Ranking Woody Allen Posters + Midnight in Paris Meets Van Gogh

The poster for Woody Allen's latest film, Midnight in Paris, has been released at Yahoo and I liked it. It's nothing groundbreaking or particularly ingenious, but I think it's nice and shows at least some artistic thought that was sorely lacking in this department for Allen's films lately.


The poster it obviously reminded me of most of all was Allen's Everyone Says I Love You, another Parisian-set film that featured a poster on the banks of the Seine. This one is obviously better than that one from 1997 since it's not just a movie still with floating block heads chillin' in the sky above. As for this poster, it ranks as one of the better Allen designs as of late, but let's take a look at his entire career for this list of the best Woody Allen movie posters, shall we?

20. Mighty Aphrodite
19. What's Up, Tiger Lily?
18. Hannah and Her Sisters


17. Alice
16. Husbands & Wives
15. Another Woman


14. September
13. Scoop
12. Everyone Says I Love You


11. New York Stories
10. Celebrity
9. Radio Days


8. Hollywood Ending
7. Deconstructing Harry
6. Sleeper


5. Shadows and Fog

Such great composition. Gives a perfect reflection of the kind of film it's selling and does so with a great central image.

4. New York Stories

The only film on this list with two entries is this Allen/Scorsese/Coppola omnibus film from 1989. As you'll see with our #2 entry as well, many foreign Woody Allen posters are far better than their domestic American versions. Why that is, I'm not too sure, although I did like the American one for New York Stories as well (up at #11), just not as much as this delightful Asian design. Of course, both come from a time when the director was as much the star as the actors and cinemagoers new what film directors looked like enough to put them on the poster! You would never see that today, would you?

3. Small Time Crooks

In my Top 50 Posters of the Decade countdown last year I wrote: "Fun visual gag alongside that attention-grabbing silhouette and a silly, but delightful, tagline. Considering the efforts that have gone into some Woody Allen films this past decade ... I think we can safely call this one a winner." And that still stands.

2. Anything Else

Yet another Asian design - Asian posters to me are what Polish/Czech posters are to most others, apparently - and whatta design it is! Love the use of an old New York map, the oddball drawing style and that apple. It all "adds up to something wonderful and almost whimsical (but not in the annoying indie way)." I ranked it as the 12th best poster of the decade.

1. Manhattan

I shouldn't like this poster as much as I do. Not only does it use a movie still, but it lumps it up in the top third of the design and fills the rest with nothing but white space and text. And yet...

And yet... if you're going to do this sort of design concept, this is how you should do it! Picking an instantly iconic slice of imagery for one thing helps and then roughening the edges of it so it doesn't merely look like you put it there and forgot it existed. And, hey look at that! A typeface that is relevant and romantic and dreamy. Can I say that that's my favourite film poster font of all time? Because I think it is. It's just so perfect in every way.

So, dear readers, do you agree? Disagree? What would you say is your favourite Woody Allen poster and where does Midnight in Paris rank?

Review: Sanctum

Sanctum
Dir. Alister Grierson
Year: 2011
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 109mins

Woody Allen’s 1993 gem Bullets Over Broadway about an aging theatrical diva in prohibition-era New York City may be a strange film to think of while watching the new 3D adventure film Sanctum. And yet here I am recalling Dianne Wiest’s alcoholic star of the stage Helen Sinclair and her memorable catchphrase: “Don’t speak!”

Read the rest at Onya Magazine
Yes, do read on because even I was surprised that I was able to somehow get a Woody Allen reference into the first paraphraph of my review of the new 3D adventure movie starring Richard Roxburgh and his nose (that nose joke was for Mel Campbell).

Speaking of Onya Magazine though, I'm kinda the new film editor there so you will hopefully be seeing a much larger coverage of Australian film there (and, subsequently, here) as I try to attempt to review a large percentage of all the Australian films that get released. I'll probably go down in flames attempting it, but we'll see, shall we?

The 38 Faces of Nicole Kidman

Have you seen this "DP/30" (30 minutes with David Poland) video at Movie City News with Nicole Kidman? Poland interviewed her for Rabbit Hole in which she stars as well as produces. It's a very entertaining interview and one filled with hilarious recollections (I adore the way her voice changes during the story about being born in Hawaii), anecdotes (Sean Penn sending her a note saying "you were robbed") and admissions (she knows she's had "failures"). All with her wicked sense of humour and a deep interest in the subjects at hand.


One pertinent issue that she raises is the idea that films can "fizzle out" when their release date is too prolonged after their initial flourish of buss and festival success. So many films play at big festivals much like Rabbit Hole did at Toronto and yet get released anywhere up to a year later. I distinctly remember all the hubbub out of Cannes about Woody Allen's Match Point and yet it was released much later in the year, by which time the buzz had cooled off. Another recent example is The Loved Ones, but we won't go through that again.

I like how, for a woman who has apparently can't show any emotion whatsoever, she is so animated in this interview. Naturally, I took screencaps. I started taking just a few of my favourite moments and it somehow ended up becoming 38. Why didn't anybody stop me? Click to embiggen and try and spot your favourite!

First Impressions

"Leave your comfort zone? Unless you're Zach Galifianakis, right?"


"Oh look, somebody wrote a book about emotionally distant British people! Wait, this is a movie? Is it about emotionally distant British people?"


"I am based on a comic book, can you tell?


"It's nice when unconventional-looking women get lead roles, isn't it? Although her teeth are way too perfect for a British person in the 1960s!"


"The Curse of the Jade Scorpian 2?"


"THIS MOVIE FEATURES A TALKING LION!"


"If Hoot taught us anything it's that audiences really want movies about owls!"


"This movie stars George Clooney."


"I will not be winning Oscars, but I will take your money."




"For black women and the gay men who worship actresses only."


"The impossible true story of how a horse battled against a blue gradient background."


"If you're a male, don't even bother."


"This movie is about computers and how you can make money from them."


"This movie is about computers and how you should fear them. The Net didn't happen, okay?!"


"Someone called Jack goes boating."

Five Shots: Mirrors