One Sheet: SING ME A SONG
I have written, several times in this space, that many of the best posters are simply a well-designed photo. This is something South Korea designers are known for. A well produced still without the usual clutter, merging of too many...
CUFFdocs 2020 Review: PRAYER FOR A LOST MITTEN Beautifully Considers The Human Condition
Romantic. Gorgeous. Giving of all the feels. This is hardly what one might expect from a documentary on the Lost & Found desk of a metropolitan transit hub. However, from the patient immensity of the opening shot of Prayer For...
Friday One Sheet: FALLING
Two posters do not a trend make, however, I will point out the effective use of wallpaper in both Charlie Kaufman's I'm Thinking of Ending Things, and today's key art, from Viggo Mortensen's Falling. Maybe wallpaper is just a stand...
