A Horse, Of Course

The news that Hungary has submitted Bela Tarr's The Turin Horse, his two-and-a-half hour black and white movie about poor folk who eat potatoes, as their Oscar submission filled me with so much delight. More delight than should ever actually come out of that gruelling film, I reckon. You've gotta appreciate a country doing something like this when there was surely something about WWII that they could submit and have an easier chance at recognition. Perhaps the Hungarians saw the out of left field nominations for Yorgos Lanthimos's Dogtooth from Greece, as well as the even more potato-centric The Milk of Sorrow of Peru and thought "Hey, why not?"

Even after the surprise of Dogtooth amidst the Oscar nominations earlier this year, I can't say I hold much hope for The Turin Horse. However, never give up hope! Maybe, just maybe, the foreign language committee branch (or whatever they call themselves these days) will want to humour the Oscar purists and nominate it. Not that it wouldn't be a worthy nomination mind you - I very much liked it, despite the nightclub drag act the screening fiasco had in stall for us - but just an incredibly baffling one that would sure confuse anybody who should happen to blindly go into a screening based purely on such a hypothetical nomination. Not every country has submitted their chosen film, but it's hard to not see A Separation as the already gung ho favourite, yeah?

Thanks to the ever dependable Guy Lodge at InContention, I have been reminded that Hungary - ever the eyebrow raisers, apparently - submitted György Pálfi's Taxidermia several years back, which I am assuming didn't get very far in the Oscar screening rooms. Unless you count the number of sick bags and hurried trips to the nearest sink/rubbish bin/quiet corner, in which case I imagine it was a raging success! The Turin Horse, with it's pared back visuals, claustrophobic sound design, brutally slow plodding pace and dry, very, very dry, sense of humour will no doubt be a tough watch for the supposedly elderly branch members, but if they really want to see fit to bestow nominations upon the most interesting, acclaimed and wellmade foreign films of the year then they could do far, far worse than The Turin Horse. Of course.

The Best (and Worst) Posters of 2009

We here are Stale Popcorn (ie Me) loooove movie posters. They can be gorgeous, hideous, hilarious, frightening or arousing and I always find something to point out. As 2009 has now drawn to a closer it is time to look back of the past year of film artwork and single out those that rung my bell so the speak. Very soon there will be a look over the entire decade - I already know what's #1 so that exciting part of list making is a dead end - but for now we are focusing on the year that was 2009. A year when, thankfully, big empty white space just wasn't as prominent as usual - it is something that I am predictable to a fault over - but with less of that came more of those annoying stripey posters and more "film still surrounded by nothing" designs. These people really need some new defaults.

I'm not doing a worst list again because after that first year I realised there are just far too many bad ones, but I hope you enjoy the extra fun categories towards the end. To catch up on previous years you can click here and here. Let's proceed, shall we?


(click on all images to enlarge)
(all images courtesy of IMP and MPDb)

10. Broken Embraces

Sure, this idea has been done before, but when you have Pedro Almodovar directing Penelope Cruz in a film noir I think an exception can be made. The colours scream "ALMODOVAR!" don't they?

9. Taxidermia

I saw this film years ago, but it only came out in America in 2009 and with it came this wonderful design. Anyone who has seen Palfi's film will know that you need a stomach made of stone just to sit through it, and the idea of making art out of something disgusting is all on show on this poster. "A twisted slice of life" indeed!

8. Julie & Julia

This poster makes me sing "Lean on me / When you're not strong" and so on. As delicately done as the eggs on the poster, this poster is just on the right side of cutesy twee and I actually like that "Based on two true stories" tagline. So much so that I can forgive that "adult woman's romantic comedy font".

7. Thirst

Because you can't say it doesn't... grab your attention. And then thrust it in your face!

6. The Brothers Bloom

Almost too overwhelmed by its own design, this poster thankfully has a purpose to its intricate artsy drawing motif instead of just wanting to appear hip. And I like that it continues its idea into the border and the credits, which some key art designers seem to just forget about.

5. Moon

Hypnotic, isn't it?

4. A Christmas Carol

I'm not sure if they used this design at all in English-speaking countries - I only ever saw that annoying one with Jim Carrey flying - but I think this German design (it is German isn't it?) is by far better and does a great job at selling the movie as the darker film it (apparently) is. If this were a horror movie I'd think it was even better since I actually get a bit of a chill from it, don't you?

