2007 Key Art Movie Poster Awards
Thanks to Posterwire, I recently learned that the Key Art Awards announced their nominations for excellence in movie marketing this past week. You’re all aware of how much I love movie posters, so I figure it’s only fair for me to share some of my comments on the nominees this year.
While the nominees include television spots and trailers, today I’m going to focus simply on posters. I might write another post later about the trailers. So here’s a quick look in images at my personal winners in each category. Read more after the jump for my thoughts.
Action-Adventure Posters
The nominees for this category include the posters for Crank, Superman Returns, Poseidon, Apocalypto, and V for Vendetta. While the movie itself was mediocre at best, I must admit that the poster for Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto is perfectly suited for the mood of the film: dark, foreboding, and with a sense of hope clouded in desolation.
Animation Posters
The nominees for this category include the posters for A Scanner Darkly, Renaissance, Ice Age: The Meltdown, Monster House, and Cars. Seeing the trailers and the posters for Renaissance made me want to see the movie so much that I ended up hanging out with director Christian Volckman before the screening just to make sure I got there on time. The movie may have been a bit of a disappointment, but the marketing was fantastic.
Comedy Posters
The nominees for this category include the posters for Running With Scissors, Borat, Thank You for Smoking, Nacho Libre, and Little Miss Sunshine. Thank You for Smoking gets everything right when it comes to design — from the title sequence to the awesome toy smoking babies they handed to the press — but in the poster war, it gets nudged out closely by the simple but so effective poster for Little Miss Sunshine.
Drama Posters
The nominees for this category include the posters for Clean, Hard Candy, Little Children, Pan’s Labyrinth, and Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. As one of my favorite movie posters of all time — and not surprisingly the winner of Posterwire’s poster of the year — Hard Candy says everything you need to know about the movie. The plot, the mood, the tone: it’s all there in that small image.
Horror Posters
The nominees for this category include the posters for Descent, The Hills Have Eyes, Pulse, and two posters for Saw III. I’ve never been a fan of horror movies, and I always felt that horror film marketing really tried to appeal to a very different audience than myself, so it’s shocking that I was so quickly drawn to the poster from Saw III. Unlike other horror posters (including the other Saw III poster) my choice in this category is subtle enough to be truly creepy.
International Posters
The nominees for this category include the posters for The Black Dahlia, The Prestige, Paris je t’aime, and two posters for Borat. There is nothing Paris je t’aime could do wrong in my eyes: the film itself was a masterpiece, and the poster reflects the cosmopolitan nature of the movie perfectly with the mish mash of Europe’s city of love into a heart. Go watch this movie. Then, go buy me a copy of the poster for my birthday.