A movie with a title like “Southland Tales” can turn people off if they don’t know what the film is based on anyway, and, in that case, a poster is probably not going to help. People tend to form a lot of opinions about films based on their title because their automatic “genre categorizer” comes into play. This is just personal observation based on my admittedly non-scientific tracking of movie stats, but I’ve noticed that movies that don’t seem to fit well into the “blink” idea of being able to categorize the genre tend to do somewhat poor: this is whether the film is horror, sci-fi, romantic comedy, whatever.

Again, I’m not claiming that as fact and I certainly haven’t done some cross correlation with posters to determine if they had any effect. But, if I had to guess, I would say they probably don’t. My feeling is that by the time people see posters in too great a quantity where they would actually have to make a decision based on it, they’ve probably already been exposed to word-of-mouth, critical review, or trailers.

No, there are a few things about the film that I’m worried about(such as some of the casting and some of the visual effects toward’s the end of the film), but I also don’t feel the need to put things down for trivial reasons.

Like, this poster doesn’t tell me everything about the film, so I hate it.

So I guess I don’t even know my own opinion… by the way, I have already read the script for Southland Tales(twice), so I think I’ve got a very good idea on what it’s about– which does make my opinion bias– but that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t say “This Poster Sucks” if I thought it sucked. I happen to think the poster conveys what almost every poster released now-a-days say’s, who is in the film and a few images from that film.

To sum up: Southland will assuredly not be a box office behemoth. However, I’m looking forward to great storytelling by Richard Kelly and here’s to hoping we have another great cult classic to check out.

And it must also be noted that The Guy is a hardcore Southland Tales fan, and there is nothing wrong with that. But there is one thing to be a fan and the other to be a non-think-for-yourself-cheerleader. Listen man, it’s okay to admit that the marketing material so far kinda sucks, you’re not putting down Richard Kelly or his film. The marketing material for Donnie Darko was the sole reason the film failed in theaters, and I believe even Richard has admitted this publicly (correct me if I’m wrong…). The honest to god truth is that this poster won’t sell this movie to anyone who isn’t already interested in the film. Therefor, it is not effective. Also, because all the photos are actual photos and not a poster illustration it looks very amateurish. I have friends that could probably create something that looks better giving them one hour in photoshop.

Again, you have to look at this not as a fan of Kellys or Southland Tales, but as the normal moviegoing audience. You need to look at this as a 17-year old high school girl or a college football player, or a guy that works serving food at the mall pretzel cart. And I’m pretty sure this poster (or the american version for that matter, which I admit is far better in comparison) does not do the job of convincing an unknowing person into buying a ticket.

But let’s wait and see what this film does at the box office. Maybe I’m totally offbase and wrong. I hope this movie does well. I hope it far exceeds expectations. But with this marketing, I doubt it.

What does the Poster for Lions for Lambs, No Country for Old Men, or American Gangster really tell you? Other then who is in the film…

Come On… to me it seems that you kinda got-it in for putting this movie down ever since they started promoting it a month ago. And if it’s that important that each film have the plot completely covered on their poster, then maybe you should start writing the same comments for every poster you blog, because no poster I’ve every seen has had a plot synopsis attached.

I happen to like this poster. And I think it does it’s job well… getting my attention.