3. Precious: Based on the Novel PUSH by Sapphire

Definitely the film with the most excellent posters (there is also this, this and not least of all this), but it was this (literally) shattering design that floored me the most. And for a movie poster to so bluntly push the film's sexual abuse angle is quite shocking.

2. The Girlfriend Experience

And I still don't even know what it's meant to "be". What is it that makes this poster for Steven Soderbergh's low-budget movie starring a porn star so... alluring? It's certainly not Sasha Grey, that's for sure. Is it the polka dots? It's gotta be the polka dots! Right? Unless I'm forgetting something, this definitely has the best tagline of the year: "See it with someone you ****". Amazing.

1. Antichrist

And not just because I actually sorta helped make it famous, but because it’s just so brilliant in idea and so artfully executed. If you even have the slightest idea of the film's big... er, moment, then you know why the idea of the scissors clamping shut in order to the heads to kiss is a leg-crossing, but altogether ballsy, idea to portray on a movie poster.

And let me tell ya, there's nothing quite like seeing a whole row of this design plastered over a wall on Spencer Street here in Melbourne! I had to take a photo. Yes, those are my fingers. I was taking the photo from inside a tram.


Notice how the second from the left has been torn down by someone as a keepsake?

Best Rip-Off:
Black Dynamite

Blaxpoitation at its finest.

Dreamiest Use of Colour:
Bright Star (Aus)

I saw this hanging up at a cinema the other day nearly 4 metres high and, gosh, it really is dreamy.

Best Saul Bass Impersonation:
Three Blind Mice

Although there is another poster out there floating about on which I am quoted!

Best Poster Series:
The Hangover

And all the others too! Runner-Up being District 9.

Best Upgrade

For turning those boring posters into one that actually makes sense in the form of this Asian design that apes off of Sgt Pepper.

Best Use of Indie Money:
Breaking Upwards

Sometimes working on a budget of two cents can product better looking work than millions.

Worst Rip-Off:
Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself

Because ripping off one of the best posters of all time for a Madea movie just seems so bizarre. Runner-ups include Everybody Wants to be Italian, My Life in Ruins and Fame (it's as if Coca-Cola and Apple made a musical about overly enthusiastic American Idol contestants.

Worst Trend:
Notepads and drawings (According to Greta, Stay Cool, Away We Go, I Love You Beth Cooper, etc)


Because nothing says annoying quite like this! It was fun a few years ago, but not anymore.

Unscariest Poster for a "Scary Movie":
The Haunting in Connecticut

I don't even wanna know.

Worst Photoshopping:
{tie}
Nine and My One and Only

Considering the latter got a barely there release and I don't even think many people know of its existence I can almost accept the bad photoshopping, but there's no excuse for Nine. None at all. Previously written about here and here.

The "My, What a Big Floating Head You Have" Award for Excellence in Big Floating Heads:
Natalie Imbruglia in Closed for Winter

She released the best album of 2009, but also one of the worst movies. The poster was no better.

Worst "Empty Space" Poster:
Did You Hear About the Morgans?

What makes this movie even worse is that, having now seen it, the event portrayed in the poster doesn't even happen in the movie. Gah!

Funniest "WTF?" Moment

For real? No, seriously, ARE THEY FOR REAL?!? It's just so... wtf?

Worst False Advertising:
{tie}
H2, For not actually being a direct-to-DVD movie despite what the poster implies, and;
Obsessed, for giving the impression that this movie isn't just an excuse to watch Beyonce whoop some white girl ass (and that her father was a producer, natch!)


Most Unappealing Poster:
Crank 2: High Voltage

Ya know, normally I'd think the idea of Jason Statham appearing anywhere (especially a movie poster) without a shirt would be a pleasant thing, but not here. Grotesque, ugly and repulsive. Blegh!

The "This Deserves Better" Award
Nine, The Road, A Single Man and Me & Orson Welles


I haven't seen any of these movies, but I can't imagine them being any worse than their posters. That three of them a Weinstein Company releases is quite telling.

