TOP 10 of 2010: #10

I used to write about movies. I even got a degree in writing about movies. As I've written less, my skills have atrophied while other hobbies, interests and things have stepped in, like making more visual art. Last year, instead of writing about my favorite movies of the year, I came up with an art project instead: the 2009 film stamp collection. This year, I wanted to come up with an even more ridiculously irrational and ambitious project: crafting a quick movie poster for ten of my favorites films from this year. I figured I'd spend just about the same amount of time on each as I would writing 250-500 words, but I would get a chance to play around visually with pens, paper and the computer in a medium I have so come to love: poster art.

This project is ridiculous, outrageous, and above all personal. My initial idea was to create off-the-cuff poster art for these films that defied any rules, boundaries or requirements one might have when making a "real" poster that would get released to the world. Inevitably, I've ended up wanting to spend more time with each one making them "better," but my goal has been to bang out ten poster ideas with no filters, no tinkering, no expectation for perfection. Each one of these, if they were being released to the world, I of course would want to perfect a little more. I like to think of them as demos; sketches, concepts, ideas for posters that could be. To make this project even more complicated and surreal, a couple of my favorite films of the year I've already made posters for, either for fun on my own (TRASH HUMPERS) or for an actual studio (CARLOS). Those movies will be absent from the project, as will the many 2010 films I haven't seen yet: WHITE MATERIAL, ANOTHER YEAR, THE KING'S SPEECH... full list to follow.

So hopefully other poster fans out there will enjoy this peek into my scattered brain, these imperfect tributes to the movies from this year that had some kind of strong effect on me. Yesterday's prelude to this project was a poster for UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES; today I give slot #10 to Darren Aronofsky's BLACK SWAN. I thought the mirror images in the film seemed like almost a red herring whereas more often we saw Natalie actually fractured and splitting apart, which is what's happening to her character. So I avoided any mirroring and split her into glitchy pieces, still suggesting that there are "two" of her... Add a light pink backdrop (the color of her room) and a nice script, upload and post.

Stay tuned for 9 more! As always, things will pile up over at my Flickr page. Leave a comment and tell me what your favorites were this year.