Friday One Sheet: PARTY POSTER
Rishi Chandna's short film Party Poster, is about a particular Indian phenomenon where associations of all kinds, political, commercial, et cetera make these absurdly cluttered and colourful banners for events both big and small: A politician's birthday, or in this...
Friday One Sheet: Bryan Lenning's JOKER
Whatever your feelings about the oddball, glossy-grimy stand-alone Joker -- and people had very strong feelings about either the quality, the nihilism, or the emptiness of Todd Phillips' quasi-remake of Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy as a comic-book origin story -- the...
Calgary Underground 2022 Short Film Short Review: CORNERS, A Bespoke Deadpan
Rory is a thorough man in a lackadaisical world. In the near future, Canada, and possibly the world has implemented a thorough set of guidelines for inspection and health of the corners of public buildings. Rory takes his job...
Calgary Underground 2022 Review: WE MET IN VIRTUAL REALITY, Authentic Feel-Good Experience
The Metaverse is coming. But before we get to that future dystopia, be it Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash or Zuck’s cringey-what-have-you, there is this charming little cafe-stop along the way. Joe Hunting’s We Met In Virtual Reality is a surprisingly...
Calgary Underground 2022 Review: THE RIGHTEOUS Offers A Stark Portrait of Guilt
The Righteous opens with the funeral of a young girl. Her mourning adopted parents, an ex-priest and his wife, still maintain active ties with the biological mother. There is an awkward visit in the family living room, adorned with many...
Friday One Sheet: IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE
The prolific, one-a-year-but-sometimes-two, output of Hong Sang Soo has yielded some brilliant posters, particularly the 'designing for designers' approach that artist Brian Hung has brought to the key art for his films in recent years. (Hat tip to Mubi for this 2021...
Friday One Sheet: EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE
While it is not the first film to do this (Key & Peele's Keanu springs to mind), the fact that Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert's Everything Everywhere All At Once is a 'multiverse science fiction black comedy action film' makes it...
Friday One Sheet: MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON
This is a poster about natural light. It is also a poster with a seashell with an eyeball that is wearing shoes, and parachuting with a lollipop wrapper. Let us just talk the light here though. Typically it is (some...
Friday One Sheet: IN THE DARKNESS OF BEING
Today we have a trio of stylish posters for Ashley Abel's short film, In The Darkness of Being, that come at the audience in three different ways, all courtesy of design house Melt. Maybe it is from watching too many episodes...
Calgary Underground Film Festival Reveals Full Line-Up
The wonderful, nerdy, and casually fun Calgary Underground Film Festival, CUFF, returns to the Globe Theatre for a fully in-person festival -- Amen! -- taking place from April 21-28. But fret not if you are located in Canada's Texas (aka...
Friday One Sheet: PETITE MAMAN
This is not the first piece of key art from Céline Sciamma's tiny drama, Petite Maman, featured in this space. The motion and joy of the Korean design was discussed in 2021. As the film is getting a commercial release...
Friday One Sheet: RESIDENT EVIL
After 20 years of feature films, and an untold number of video games on multiple platforms, the un-killable zombie franchise, Resident Evil, comes to Netflix. I must say, the teaser designs for the series are superb. High impact yellow, loads...
Friday One Sheet: BULLET TRAIN
I am highlighting the key art for this Hollywood-Japan blockbuster starring Brad Pitt, Sandra Bullock, and Sanada Hiroyuki because I am not entirely sure if the design house, BLT Communications, was aiming for a Japanese train safety card aesthetic or simply phoning...
Friday One Sheet: CALCINCULO
Here is a lovely, hand-drawn festival poster that captures that exact moment on a swing where you simply let go and enjoy the gravity of the situation. The key art is for an Italian-Switzerland co-production, Calcinculo, where I have the feeling...
Friday One Sheet: FRESH
One of the best film festival press kits that has ever been offered was Fortissimo Films' promotion for György Pálfi's culty, exceptionally (but delightfully) grotesque Taxidermia. It came in a styrofoam tray, wrapped in shrink-wrap, where the booklet itself was...
Review: A BANQUET, A Nightmare of Single Parenting
“We’ve all got problems, darling, don’t be the show.” At about the midpoint of A Banquet, a grandmother frames her granddaughter’s mental health crisis as an elaborate psychodrama. June (iconic character actor Lindsay Duncan, tough as nails with a hint...
A Creepy Teaser Trailer for Alex Garland's MEN
Alex Garland, the writer/director behind the superb science-fiction-horror pictures Ex Machina, Annihilation (and former collaborator with Danny Boyle which he wrote 28 Weeks Later and Sunshine, among others) returns to the big screen after a short dalliance with television (DEVS)....
10+ Years Later: AIR DOLL Has Not Aged a Day
I saw Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Air Doll on the festival circuit during the fall of 2009, in Toronto. Watching it again over a decade later, I realized what I had taken away from the film was not so much a...
Friday One Sheet: THE LONG WALK
This new poster for Mattie Do's The Long Walk, released ahead of its upcoming cinema bow, does several interesting things. First, it visualizes the central image of a road, via perspective, as a wide ocean. All that sepia-tinged negative space is...
Review: SUNDOWN, Quietly Extreme and Surreal
Tim Roth and Charlotte Gainsbourg star in a drama directed by Michel Franco.
