Criterion Corner

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International Poster Tour: STAGECOACH (dir. John Ford) 1939

can you guess which one of these things recently sold at auction for $77,000? 

(in a related story, i’ve got a sweet bargain for anyone who has $26 K to spend). 

just when i was gonna put a temporary moratorium on poster galleries, they pulled me back in! leave it to poster curator / modern hero adrian curry to dig up and assemble a collection of one-sheets so gorgeous and thorough that it leaves me no choice but to postpone all the dizzyingly brilliant original content i’ve got ready to go (just pretend).  

do yourself a favor and head on over to Mubi, where Mr. Curry explains how Stagecoach resulted in so many great posters, and who was responsible for all these diverse examples of enduring design.  

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International Poster Tour: SEVEN SAMURAI (dir. Akira Kurosawa) 1954

another night, another glorious collection of Kurosawa posters from Strangewood (with a little Criterion art thrown in there for good measure). this film has inspired so much great design over the years that you could probably compile a few of these posts without repeating yourself… i feel like the farmers at the end of the film — no matter which ones are omitted, we still win. 

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International Poster Tour: ANATOMY OF A MURDER (dir. Otto Preminger) 1959

there are graphic designers, and then there are graphic designers. oh, and then there’s saul bass, the dude who — among many other things — was able to take a routine courtroom drama and mine from it an image that is now as iconic to film fans as anything from Star Wars or Red State (note to self: rethink comparisons in future posts). In fact, Premiere Magazine (it was a real thing, i promise) ranked bass’ original one sheet as the greatest movie poster ever made. Anatomy of a Murder is a rather exceptional film, but it’s because of saul bass that it’s something of a mythic one, as well. 

naturally, most of the marketing teams responsible for introducing Anatomy of a Murder to their national markets had the good sense not to mess with greatness, and made sure to inclue the broken man design in their posters… and for their upcoming DVD & Blu-ray release, Criterion just slapped the original one-sheet on the box and called it a day. but what a day. 

Otto Preminger’s ANATOMY OF A MURDER hits Criterion DVD & Blu on 2/21/2012.

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International Poster Tour: BELLE DE JOUR (dir. Luis Buñuel) 1967

so Buñuel’s erotic masterpiece (harvey weinstein’s words, not mine) finally arrives in the Criterion Collection today, and not to spoil my review or anything, but if there’s one 2012 Criterion that you absolutely must own so far this year, it’s this one, and given that it’s almost January 20th, that’s saying quite a bit (sorry, Traffic upgrade for which approximately zero people asked).

unsurprisingly, the myriad posters that Belle de Jour has inspired over the years are both immediately fetching and entirely predictable. it’s only the Polish (natch) who spiced things up a bit, veering away from catherine deneuve’s come hither stare with that inspired abstract design in the bottom right corner of the image tower above. that being said, methinks the Criterion cover art may be the best of the bunch. 

what say you?

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International Poster Tour: 12 ANGRY MEN (dir. Sidney Lumet) 1957

“Life is in their hands. Death is on their minds!” 

reading genius copy like that, it’s hard not to think that the art of designing a poster / promotional campaign isn’t dead. especially after that Clash of the Titans poster that featured a brown mess of CG tentacles above the tagline: “Titans Will Clash.” …that one hurt.

anyway, Sidney Lumet’s masterful 12 ANGRY MEN is out via Criterion on 11/22/11. for what it’s worth, the film’s geometric nuance and attention to spatial relations (and how they’re conflated with moral standings) make it great warm-up viewing for Polanski’s CARNAGE.

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International Poster Tour: HARAKIRI (dir. Masaki Kobayashi) 1962

…oh. oh wow. 

i may have to retire this feature / my rods and cones forever, as this sampling of one-sheets for Masaki Kobayashi’s magnificent (and recently Blu-graded) samurai classic are truly an exceptional lot… you would imagine that the film’s rich pathos and imagery would inspire a number of excellent posters, but the sheer variety on display here is kind of staggering, especially given the consistent quality of these one sheets from countries the globe over.

i’m gonna go put this blu-ray in, stat. …i mean, that’s what i would do if i weren’t filing this post from the dankest corner of an uptown library, and rendered immobile by the espresso IV drip that’s pumping pure, unfiltered will to live directly into my veins. hooray, grad school! but you should go put this blu-ray in, stat… in the immortal words of Christian Bale at the end of that one movie, “live for the both of us!”

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International Poster Tour: SALO or The 120 Days of Sodom (dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini) 1975

so Criterion, with appropriately sadistic relish, is releasing a blu-ray of Pasolini’s notoriously debauched SALO on October 4th. google tells me that, over the years, the film’s marketing materials have not been particularly coy about the kind of experience that Salo so unabashedly is. i was hoping to find some stuff that was either more abstract or, conversely, ridiculously graphic, but these aren’t too shabby… the one on the bottom with the naked fella is perhaps most effective.