Above: 1981 French grande for Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, USSR, 1979). Art by Bougrine.
It’s been six months since I last did one of these round-ups of the most popular posters featured on my Movie Poster of the Day Instagram (previously Tumblr).
With some 3,349 likes to date, this rare French poster for Tarkovsky’s Stalker, posted just last month, outstripped the pack and is in fact the second most “liked” poster I’ve ever posted, just a couple of hundred likes shy of Andrew Bannister’s UK poster for Parasite which I posted over a Pandemic ago. With art signed by one “Bougrine” the poster is currently offered for sale at Posteritati. Though the style and signature don’t quite look right, there was a Vladimir Bougrine (1938-2001) who was a prominent Soviet dissident painter who ended up in Paris in 1977 where, according to Wikipedia, “the French Ministry of Culture introduced him to...a community of writers, musicians and film-makers.” So it is just possible that he is the author of this poster.
There are a handful of new posters in the mix: somewhat surprisingly the third most popular poster here was the French release poster for Julia Ducournau’s recent Palme d’Or winner Titane, closely followed by RYSK Studio’s glorious storm-swept design for Cannes curtain-raiser Annette. And some of the best contemporary designers made the cut with new posters: Brian Hung with The Woman Who Ran, Vasilis Marmatakis with Great Freedom, Caspar Newbolt with The Last Son and Laurent Durieux with La Piscine. Special shout-out also to Desi Moore for her unused 2020 design for Never Rarely Sometimes Always which was immensely popular. There are also a couple of gorgeous pieces of fan art from the past decade by two of my favorite artists: Adam Juresko’s Marie Antoinette and Sam Smith’s Life Aquatic.
So, without further ado, here are the rest of the 25 most “liked” posters of the past six months of Movie Poster of the Day (out of 131 posted), presented, as always, in gently descending order of popularity.
Above: Japanese poster for Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams (Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 1990). Designer unknown.
Above: Alternative movie poster for Marie Antoinette (Sofia Coppola, USA, 2006). Design by Adam Juresko.
Above: 1989 Polish re-release poster for 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, Italy, 1963). Design by Andrzej Pagowski.
Above: French grande for Titane (Julia Ducournau, France, 2021). Poster design by Silenzio; photo by Carole Bethuel. Posted in my round-up of Cannes Competition posters.
Above: French grande for Annette (Leos Carax, France, 2021). Design by RYSK Studio. Also posted in my round-up of Cannes Competition posters.
Above: Unused poster for Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hittman, USA, 2020). Design by Desi Moore.
Above: 1973 US re-release silkscreen poster for the R-rated version of A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, UK/USA, 1971). Artwork by David Pelham (from the Penguin paperback edition of the Anthony Burgess novel).
Above: Japanese poster for Gummo (Harmony Korine, USA, 1997). Designer unknown.
Above: 2021 re-release poster for La Piscine (Jacques Deray, France, 1969). Art by Laurent Durieux. I wrote about this poster in Notebook this past May.
Above: Unused poster concept mock-up for Scanners (David Cronenberg, Canada, 1981). Designer unknown.
Above: US mylar one sheet for Altered States (Ken Russell, USA, 1980). Design by Philip Gips.
Above: 1968 US re-release poster for King Kong (Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack, USA, 1933). Design and illustration by Lee Reedy of Dot Graphics.
Above: 2021 US one sheet for The Woman Who Ran (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea, 2020). Design by Brian Hung. I wrote about this poster, and other works by Hung, on Notebook in June.
Above: Spanish poster for Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, Germany, 1922). Artist and date unknown.
Above: Japanese poster for La Jetée (Chris Marker, France, 1962). Designer unknown. Posted on Chris Marker’s 100th birthday on July 29, 2021.
Above: Romanian poster for The Nun aka Suzanne Simonin, La Religieuse (Jacques Rivette, France, 1966). Designer unknown.
Above: British one sheet for Quadrophenia (Franc Roddam, UK, 1979). Designer unknown.
Above: US one sheet for The Last Son (Tim Hutton, USA, 2021). Designer: Caspar Newbolt.
Above: 1980 mini-poster for The Third Generation (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, W. Germany, 1979). Designer unknown.
Above: 1961 Polish poster for Moby Dick (John Huston, USA, 1956). Designer: by Wiktor Górka.
Above: 2012 alternative art poster for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson, USA, 2004). Design by Sam Smith aka Sams Myth.
Above: US one sheet for Up Tight (Jules Dassin, USA, 1969). Design by Stephen Frankfurt and Philip Gips.
Above: Festival one sheet for Great Freedom (Sebastian Meise, Austria, 2021). Design by Vasilis Marmatakis.
Above: 1962 German poster for The Human Condition III: A Soldier’s Prayer (Masaki Kobayashi, Japan, 1961). Design by Hans Hillmann. I wrote about this poster and the new Hans Hillmann archive in March.
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