Monsters

After having put up a post on the poster for Sofia Coppola's Somewhere last week, I've just coincidentally come across this other one, which shares several elements with the former: a pair of young different-sex characters, tropical lush setting and a dystopian/science-fiction air to it..., and a Christmas season release. Other than that, and without the will to repeating myself, let this one serve as the stark antithesis to all of that which I had found inspiring in the poster for Somewhere. Let it be a benchmark.

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Vertigo Films: Monsters
Leicester Square Station (LU)
London

Return to Narnia this Christmas

Christmas, that special time of the year to remember with nostalgia the time when street Christmas lights simply meant 'Christmas'.

Now sponsorship has altered that meaning.

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20th Century Fox + Walden Media: Return to Narnia this Christmas
Regent Street, W1B
London 

Somewhere

It’s rather regrettable, but I rarely go to the cinema anymore, especially not to see brand new films, so I guess I’ve become estranged from the segment of population to whom film posters are aimed at.
Yet, the poster for Somewhere has really got me. I know nothing about the movie, only that is directed by Sofia Coppola, a lady with a hell of a last name who had written and directed Lost in Translation, which I had enjoyed watching at the time (so I’m admitting an initially positive bias).
However, I guess it is all of the inspiring questions that the poster puts forward what has been the bait I’ve bitten.

Usually, film posters present a clear range of expectations about the films they advertise, certainly their genre and often even a sketch of their plots. They typically offer questions for the ‘reader’ of the poster to guess in a quite easy way.
But the poster for Somewhere, I would say, poses questions with unsure answers: what is the relation between the two characters? Have they just met? Where is that location? And when is that? Is that a dystopian scenario à la Ballard’s ‘Drowned World’? Are they in their own dream? Are they maybe in my dream? Ultimately, am I losing the grip of myself?

So I’d say that the poster’s appeal is more about what it hides than what it shows, more about what is uncertain and open to (my) speculations than about what is dully evident: there, something is happening to someone at some point somewhere…, but where, when, who, what? It is –I think while inhaling deeply from my joint– as if it spoke of some unspeakable depths I should hear about.

I’m afraid, though, that in the end I won’t go to see the film, as I’m one who lives in fear of utter disappointment.

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Focus Features International: Somewhere
Euston Station (LU)
London

Who is Salt?

Every morning I used to walk past this poster on my way to work and every time I thought to myself what a profoundly uninspiring poster it was, even giving it the benefit of the possible subliminal reading of the shape of hands and gun as Angelina’s so much desired genitalia (you just need to squint your eyes and adopt a reasonably suspicious attitude). Even with that, there is nothing to the poster but the stale old-school star-system appeal of a famous and arch-sexy Hollywood actress.
Maybe because of that, maybe a bit self-aware of their dullness, the creators decided to enhance the poster a bit by throwing in that explicit question: “Who is Salt?”. But I could only agree with the answer a fellow citizen scribbled on the actual display: “who cares?”.

Incidentally, I could not help to grin at the fact that someone –maybe someone whose intelligence felt defiled– had decided to ‘intervene’ with the ad, an intervention which I find to be an illegal but surely legitimate act: does not the public space belong to the public after all?


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Columbia Films: Who is Salt?
High Road, N22
London