Glourious Basterd

Every couple of years Quentin Tarantino releases a new movie, which means blood, great music, and astounding posters. Unlike the airbrushed generic posters that float around for nearly every other movie, when a Tarantino poster is released it's artwork. Only a few days ago the new Inglorious Basterds artwork was released to demonstrate this once more. Thats right, this post is just a praising of Tarantino posters, but at least its one thats well deserved.

One of the qualities that makes Tarantino posters stand out is the use of contrast especially between varying colors. In this new, and gorgeous, Inglorious Basterds poster it is what draws your eye to the immediately to the red; it seems so vivid because there it is surround by a small area of lighter colors, and then surrounding darkenss. Then when the eyese are drawn there one can spot the swasticka. It is exactly like this that classical art is supposed to function.

Another simple reason for why Taratino's posters so good is because they embody the feel and look of the art from the time or genre his film is drawing upon. Any fan of Tarantino would say that he draws inspiration from a lot of sources and it can clearly be seen in his films. When he paired up with Robert Rodriguez for a Grindhouse film event, his film DeathProof was clearly based off of not only earlier 70's grindhouse films, female exploitation films, and of course car movies. All of these are brilliantly blended together, along with an old classic feel in the poster. In Kill Bill vol 1. Kung Fu movies were a main influence. Bruce Lee impacted the films to such an extent that not only did the main character "The Bride" wear a jumpsuit based on one of his, but also the posters are even designed to match. Kill Bill vol 2 has more of a country theme in the film and so even the poster's colors are subdued with the images softened.

Then there are the earlier classics. Jackie Brown makes it impossible to choose a favorite poster, even though it's often over looked for Tarantino's other films. Theres one with Pam Grier revisiting her Foxy Brown post as she is posing in her flight attendant suit and holding up a nice gun with a super seventies pose. Then there is the black and white ensemble cast that features them all in their element, expressing all exactly what they are known for: Pams as a tough woman, Samual L Jackson ready to scream mother fucker, Bridget Fonda looking sexy as hell, and Robert De Niro looking like a consumate Badass, though with a suspicious mustache. Finally, the main cast members has their own posters, something now common place. Is their any arguement that Bridget Fonda's is clearly the best of them? Its perhaps possible that her poster outshines her role, it was just damned good, getting her entire character across in one shot.

Then there is Pulp Fiction and Resevoir Dogs, what could be said about those films and their posters that hasn't already been said. Probably nothing actually. They have beeen posted all over not only dorm rooms for over a decade now, and even get framed nicely in expensive homes cause of their artistic quality...and Uma Thurman. I won't try to explain. I'll just show again to let you see once more. I'll leave you with those, and the thought that the next time you see a new Tarantino poster, is it just another film poster, or is it art?