Michelle, Anne, Almodovar and Charlotte Sitting in The Tree

Okay, not quite.

Lets wipe the stink of artistic failure from our collective memories and take a peek at three amazing works of poster artwork. Click all images to enlarge.

The poster for Lone Scherfig's One Day starring Anne Hathaway may look 1993 ad for a perfume named "Sunday Morning Suede", but I actually really dig it. A lot. I like the way the colours appear washed out like an old photograph, and yet they still pop out. I like the continued use of numbers throughout and I even like the slash between Hathaway and Jim Sturgess' names. Weird, I know. I guess I'm also just thankful that they've shown these two stars in an embrace and not some lame-brained, posey posey mess. Since they've branded the poster with their logo, I don't really need to tell you where it came from, do I? *grumblegrumble*

Via Cinematical comes this poster for Kelly Reichartd's Meek's Cutoff. A while ago I spoke of how the poster for Never Let Me Go looked too much like a book cover to properly sell the film, the same can be said for this and yet I actually think it works much better. Love the pencil-drawn image at the core, and while it is completely unrepresentative of the film the distributor has gotta sell those tickets somehow! Conjuring up memories of True Grit is probably not a bad way to go. I like the colour, which is so rarely used, I like the way the cast is laid out and the typeface has me drooling (I have a bizarre fondness for words fitting into other words like puzzle pieces.

From The Playlist comes... well, this. It sure is something, isn't it? The first poster for Pedro Almodovar's The Skin That I Inhabit is a blunted peek at the film's nastiness. A weird merging of "pretty" and "sickening", which sounds fitting for an Almodovar film with echoes of Eyes Without a Face. You certainly won't be able to blame the movie for people going and being turned off by all the scalpel action if they keep marketing the movie this way. It puts its cards on the table quite willingly, which is to be admired.

And what of Charlotte? Well, she doesn't get a poster, but there is some happy news! One of my absolute favourite films from last year was Julie Bertuccelli's France/Australia coproduction, The Tree and I was glad to read today that an American release date is on the cards through Zeitgeist. Indiewire reports that the film, a sublime rumination on life after death (Clint Eastwood should take note), will be released in New York and Los Angeles before a national roll-out. I hope my American readers will get the chance to experience The Tree for themselves.

Blue Movie

A little poll for you lovely readers on this Wednesday afternoon.

poll by twiigs.com

That third one, in case you're wondering, is the newly released Australian poster from the wonderful local design company Carnival Studio. What do you guys reckon is the best? The earlier pink design? The American design that goes the "blue movie" route with its dark colours, or the Australian design with its golden hues? Have a say.

Black & White Friday: Shutter Island

Perhaps an obvious choice, but even though I didn't like the movie I still thought there would be enough within it to sustain a Black & White Friday entry. I was surprised by how modern the film felt and, perhaps, I might have liked it more if it had surrendered to the classicism of it all (not that I would expect Martin Scorsese to go there, but this tale was begging for a big ol' noir-tinged camp telling, don't you think?) I just could not buy Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo as characters from the 1950s and with so many modern filmmaking flourished from Scorsese mixed with the obvious gothicism of it all and Shutter Island felt confused and really quite boring.


Interesting, I found the art direction of Shutter Island quite bothersome. The exterior scenes were great, but the interior ones were just too over the top in 1950s insane asylum decor. And yet when the colour is gone I feel that the interior scenes looked better. Strange, that. Whoever scouted this location, however, deserves a special cheque from Marty.


I quite liked Ben Kingsley here. Not in any particular "wow, his acting is superb" kind of way, but I thought he totally fit into the vibe of the movie. I can see him slotting right into the same role had this movie been made in 1954 (er, if he'd been alive and all that jazz of course) with his propensity to overact and be a bit larger than life. It's just a shame that Martin didn't really frame him in any particularly interesting ways.


The skies of this movie always looked so manufactured (and not in a matte kinda way like they would've been in the past), just so much CGI! gah! In black and white they look excellent, though.


See what I mean? Lovely shot by any means.


This is what I was talking about before. In the movie, this scene is just quite putrid and unappealing, but in black and white it feels so much more classical and less like I'm gonna get tetanus.





The women of Shutter Island. Scorsese can work miracles with actresses so it is always a shame when he doesn't just knuckle down and make a movie with a female lead role. He went there with The Age of Innocence and it's one of Marty's very best and just thinking of the performances from the likes of Sandra Bernhard, Lorraine Bracco, Cate Blanchett, Sharon Stone and the women of After Hours makes me shudder in delight. My favourite of the women in Shutter Island was Patricia Clarkson (and I love the shot I captured of her, actually looking quite old fashioned) because she was just so "on" and focused. Her role is thankless, really, but she does good stuff with it. Same goes for underrated actress Robin Bartlett (at the top). Emily Mortimer is good in her prison cell scene, too, although I admit I was very wrong about predicting her Oscar win.

And that leaves Michelle Williams, the weakest of the four. She doesn't really get much to do, does she? Despite having the most screen time of them all she basically just has to stand around and look a little bit sick, a little big ethereal and a little bit like there's not much going on upstairs. I chose this shot, however, because it reminded me of a similar moment in David Lynch's Mulholland Drive which, let's face it, Scorsese was clearly inspired by in some respects.


I really liked this scene. It had compelling actors actually doing good acting, advancing the story (and not just needless plodding like so much of the rest of the movie) and it was one of the very few moments that fully embraced the concept of this kinda noir, kinda camp, kinda artificial world (notice how it actually does look like an old kinda movie that it's halfheartedly trying to be).


This moment very much looks like a shot from an old movie, I reckon. Perhaps that's because we can't see the faces of any of the very modern actors? Perhaps.