Apologies for the long delay in our third OWF Award of 2010 but things have been ridiculously busy around here. Today's is a fun category for the weekend, probably the most light-hearted and widely opinionated of the whole awards agenda, because it doesn't matter how great or how shitty a movie is, it's the poster for that film - often the unfulfilled promise of a movie - that we are awarding here. So simply, which poster was the most striking and memorable to you? Maybe it impressed you with it's artist merit, it's complexity or it's simplicity? Like the rest of the categories, Ive narrowed it down to 15 choices. Im sure there will be those Ive missed or forgotten, so do speak up in the comments section. You can nominate as many as
three films from below, the top five will be OWF Nominated, the overall winner will win the top prize. You can find a gallery of the posters after the jump... My votes went to
The American,
The Social Network and
Toy Story 3.
INCEPTION
There's so many posters I could have chosen from the many one-sheets Warner Bros used to promote
Inception, I found all of them fantastic. For that reason, I was unable to chose one so here you are voting for all the posters from the film. After all, they were all original, industry pushing smart with intriguing visuals hinting at the complex puzzle that awaited you.
TOY STORY 3
There's so much nostalgia with these characters that Pixar didn't particularly need to do much else than just bundle of their characters together into a simple one-sheet and we were all sold on the picture. Hell, they didn't even need to give us a title! And despite the fact they did little more than just that, they couldn't but help themselves make it feel colourful, energetic, lovable and beautiful. The biggest smile I had on my face all year was when I saw this poster for the first time. It was like opening a toy chest and finding all these charismatic soles starring back at me, faces I knew and others I couldn't wait to meet.
Buried
This Saul Bass 'Vertigo' inspired
Buried poster was a particular delight this year, showing us that it is possible to have depth in 2D imagery, not matter that Hollywood tries to tell you differently these days!
Black Swan
Natalie Portman as the
Black Swan. I have failed in my task to tell you why this poster impressed me so much but when I was putting together this list (before doing deeper research online) this was one of the first posters that stayed in my head and was memorable to me. And that's what a poster should do, isn't it? Maybe it's because this was a teaser poster for so long before I got to see the film, I don't know. Or maybe for it's creepiness. But I hope this poster gets votes anyway.
True Grit
I'm a sucker for all text posters. I think there was one for The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford that I went crazy for a couple of years ago. I guess there's something about the Western genre and the history of wanted posters that makes this kind of thing work so well.
Punishment Comes One Way Or The Other. Bridges, Damon, Brolin. Coen Brothers. True Grit. Retribution. Awesome.
Easy A
Here's a great little poster for a great little movie, the Screen Gems teenage comedy
Easy A which I'm so glad did some good business this year. Hollywood's next big thing,
Emma Stone, fills the thing with curious nicknames such as 'Trollop", "Tart" and "Floozy" plus the interesting teaser on her notepad. Who the hell knew what this film was about from the poster alone but a ton of you saw it. I think this poster did a great job of building curiosity.
The American
For The American, a vintage, 70's inspired film - comes a vintage, 70's inspired poster. My absolute favourite poster of the year - don't you agree?
Blue Valentine
Yes, a poster in pink can be beautiful!
The Town
Welcome to the bank robbery capital of American. Ben Affleck's stunning crime movie
The Town had a cool poster, where the heist was sold above it's famous faces. There's just nothing quite like masked nuns with automatic weapons to peak your interest in a movie. Loved this one.
The Social Network
Just simply perfection. An internet browser with the familiar faces of the Facebook website, a large image of Jesse Eisenberg as the creator Mark Zuckerburg and then that great tagline. The poster for
The Social Network has now become iconic and for good reason. Poster gets my vote.
DAYBREAKERS
It's always difficult to promote this kind of genre film but I appreciate that Lionsgate went a different direction from floating heads and gave us this great tease of the science fiction that awaited us with
Daybreakers.
Happy Tears
Beautiful, right?
Iron Man 2
I wasn't a fan of the majority of Iron Man posters that Marvel and Paramount shoved down our throats... but I loved this one, the simplest of it all. It's just Iron Man in an iconic pose. That's all you need.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
An epic of epicness poster.
LET ME IN
Effective!