It’s the end of the month, so it is time to reflect, relax and rewind our way back through the one-sheets, banners, promotional artwork and posters released in the last calendar month, highlighting some of the ones we though were noteworthy. It’s a little section we like to call Best Posters.
A day late, a buck short, but we’re back for another month. It’s a slightly smaller crop this month, but what they lack in quantity, they more than make up for in quantity. Everything from re-releases to Fibonacci spirals and giant chickens can be found in this month’s column. So it’s business as usual, really.
Let us know in the comments below if we’ve missed your favourite, we got it wrong, or better yet, if we got it very right.
Blood Simple – Designer: The Boland Design Company
Janus Films are re-releasing a 4k remaster of of the Coen Brothers’ first feature, BLOOD SIMPLE, and The Boland Design company have a straightforward but stylish design for their neon-infused poster. The small, pearl-handled gun will be instantly recognisable to anybody that knows the movie.
Detour – Designer: Leroy and Rose
The upcoming TBS series from The Daily Show alumni Jason Jones and Samantha Bee is inspired by their own experiences on family vacations, and this is one of a series of viral tourism posters created to promote the show. We have a bit of an affinity to Chicago here, so this vision of someone throwing up into a green river is something all Chicagoans will recognise.
The Duel – Designer: LA
Despite a relatively straightforward design, there is a lot going on in these posters. First up, the “things within people” school of design has been popular in the last few years, and the presence of Woody Harrelson and this style can’t help but recall the opening credits of True Detective‘s first season. Then there’s the way the two posters work together with each other, placing them side by side as they are above (if you’re reading this on a desktop, tilt your screen on a mobile device), one gets the visual impression of a duel in progress.
Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World – Designer: P + A
“A Werner Herzog Film” would be more than enough to make this an interesting poster, but the representation of ubiquitous connectivity in the modern world is in his latest documentary is a person with a mass of wires for a head (or alternatively, their head is in there somewhere). Maybe we are all albino crocodiles looking back through the abyss of time?
Moana (Vaiana) – Designer: Hamagami/Carroll, Inc.
Disney’s highly anticipated animated film MOANA is referred to as VAIANA in the European market, and this poster uses the full French title: “Vaina La Légende Du Bout Du Monde” (literally “Vaiana: The Legend of the World’s End“) The simplicity is not too far removed from the US teaser poster, but here it’s even simpler: a tiny boat in the middle of the ocean, with the overlay of tribal tattoos (a feature of a teaser trailer) is Disney magic.
A Monster Calls – Designer: P+A
There is something intensely unsettling about this poster, and it’s not Liam Neeson’s name. It’s like the Wicker Man coming to life and getting a little touchy. Just without Edward Woodward burning alive inside him. Or maybe he is. We really don’t know, but we can imagine.
Nerve – Designer: LA (Photography by Cullin Tobin)
The viral campaign for the upcoming NERVE, about people entering an online video reality game, features a series of ads for the app in the film. This one has a giant rooster. Do you need to know more?
Power Rangers – Designer: LA
If this poster was shown to you without the caption, POWER RANGERS is not the first thing that would come to mind. Now, we were burned before with a series of stylish Jem and the Holograms posters, but this is the definition of a stylish teaser poster for what is sure to be a massive blockbuster with a heavily Photoshopped final payoff sheet.
Shark Week – Designer: Midnight Oil
As an outsider to the US, the whole Discovery Channel Shark Week thing is a little foreign to us. Yet this trippy poster is right up our alley, and so much like the dreams we had in those halcyon days spend on the beach, spent dreaming of flying dinosaur fish.
Suicide Squad – Designer: Concept Arts
With any luck, the final SUICIDE SQUAD film will be everything that this poster represents: bright, colourful, filled with iconic images and bad for your teeth.
Tale of Tales (Il racconto dei racconti) – Designer: Empire Design
Empire Design takes a leaf out of Gustave Doré’s 19th century wood engraving prints here (see: The Divine Comedy), one of a series of posters for the Italian film.
Tallulah – Designer: and company
Netflix has had mixed success with their original films: for every Beasts of No Nation, there’s a Ridiculous 6. The film has a similar distribution model to The Fundamentals of Caring, coming straight from Sundance to streaming, but one thing is for sure: the stylish poster art (more people inside things and things inside people!) is very eye-catching.
Voyage of Time – Designer: P+A
Terrence Malick has made as many films in the last five years as he has in the previous thirty, and this one is apparently a documentary about the birth and death of the known universe. Potentially covering similar ground to the themes of the fictional The Tree of Life, the spherical nature of the poster has the first Fibonacci spirals (told you!) of the month.