THE WORST POSTER OF 2009:
The Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience

To think I wrote this blog piece on 9 January and it has held up all year long as the worst piece of drivel advertising I have seen all year. I like that the winning answer of the poll I ran at the time was "They're worse than herpes". Just dreadful in every imaginable way.

The Second Annual Showgirls Honourary Award for Brilliance in the Face of Ineptitude in Poster Design:
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

Why oh why was the poster in which Nicolas Cage waves a gun in the face of two old ladies (and an iguana) banned? Sure, it shows threatening violence and that's a big no no, but is it really any more offensive than the Jonas Brothers using their guitars as representation of their penis? I think not! Meanwhile look at the gun on that second poster! Yowza! I think he's happy to see me.

Review: Taxidermia

Taxidermia
Dir. György Pálfi
Year: 2006
Aus Rating: R18+
Running Time: 91mins

I watched the humourously revolting Taxidermia last night. You may know that title as one of the official selections of 2006's Cannes Film Festival and as Hungary's entry into the 2007 foreign language film category at the Academy Awards. I had heard plenty about it, about how it was not for a faint of heart and how it's one of the sickest movies ever made.

Well, I gotta ask - is it really that sick? Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of disgusting images in this film and the themes it explores are positively nauseating, but is watching a man fuck a pig really more vile than any of the images we get served yearly in horror films? Isn't it more sick to watch someone be stripped and murdered (and perhaps be asked to enjoy it) than it is to watch a man stuff an obese man's corpse with grass?

...okay, perhaps it is.
But I was still surprised how little I was revolted by György Pálfi's film. Taxidermia has three stories, all - I assume - adapted from the Lajos Parti Nagy short stories - that revolve around three generations of men. The first is an errand boy who is addicted to swallowing fire and eventually grows a flame-throwing penis. The next story is about his son who has a pig tail and grows up to become a competitive speed eater vying for the affection of an Olympic gold medalist speed eating woman. The third and final story is about his son who is a taxidermist who cares for his 600 pound father and his fat lard-eating cats.

Notice how casually I said all that? It's because the film takes itself so casually that it stops being revolting and shocking after a while and the disgusting acts it is showing become merely part of the scenery. It doesn't show you these people degrading themselves because it can, it does it because that's simply what they do. Make sense? Probably not.

The only parts where I actually felt quite sick was during the speed eating scenes of the second story. And even then it was only the copious amounts of CGI vomit that was irksome. The film's "centrepiece" - I guess you could call it that - is a scene in the final moments of the taxidermist son enacting his profession with deeply disturbing skill before the scene ends with one of the more genuinely shocking revelations I've seen in a long time. I can barely watch anything that involves medical work yet I was strangely transfixed.


Taxidermia is bloody and brutal, it doesn't shy away from showing the audience images that it knows will find sickening, but as I've said, it doesn't show these things merely to gross an audience out (well, maybe a little). I really think it is showing a story of these three people. Stories that just happen to involve bestiality, self-mutilation, murderous felines, embryo modelling, children with curly pig tails and a scene involving caviar that will make someone with the most seasoned food palate squirm in their seat at the sight of it.

That Palfi makes the film so watchable at all is, I think, a testiment to this surprisingly young director (he's 33, and this is only his second feature-length film). He has amassed a great technical team alongside him. The photography by Gergely Pohárnok somehow mananges to find a grimey beauty in the images. The editing by Réka Lemhényi is probably some of the very best of the year and Lemhényi should be snapped up quick smart by a director with more, how shall I put this? With more commercial possibilities. In fact the work by the cinematographer and editor work incredibly well together (surprisingly rare) and there is one sequence that involves a revolving bathtub that is fascinating to watch as the two medium merge into one. Adrienn Asztalos's art direction is also kookily fascinating, filling rooms with stripped paint, dead animals and all sorts of various fetishist images. There's no denying that Taxidermia looks like a Hollywood film gone down the Midnight Movie path. Discussing the performances however is generally on the pointless side, but of team of grotesques I thought Marc Birschoff was a standout and one worthy of future thought.

I wouldn't recommend Taxidermia to many people, but if the idea of watching a man have sex with a morbidly obese woman who then partway through turns into a dead pig carcus sounds like something that doesn't make you want to heave at the mere thought, then seek it out. You may just find outself being surprised, and in more ways than one I imagine. B