by Kurt Halfyard

Friday One Sheet: PARASITE

There are so many curious things on display in the first piece of key art for Bong Joon-Ho's latest film Parasite.There is the obvious dead body in the bottom corner. However, the censorship on the various characters' eyes -- star...
by Kurt Halfyard

Friday One Sheet: SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK

Uncluttered concept, unconventional placement of credit blog, and pastel pink horror - The latest anthology film has a suite of posters that know the value of negative space, but none quite as striking as this bathroom nightmare. Does it get...
by Kurt Halfyard

Calgary Underground Film Fest Announces 2019 Lineup: HIGH LIFE, LITTLE MONSTERS, DR. RUTH And More

Western Canada's largest genre festival celebrates its sweet sixteen this year. The Calgary Underground Film Festival (CUFF) dropped its line-up today, and as with previous years it is a delightfully eclectic mix of the both serious and silly cinema. Documentaries...
by Kurt Halfyard

Friday One Sheet: Leaning Against The Frame In ONCE UPON A TIME IN... HOLLYWOOD

The strange marketing materials for Quentin Tarantino's '9th Film' (as the poster says) feature (across two one sheets) the trio of lead characters leaning against 'the frame' of the poster. It is also present in one of the initial pieces...
by Kurt Halfyard

Friday One Sheet: FINGERS

Eschewing the usual 'Indie Yellow,' the key art for Juan Ortiz's crime comedy, Fingers, comes as a hand-drawn (ahem, sorry) collage on a palm with partially and fully severed digits, framed in water-stained pink. Artist and designer Emily J. Moore,...
by Kurt Halfyard

Friday One Sheet: GIRL ON THE THIRD FLOOR

Evoking the middle space between Darren Aronofsky's mother! poster, and the Russell Mills' Downward Spiral art from Nine Inch Nails' iconic 1994 album, the one-sheet for SXSW debuting Girl On The Third Floor is eye catching to say the least....
by Kurt Halfyard

Friday One Sheet: HAIL SATAN?

Leaving neon behind for a spell, and focusing on the dark lord himself, this week's key art is from Penny Lane's documentary that focuses on the religious group, The Satanic Temple. Hail Satan? still cheekily catches the eye with its...
by Kurt Halfyard

Friday One Sheet: DIVINE LOVE and Neon Iconography

This column's obsession with neon continues with the key art for Brazilian drama and Sundance entry, Divino Amor. The design feels like those ubiquitous paperback novels of the 1980s, dealing more in iconography than 'description.' Even the tagline here, "True...
by Kurt Halfyard

Friday One Sheet: TEEN SPIRIT

Even after the Pink Explosion of Key Art in 2017, I still find the colour endearing in all its forms in movie poster design. Case in point is the one sheet for Max Minghella's Teen Spirit, which features a fuchsia...
by Kurt Halfyard

Review: MEGA TIME SQUAD, Swiss-Watch Crafted Silliness

One fine day in his sleepy coastal New Zealand town, after being booted out of living in his mom's garage, petty criminal wannabe (in the local parlance, "Bogan") John, and his dopey pal Gaz, decide to screw over their boss,...
by Kurt Halfyard

Friday One Sheet: DESTROYER (en Français)

High contrast. Minimalist design. Emphasize movie star. Dominating typeset. This. Is. A. French. Movie poster.  And yet it has all the Hollywood elements too.  All you need is A Girl, A Gun, and Hyperbolic pull-quotes. (Jamais! Jamais!) Don't get me...
by Kurt Halfyard

Friday One Sheet: HIGH LIFE Essays Biology in Space

Thus far, 2019 has been the year of Green. While two weeks hardly make a trend, it cannot be understated how underused green is in movie key art. Here is the poster for Claire Denis's 'sex-ain't-sexy' space drama, High Life,...
by Kurt Halfyard

Friday One Sheet: TRANSIT

Part near-future science fiction, and (seemingly) a hybrid remake of both Casablanca and The Passenger, Christian Petzold's Transit is a strange beast of a film. The Boland Design Co. offers a gorgeous, green tinted piece of key art that emphases...
by Kurt Halfyard

Friday One Sheet: HOTEL MUMBAI

As fitting for a movie with the word HOTEL in the title, the most recent poster for Hotel Mumbai features the sumptuous interior design of one of the rooms. Because the film is about the 2008 terror attacks on the...
by Kurt Halfyard

Friday One Sheet: The Best Posters of 2018

The beauty of 2018, in terms of Key Art, was in the wide range of styles and colour palettes that were designed for a difficult to categorize year, that was a mix of throwback aesthetics, experimentation and clean minimalism. There...
by Peter Martin

Screen Anarchy's Favorite Films of 2018

Here's our favorite films of 2018, as voted on by more than 20 of our contributing writers, who collectively picked 114 films as their favorites. 1. Roma 2. The Favourite 3 (tie). BlacKkKlansman / You Were Never Really Here 5....
by Kurt Halfyard

Friday One Sheet: GRETA

The teaser poster for Neil Jordan's latest thriller, Greta, is going the 'book cover' route in terms of design. That is to say, using icons, the fish hook and the work briefcase. The background is painted with a bold yellow...
by Kurt Halfyard

Friday One Sheet: Baby It's A COLD PURSUIT Outside...

Cold Pursuit is latest in a series of Liam Neeson revenge pictures. It is a remake of Hans Petter Moland's (here directing again) thriller, In Order Of Disappearance, which starred Stellan Skarsgård and Bruno Ganz. The 2014 version had a...
by Kurt Halfyard

Friday One Sheet: SHAZAM! (And the Deadpool Effect)

It has been a slow month for movie posters. And I rarely highlight superhero stuff, because I am no expert at the nuance/history of the characters and they are ubiquitious, and generally they are lazy. And yet, here we are...
by Kurt Halfyard

Friday One Sheet: THE EMPEROR OF PARIS

The art of the character poster is alive and well in France at the moment. Jean-François Richet's glossy blockbuster on the worlds first Private Detective, François Vidocq is no exception. Vincent Cassel is playing the criminal turned criminologist, who enraptured...