May 3, 2007

When Bad Posters Strike: A Mighty Heart


Holy.
Freakin'.
Shit.


I'm sure I've joked around before claiming that I could have designed some of the posters Hollywood shoves into cinemas, but in all honesty (and here I am admitting it), I probably couldn't. But that stops here. Because, no doubt, I could have designed this poster. I could have conceived it, designed it, created it in Photoshop and then printed it off on glossy paper and claimed it was a flyer. No freakin' shit. I kid you not. Surely this is one of the laziest posters ever, right? I mean, really? THIS? This is what they want to represent their movie? It looks like a really low-grade airport pulp fiction novel or something.

I assume that this poster was made using $5 petty cash. The left over change from that $5 probably bought coffee for a couple of people on-set.

My god. I sort can't even believe they bothered to release this poster. I even put this question out there: Is the image used in the bottom half of the poster (the heavily saturated image of a man in chains) actually a discarded image taken during a photo session for Michael Winterbottom's (Mighty Heart's director) last film Road to Guantanamo. No kidding. Click the image to your left to look at the Guantanamo poster in full-size.

I also hypothesise that Dan Futterman obviously must've done something to piss off the poster designer. I am completely aware that he is apparently only in it for quite a small amount of time, but he still constitutes as a worthy name. I mean, he is playing Daniel Pearl afterall.

And speaking of Pearl, there is not one single mention of who or what this film is even about. The cliched tagline - "It was an event that shocked the world. This is the story you haven't heart." *yawn* - doesn't mention what this shocking event was. The title doesn't give a clue. The only thing I can gather is that Angelina has a perm.

...oh! Wait, now I get it. Angelina with a perm = the event that shocked the world. Okay, It makes sense now.

As for the film, it premiers at Cannes. Being a film by Michael Winterbottom, I predict it will be tediously slow, feature lots of scenes of people talking about nothing (and not in the self-referencial way) and maybe a nudie scene (though not of Angelina. She don't do that stuff anymore). I also predict that it will feel like 20 years of my life is flashing by in quick succession that can only be matched by the latest Catherine Breillat film.

9 comments:

J.D. said...

I don't think that sucks. It's certaintly cheap-looking, but it feels like that's in a good way. I don't know. And regarding the poster for TRtG, I prefer the one with the covered head, mainly because it's so frickin' unbelieveable as a poster, and that's what makes it brilliant.

Anonymous said...

yeah....that tagline is interesting

Glenn Dunks said...

JD, definitely agreed on THtG, but I didn't feel like having that image on my blog quite frankly.

RC said...

not a fan of this poster.

i bet thandie newton's glad now that she's not in this blah poster.

--RC of strangeculture.blogspot.com

adam k. said...

Yeah I also don't mind this poster. Doesn't seem so bad to me. I see what they were going for.

Glenn Dunks said...

I see what they were doing too. Nevertheless...

Boyd said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Boyd said...

This is pretty bad. Suddenly I am not looking forward to this in the way I was when "Untitled Daniel Pearl Project" was just an abstract entity (and this from the guy who thought Guantanamo was OK).

Anonymous said...

When will studios learn that you DO NOT allow Angelina Jolie to film any kind of heavy drama or drama period? The woman sleepwalks through the movies she makes. She does OK when she is "allowed" or choreographed to kick arse in her action movies but keep her out of other genres especially when it will be a "downer". Her idea of subtlety or revealing the inner workings of the mind is to go s-l-o-w on EVERYTHING. I am still waiting to get my time back after Beyond Borders! She simply doesn't have the skills. And as for Winterbottom, I am still waiting to see anything he does that I consider worthy of my time.

I hope this works out especially for Jolie because heaven knows that her record is enough to recall her Oscar, Rottentomatoes have not been kind.