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.

Incident at Uluru and Other Undiscovered Aussie Films

I had never heard of The S.P.A.S.H. until today when Matt Riviera mentioned it on Twitter. They are "The Society for the Preservation of Australian Secret Histories, which is an independent organisation dedicated to the discovery and study of undocumented, suppressed and censored historical events that have occurred in Australia since becoming a federation on the 1st of January 1901." Basically they work in showing you things that have heretofore been unseen.

Thing is, it's all a big ruse. I love it!

The S.P.A.S.H., I take it, is essentially a new and interesting way for whoever it is that runs the joint to get their work out there. The first of their "undocumented, suppressed and censored historical events" to be uncovered is the work of cult leader Ray "Millennium Ray" Author" who ran a cult/film studio in the Australian outback. The studio was called Dreamtime 79 and they made many films as a way of getting the Dreamtime cult message to large audiences, an effort that ultimately failed. What we have left is this suspiciously well-preserved series of poster artwork for films such as Incident at Uluru, TasMANIA!, Cemetary Dogs and The Lair of the Lyre Bird.

Some of the absolutely stunning pieces of artwork are shown below, but click here to see the rest of them. If you're going to make up an entirely fictional cult movie studio as a method of showing off your poster designs (including an extensive history) then I think they deserve to be seen.



Is it bad that all of these posters are better than almost all of the posters made for real movies? And that all of these movies have such wonderful titles and delicious artwork that I instantly want someone to actually make them. They would have to be in the style of 1970s and '80s "ozploitation" flicks though. What a hoot!

Of course, the whole thing could be entirely real, in which case...

Review: Julia

Julia
Dir. Erick Zonca
Year: 2008/9
Aus Rating: N/A
Running Time: 144mins

A quick search on IMDb for the title "Julia" brings up roughly ten or so other projects with the exact same name, not to mention some called Julia Julia and Being Julia. That one of the Julias stars the likes of Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave and Jason Robards is like giving any movie there after with that title a push backwards. However, for as many films have been called Julia throughout the history of cinema, it's hard to imagine any of them are quite like the one that Erick Zonca presents. And while many pundits are calling for Meryl Streep to win her third Academy Award for playing a very different "Julia" - Julia Child in Nora Ephron's Julie & Julia - having now seen Swinton storm her way through Zonca's film, I can't help but wonder why everyone isn't screaming to high heaven for Swinton to win her second. Julia Vs Julia would be an interesting notion, sure, but one in which there is an easy and predictable winner: Tilda Swinton.

It's hard to properly explain just how fantastic Tilda Swinton truly is in Zonca's two and a half hour sprawling thriller. It, however, ranks as a performance of such ballsy bravura that it can easily rank alongside Naomi Watts in Mulholland Drive, Laura Dern in INLAND EMPIRE and Charlize Theron in Monster as such a towering, all-encompassing beast of a performance. Playing the permanently-sozzled lush title character as if her life depended on it, Swinton charges out of the gates at full speed. Dancing up a storm to the Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" and Sam Cooke's "Shopping Around" in the opening scene, gyrating on multiple partners and pouring alcohol into her gullet like petrol into a car.


I'm not going to even discuss where the film goes because, quite frankly, half the fun is getting there and not having a single clue as to what it going in (much like Julia herself has no idea what she's doing most of the time, too). Julia is not an "easy" watch, that's for sure, but it's hardly the gritty, miserable experience some may present it as. Sure, Julia is a despicable character for the majority of the films running time, doing everything including drugging children, stealing from gangsters, extorting money from drying tycoons and leaving a kid out in the desert by himself, but even when the viewer's eyes are bulging at the sheer audacity of what Julia has the guts to show, one has to admire it. Where does one, and I'm asking Erick Zonca personally here, get the nerve to write and direct a scene in which a grown woman wearing a mask waves a loaded gun in front of a child's face before tying him up to a pipe and putting masking tape over his face?

Julia isn't just a good film, however, due to Swinton's performance and the sheer audacity of Zonca's convictions. It's a technically efficient film with superb cinematography by Yorick Le Saux, interesting sound design and some sly second fiddle performances from the likes of Saul Rubinek, Kate del Castillo and Bruno Bichir. However, in the end, it really does all come down to Swinton and Zonca who have teamed up to present us with one of the most brazen films of the last few years. It is hardly surprising that the film only a got a four-night engagement at one cinema here in Melbourne. A barely attended four-night engagement, to be exact.


By the time Julia's almost comically perverse trip through Los Angeles suburbia and Mexican border towns comes to an end I felt exhausted and exhilarated and all but jumping with glee. To watch Tilda Swinton act hurricanes in Julia is to watch a master at work giving the performance of a lifetime. And if people do not go and see it because they would rather see New Moon so as to notch up some blog visitor numbers and some sarcastic tweets then so be it, but anybody willing to experience the pedal-to-the-medal bombastic tour de force of Julia will surely be enthralled from start to finish and even if one thinks the dismount that Zonca performs on the character of Julia is a discredit to the her - although I think it sits perfectly in with how the character is presented in early scenes with del Castillo - you surely cannot deny that it's a wild ride getting there and one that is completely and utterly unpredictable in every way. A-

Review: Wake in Fright

Wake in Fright
Dir. Ted Kotcheff
Year: 1971
Aus Rating: M (2009 ReRelease)
Running Time: 114mins

What’s dirty, sweaty, enthralling, dangerous, thrilling and covered in the orange haze of the desert? That would be Ted Kotcheff’s seminal Australian outback thriller Wake in Fright. A film of myth and legend within the film buff’s landscape for nearly 40 years since its premiere in 1971. Hailed by audiences and even a young Martin Scorsese at the Cannes Film Festival before screening in America and Britain. It was ripped to shreds by Aussie audiences – the miniscule amount of audiences that actually went – and since then the original prints went missing with the film to only ever pop up occasionally on late night television as presented by Bill Collins. The film was thought lost forever and a sad casualty of this country’s capacity for cultural cringe.


Read the rest of this review at Onya. And while you're at it, why don't you send a bit of a congratulations to Sandi Tinghello, the wonderful and lovely editor-in-chief of Onya, for the news that we will be going to print 2010! Great news!