by Kurt Halfyard

Friday One Sheet: SUSPIRIA In Design

Back to the exceptional key art campaign for Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria remake. For me, this 3 colour 'design 101' minimal poster, and its colour shuffled variant, evoke the iconic poster for Andrej Zulawski's Possession. I mean, not obviously, of course,...
by Kurt Halfyard

Friday One Sheet: SPOOR

Today we have a stark, and 'uncanny valley' type of key art out of Turkey. Agnieszka Holland's much lauded Polish crime film, Pokot (Trophy), took a fair number of awards and plaudits on the festival circuit including Berlin's Silver Bear,...
by Kurt Halfyard

Friday One Sheet: Tied Up For THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT

Lars Von Trier's serial killer miniseries, The House That Jack Built, that got condensed into a feature has a monochrome-palette set of character posters that recall the advertising campaign for Von Trier's last large opus, Nymphomaniac. Indeed, design studio The...
by Kurt Halfyard

Friday One Sheet: A SIMPLE (Thai) FAVOR (Again)

A number of weeks ago, we slathered on the love for the pastel geometric key art designs for Paul Feig's mystery thriller, A Simple Favour. As the film gets an international push, there has been consistency in the marketing campaign,...
by Kurt Halfyard

Toronto 2018 Review: IN FABRIC Is More Thriftshop Than Selfridges

Any new Peter Strickland film is cause for celebration. The Berkshire auteur has delivered some of the most delightful unease (and wicked humour) in cult cinema since 2009's Katalin Varga. In Fabric is his most wildly fluctuating film, where the highs...
by Kurt Halfyard

Toronto 2018 Review: NON-FICTION, A Comedy That Is Both Social And Media

"More people read my blog than my books," decries one of the characters in Olivier Assayas's latest film, Non-Fiction. The response from another is, that those blog readers are more likely than anyone else to buy those books. And a...
by Kurt Halfyard

Toronto 2018 Review: WIDOWS, Intelligent and Slick Commercial Cinema

Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez and Elizabeth Debicki star in Steve McQueen's top-quality heist movie.
by Kurt Halfyard

Toronto 2018 Review: AMERICAN DHARMA Wrestles With Our Current Political Carnage

The third chapter in Errol Morris's documentary interview trilogy on significant figures in USA policy creation and thinking is described by the director himself as "his horror movie." Indeed, the Oscar-winning documentarian showcased a very considerate and quite repentant Secretary...
by Kurt Halfyard

Friday One Sheet: SUSPIRIA And Watercolour Nightmares

Our poster column is more or less on hold while the Toronto International Film Festival takes over the city for the next ten days, but I wanted to quickly highlight Tony Stella's watercolour terror of a poster for the remake...
by Kurt Halfyard

Friday One Sheet: CINEMATOGRAPHE LUMIERE, The World's First Movie Poster

Looking more 'theatrical playbill' than 'key art,' this One Sheet, for the Lumière Brothers' travelling collection of short films, is a beautiful, even understated, representation of its time. Released in December 1895, to advertise a bold new entartinment technology, and...
by James Marsh

Festival Diary: Arrow Video FrightFest Day 1 - THE RANGER, SUMMER OF 84

The 19th edition of the UK’s foremost celebration of ghoulish genre cinema kicked off in riotous style last night at the glorious Empire Cinema in London’s Leicester Square. The five-day horrorthon kicked off with the UK premiere of Jenn Wexler’s...
by Kurt Halfyard

Friday One Sheet: Gaspar Noe's CLIMAX

One thing you are guaranteed with a Gaspar Noe film is a good poster. Whether or not you like his aggressively immersive and highly sexualized cinema, the key art is always distinct, original, and magnificent. Today we have the first...
by Kurt Halfyard

Friday One Sheet: SLICE And Brand Humor

The minimal teaser posters for A24's 'pizza delivery boy slasher film,' Slice, get right to the meat and cheese of the matter. B O N D, one of my favourite key art design houses who did the tropical Star Wars:...
by Kurt Halfyard

Review: SUMMER OF '84 Has An Interesting Dialogue With THE 'BURBS

Be it in big cities or small towns, people have spied on their neighbours, and assumed the worst about them, since we traded a nomadic hunter-gatherer society for permanent houses. It was, however, Alfred Hitchcock (and screenwriter John Michael Hayes)...
by Kurt Halfyard

Interview: RKSS Talk Childhood, Serial Killers and SUMMER OF '84

On the afternoon prior to their sophomore feature film playing to the home-town crowd at Fantasia, I had an all too brief chat with the Quebecois director trio known as Road Kill Super Stars (RKSS) about Summer of '84. Sitting...
by Kurt Halfyard

Review: THE CRESCENT, A Quietly Confident Experiment in Horror Cinema

Late in Seth A Smith's The Crescent, there is a hushed shot of the lead character, who happens to be a 2-year-old toddler, sitting on a beach, framed inside an hollow wreck of an old seaside house. The camera slowly...
by Kurt Halfyard

Fantasia 2018: It's a Wrap on Montreal's Wonderful Summer Camp for Genre Fans

The 22nd Fantasia International Film Festival has come to a close. Hats off to anyone with the stamina to make it from the early July beginning to curtain closes in August. We know a few folks who do the three...
by Kurt Halfyard

Friday One Sheet: Possible New Poster Cliche - The Image Vortex

Three data points do not make a trend, and therefore I may be wrong on this. However, after perusing the series of potential posters for Terry Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Do Quixote, one of them stood out immediately as...
by Andrew Mack

LUZ: Watch The New Teaser Trailer For Tilman Singer's Intense Debut

Already taking the festival circuit by storm, this intense, and intensely strange, possession mind bender, now has now a teaser trailer worthy of the experience. Tilman Singer's Luz, deftly straddles the line between genre and art-house, and it is sure...
by Kurt Halfyard

Friday One Sheet: THE SPY WHO DUMPED ME and the Vintage Travel Poster

Perhaps another Hollywood parody of the Super Spy genre is not the cup of tea of the regular Screen Anarchy readership. In this column, however, we look at the styling and quality of the key art, not necessarily of the...