Above: Alternative poster for MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (George Miller, Australia/USA, 2015). Artist: Signalstarr.
Movie Poster of the Week was on vacation for the past few weeks and for the first time in three and a half years I took a break from posting a poster a day on Tumblr. Since getting back I have been posting the best new posters that I missed while I was away, one of which—the teaser for Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight which was unveiled at Comic-Con last week—has racked up more likes in a single day than almost anything else I’ve posted in the past three months.
The standout favorite of the past quarter however—with over 1400 likes and re-blogs to date—was this stunning alternative poster for Mad Max: Fury Road by the British artist known as Signalstarr, a.k.a. Nick Stewart Hoyle. As a rule I don’t usually post fan posters, or whatever you like to call them, on Movie Poster of the Day, but Hoyle’s beautiful, pitch-perfect retro design—fake paper folds and all—was far superior to anything put out by Warner Brothers and impossible to resist.
I like how it also makes a nice pair with the second most popular design of the quarter, the original Czech poster for Jaromil Jires’ Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, made 45 years earlier, each with their shadowy, masked villains and, again, those paper folds.
Unusually, half the posters among the top 20 were for new films, which is a healthy sign. But what surprises me about the two other posters that round out the Top Four—that inspired marriage of Colin Farrell and negative space for The Lobster, and the aforementioned Hateful Eight which seems to borrow from the Mondo aesthetic—is that so far I’ve been unable to put a designer’s name to either poster. If anyone knows who is responsible for either of them please let me know. [Update: the Lobster designer is Vasilis Marmatakis].
The twenty most popular posters of the past three months are presented below in descending order.
Above: 1970 Czech poster for VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS (Jaromil Jires, Czechoslovakia, 1970). Designer: Rudolph Nemec.
Above: Festival poster for THE LOBSTER (Yorgos Lanthimos, Greece/UK/Ireland, 2015). Designer: Vasilis Marmatakis.
Above: US teaser poster for THE HATEFUL 8 (Quentin Tarantino, USA, 2015). Artist: TBD.
Above: 1958 German poster for THE GREAT DICTATOR (Charles Chaplin, USA, 1940). Designer: Freytag.
Above: 1970 Czech poster for RASHOMON (Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 1950). Designer: Bedřich Dlouhý (b. 1932).
Above: UK quad for AMY (Asif Kapadia, UK, 2015). Designer: Wonderland.
Above: French poster for UMIMACHI DIARY (OUR LITTLE SISTER) (Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan, 2015). Designer: Le Cercle Noir.
Above: Festival poster for HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT (Kent Jones, USA, 2015). Designer: TBD.
Above: French petite poster for HORROR OF DRACULA (Terence Fisher, UK, 1958). Artist: Guy Gérard Noël.
Above: Japanese herald for LE SAMOURAÏ (Jean-Pierre Melville, France, 1967). Designer: unknown.
Above: 1957 Polish poster for PATHER PANCHALI (Satyajit Ray, India, 1955). Designer: Wojciech Fangor (b. 1922)
Above: US one sheet for WHEN I LIVE MY LIFE OVER AGAIN (Robert Edwards, USA, 2015). Designer: Akiko Stehrenberger.
Above: US one sheet for MOVE (Stuart Rosenberg, USA, 1970). Designer: uncredited.
Above: US one sheet for COP CAR (John Watts, USA, 2015). Designer: TBD.
Above: South Korean poster for TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes, Belgium, 2014). Designer: Choi jee-woong.
Above: US one sheet for BEST OF ENEMIES (Morgan Neville, USA, 2015). Designer: Gravillis Inc.
Above: Japanese poster for PARIS WHEN IT SIZZLES (Richard Quine, USA, 1964). Designer: unknown.
Above: Polish poster for LES PÉTROLEUSES aka THE LEGEND OF FRENCHIE KING (Christian Jaque, France, 1971). Artist: Wiktor Gorka (1922-2004).
Above: Late 40s French affiche for REBECCA (Alfred Hitchcock, USA, 1940). Artist: Claire Finel.
Poster sources are all credited on Movie Poster of the Day; click on the titles above for more information.
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