International Features
Friday One Sheet: STRAYS
Here is the tail (sorry...) of two very different marketing campaigns for a Universal Studios R rated talking dog movie, Strays. USA versus Germany. In the United States, the movie star names are almost as big as the photos of...
Pretty Packaging: GHOST IN THE SHELL Lands An Ultimate Edition
Blu-ray distributor Plaion, previously known in Germany as Koch Media, has been responsible for some Special Editions which were absolute jawdroppers. Their release of Richard Stanley's The Color Out of Space was a highpoint for me in 2020, and last...
Friday One Sheet: HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE
Let there be no criticism of clarity on the key art for Daniel Goldhaber's eco-thriller, How To Blow Up A Pipeline. Large fire-engine red stencil letters, overlaid onto black smoke, foreground the title of the film that tells any prospective...
Pretty Packaging: The SHAWSCOPE VOLUME 2 Boxset Kicks Shins Again!
In my 2022 overview article I mentioned that Arrow had released two awesome Shaw Brothers Blu-ray boxsets. I also said that as I had given the first one a "Pretty Packaging" article, the second one would get one as well,...
Friday One Sheet: MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: DEAD RECKONING PART ONE
In spite of its incredibly clunky title, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One, the seventh film in Tom Cruise's M:I franchise has its first piece of key art, and it is lean and minimal. This teaser poster, from Concept Arts,...
First Look 2023 Preview: Survey of New World Cinema
Once again, First Look Festival at the Museum of the Moving Image is upon us, showcasing new, adventurous films from around the world. Encompassing features, shorts, narratives and non-narratives, this year's wide ranging selections include Tori and Lokita, a new film...
Friday One Sheet: JOHN WICK CHAPTER 4
The mountain of John Wick: Chapter 4 marketing has been fun and colourful, as is the franchise it supports. Recently, the film had a series of artists do different takes on key art, and while there are several of these...
Friday One Sheet: INSIDE (again)
The key art campaign by design house Arsonal, for Vasilis Katsoupis's psychological art-heist movie, Inside, continues to bear fruit. Here we have an abstract rendition of Willem Dafoe's face with manifestations of various emotional states (or demons) busting out from...
Preview: Rendez-Vous With French Cinema 2023
Showcasing the best of contemporary French films, this year's Rendez-Vous with French Cinema features 21 features from old masters to newcomers, including new films by Philippe and Louis Garrel, Arnaud Desplechin, Dominik Moll, Patricia Mazuy and Léa Mysius. Though I...
Friday One Sheet: THE ECHO
The power of a single image is full on display for in the key art for Tatiana Huezo's rural Mexico documentary, The Echo. A child hugs a tree. Simple. Not so fast. The colour scheme is cool blues with a...
Friday One Sheet: DALVA
This balanced piece of key art from design house Silenzio taps all the photography basics. Rule of thirds? Check. Bokeh? Check. Implied motion with low shutter speed? Check. In the digital-layer decades of over-processed, and cluttered, movie posters, the French,...
Friday One Sheet: OPPONENT
Design house riddertoft has been featured in this column several times. Their diverse work on titles such as Triangle of Sadness, Holy Spider, and Another Round, is always exceptional. Their key art, below, for Milad Alami's immigrant wrestling drama Opponent, is an...
Friday One Sheet: INFINITY POOL
I rarely do character-style posters in this column; however, Mia Goth is having a moment, so here we are. Design house AVPrint did a series of posters for Brandon Cronenberg's Infinity Pool, in ultra-tight closeup with a very high grain. This one,...
Friday One Sheet: CONSECRATION
We always love a bit of blasphemy here at Friday One Sheet, and today's key art for Chris Smith's Consecration fits the bill. This design from The Refinery immediately evokes Ken Russell's 1971 masterpiece, The Devils. Not so much that...
Evaluating FAUST, F.W. Murnau's Classic
Silent film director F.W. Murnau is probably best known for his work on the classic macabre film Nosferatu. Just to be clear, that may be his best film, as I almost assumed that he directed Metropolis in 1927. That was...
Friday One Sheet: SCREAM VI
When your slasher franchise is getting long in the tooth, you can bring it to New York, or Europe, or Space. The Scream franchise, with its sixth entry coming out in 2023, chose the first option. This is not terribly...
Now Streaming: Top 10 Series of 2022
Episodic series from around the world, debuting on streaming services.
Friday One Sheet: EYES WIDE SHUT
Yes, this has been floating around movie-nerd internet for some time, however, in the tradition of this column, that the last Friday before Christmas shall be an alternate Eyes Wide Shut poster, here we are. This 'Hallmark Christmas Movie' spoof...
Friday One Sheet: MANTICORE
The manticore is a creature from Persian mythology with the head of a lion and the tail of a scorpion. It is capable of shooting poisonous spines at its enemies and prey. I like this minimalist and old school poster...
Friday One Sheet: 1923
The star-system is not quite dead. Today we are stepping out of the usual 'movie poster' space, albeit looking below, you would never know it. 1923 is prequel series to long-running (and highly franchise-able, apparently) neo-western Yellowstone. Helen Mirren and...
