Above: Alternative and official UK posters for Parasite (Bong Joon-ho, South Korea, 2019). Designers: Andrew Bannister (left) and La Boca (right).
It’s been far too long since I last did one of these round-ups: nine months to be exact. A lot has changed in the world over that time of course, the most pertinent to this column being that far fewer new posters have premiered recently, and that the distractions and stresses of our current situation have led to me posting less frequently than I usually do.
But, as I’ve been doing for many years, I have tallied up the most popular posters featured on my Movie Poster of the Day Instagram (previously Tumblr) and by a long shot the most popular posts of the past nine months were for the two U.K. Parasite posters above. If it seems I’m giving these astonishing works short shrift by lumping them together here it’s because they were already featured prominently in my piece on The Posters of Parasite back in January and you can see them in all their glory there.
The Top 25 as a whole makes for a splendid gallery of international design, old and new: Japanese posters for French, British and American movies; new American re-release designs for an ’80s Russian masterpiece and a ’90s Hungarian epic; a Hungarian poster for a ’60s British classic; German and Spanish posters for a couple of ’70s American cult favorites; new posters for a Tarkovsky doc and the latest Wes Anderson; superb new designs by Movie Poster of the Week favorites Akiko Stehrenberger and Vasilis Marmatakis, and a recently uncovered design by Brandon Schaefer. And yet another Parasite poster.
And, lest we forget, the list also includes two absolute masterpieces of poster design posted to mark the passing of the great Philip Gips and what would have been the 100th birthday of the g.o.a.t. Saul Bass.
So, without further ado, here are the rest of the 25 most popular posters of the past nine months of Movie Poster of the Day (all racking up 1,000 likes or more), presented, as always, in gently descending order of popularity.
Above: Japanese poster for the Three Colors Trilogy (Krzysztof Kieslowski, Poland/France, 1993-94). Designer unknown.
Above: Spanish poster for Serpico (Sidney Lumet, USA, 1973). Artist: Francisco Fernández Zarza aka Jano. Posted on April 25 to mark Al Pacino’s 80th birthday.
Above: 2019 art poster for Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1959). Designer: Akiko Stehrenberger.
Above: Festival poster for Andrey Tarkovsky. A Cinema Prayer (Andrey A. Tarkovsky, Italy, 2019). Designer unknown.
Above: 1980s silkscreen print for Seconds (John Frankenheimer, USA, 1966). Designer: Saul Bass. Posted on May 8th to mark Bass’s centenary.
Above: French grande for A Woman is a Woman (Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1961). Designer: Chico. Posted on December 15th to mark the passing of Anna Karina.
Above: German poster for Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais, France, 1961). Designer: Tostmann. Posted as the lead-off teaser for my article on Social Distancing in Movie Posters.
Above: US one sheet for Downhill Racer (Michael Ritchie, USA, 1969). Designer: Philip Gips. Posted on October 5 to mark Gips’ passing at the age of 88.
Above: US one sheet for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand, 2010). Designer: Chris Ware. Posted on November 9 when I selected this as my favorite movie poster of the decade.
Above: 2019 US re-release one sheet for Sátántangoó (Bela Tarr, Hungary, 1994). Designer: Dylan Haley.
Above: Japanese poster for Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone, USA/Italy, 1984). Designer unknown.
Above: Festival poster for Nimic (Yorgos Lanthimos, Germany/USA/UK, 2019). Designer: Vasilis Marmatakis.
Above: Mondo poster for Parasite (Bong Joon-ho, South Korea, 2019). Artist: Randy Ortiz.
Above: US one sheet for The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson, USA, 2020). Artist: Javi Aznaraz.
Above: Japanese poster for The League of Gentlemen (Basil Dearden, UK, 1960). Designer unknown.
Above: 2016 French re-release poster for Freaks (Tod Browning, USA, 1932). Designer: Brandon Schaefer.
Above: 1970 Hungarian poster for Kes (Ken Loach, UK, 1969). Designer: György Kemény.
Above: US one sheet for Dorian Gray (Massimo Dallamano, Italy/UK, 1970). Artist: Ted CoConis.
Above: Indian poster for The Middleman (Satyajit Ray, India, 1975). Designer: Satyajit Ray.
Above: Korean poster for Varda by Agnès (Agnès Varda, France, 2019). Designer unknown.
Above: US one sheet for Hour of the Wolf (Ingmar Bergman, Sweden, 1968). Designer unknown. Posted on March 9th to mark the passing of Max von Sydow.
Above: German poster for The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, USA, 1973). Artist: Tino Avelli.
Above: 2020 US re-release poster for Come and See (Elem Klimov, USSR, 1985). Artist: Jaxon Northon.
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You can see all my Movie Poster of the Week posts here, and if you want to see more of Movie Poster of the Day and you’re not on Instagram, you can follow me on Twitter and get occasional updates there.