Above: Chinese poster for Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, Japan, 2001); artist: Zao Dao.
The most popular poster to date on my Movie Poster of the Day Instagram, by a dragon’s length, with more than double the amount of likes of its closest contender, was this gorgeous Chinese poster (and its color variant which you can see here) for Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (2001), which apparently just got a Chinese theatrical release eighteen years after it was made. The posters were painted by the young Chinese comic book artist Zao Dao who you can, and should, read more about here.
I was happy to see Renato Casaro’s prop poster for Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood’s film-within-the-film Kill Me Now Ringo, Said the Gringo—which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago—make such an impression, as well as another of my favorite Casaros painted forty years earlier, for Screamers, a.k.a. Island of the Fishmen (1979).
In third place I have to make note of Albin Grau’s extraordinary 1921 magazine ad for Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922)—not a poster exactly but a worthy exception—which sold for an astounding $52,800 at auction earlier this year.
Sadly, as is often the case, there were a handful of memorial posts: for three giants of international cinema—Bibi Andersson, Agnès Varda, and D.A. Pennebaker—whom we lost in the last few months at the ages of 83, 90, and 94.
But, as always, I’m happy to see a healthy number of new posters in the mix. As well as Dao and Casaro’s posters there were ten other new designs, including two each by MPOTW favorites Akiko Stehrenberger and Midnight Marauder. Also, because I love the film so much, I was very pleased to see my own poster for the re-release of Derek Jarman’s The Garden (1990) make the cut, which I will humbly put down to the sheer beauty of that film.
So, without further ado, here are the twenty-four other most popular posters (five more than usual because they’re just so good) of the past four months of Movie Poster of the Day, presented, as always, in gently descending order of popularity.
Above: Prop poster for Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, USA, 2019); artist: Renato Casaro.
Above: 1921 magazine ad for Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, Germany, 1921); artist: Albin Grau.
Above: US poster for A Woman Under the Influence (John Cassavetes, USA, 1974); designer: unknown.
Above: Japanese poster for Babette's Feast (Gabriel Axel, Denmark, 1987); artist: Tsunemasa Takahashi.
Above: Japanese poster for Persona (Ingmar Bergman, Sweden, 1966); designer: unknown.
Above: 1963 Czech poster for Accattone (Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italy, 1961); artist: Milos Reindl.
Above: South Korean poster for Parasite (Bong Joon-ho, South Korea, 2019); designer: TBD.
Above: Japanese poster for Happy Together (Wong Kar-Wai, Hong Kong, 1997); designer: unknown.
Above: 2019 US re-release one sheet for A Bigger Splash (Jack Hazan, UK, 1974); designer: Midnight Marauder.
Above: French affiche for Screamers aka Island of the Fishmen (Sergio Martino, Italy, 1979); artist: Renato Casaro.
Above: US re-release one sheet for The Garden (Derek Jarman, UK, 1990); designer: Adrian Curry.
Above: French grande for The Dead Don't Die (Jim Jarmusch, USA, 2019); designer: Arsonal.
Above: US one sheet for What You Gonna Do When the World's On Fire? (Roberto Minervini, US/Italy, 2019); designer: Mika Kimoto.
Above: US one sheet for A Faithful Man (Louis Garrel, France, 2018); designer/illustrator: Akiko Stehrenberger.
Above: US one sheet for The Mountain (Rick Alverson, USA, 2018); designer: Sam Smith.
Above: Japanese poster for Teorema (Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italy, 1968); designer: unknown.
Above: US one sheet for Don’t Look Back (D.A. Pennebaker, USA, 1967); designer: unknown.
Above: Alternative US one sheet for The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Joe Talbot, USA, 2019); designer/illustrator: Akiko Stehrenberger.
Above: US one sheet for Pasolini (Abel Ferrara, USA, 2014); designer: Midnight Marauder.
Above: 1969 Polish poster for Les Creatures (Agnès Varda, France, 1966); designer: Franciszek Starowieyski.
Above: Japanese poster for Gold (Karl Hartl, Germany, 1934); artist: unknown.
Above: 1972 Japanese poster for Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (Elio Petri, Italy, 1970); designer: unknown.
Above: Dutch poster for In Fabric (Peter Strickland, UK, 2019); designer: La Boca.
Above: 1970 Hungarian poster for Stolen Kisses (François Truffaut, France, 1968); designer: András Máté.
Poster sources are all credited on Instagram and Tumblr. Follow me on either or both.
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