A batch of new posters for possible Oscar contenders have arrived over the last 24 hours including posters for Tommy Lee Jones‘ The Homesman starring Jones and Hilary Swank, St. Vincent starring Bill Murray and Melissa McCarthy and The Imitation Game (read my review) starring Benedict Cumberbatch, but it’s the Brazilian poster for Whiplash that really catches my eye.
Arriving via Cinemarcado, the orange and white poster harkens back to the ’70s with a tagline that translates to “The road to the top can take you to the limit”. Simply fantastic and a film I truly hope finds its way into Oscar voters’ hearts. I can’t wait for you to see it. Here’s a snippet from my review:
Whiplash is one of those rare films where you need to understand the intention or you’ll find yourself rolling your eyes more than once as writer/director Damien Chazelle turns the volume not up to ten, not up to eleven, but he breaks the damned thing off. The sheer electricity of this movie had me so utterly amped up I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. This is the kind of movie that makes your heart beat faster. This is the kind of movie I would have wanted my high school or college coach showing me. It’s an exhibit as to how hard someone must push for greatness while testing the limits of how far that someone should be pushed…
In the press notes for the film Chazelle reveals he was a drummer in a somewhat similar situation to Andrew, though there’s no telling if he endured the berating Fletcher doles out on a minute-by-minute basis, using any and every weakness Andrew may have to his psychological advantage. [J.K. Simmons] becomes the musical equivalent of R. Lee Ermey in Stanley Kubrick‘s Full Metal Jacket and it makes sense considering Chazelle says he “wanted to make a movie about music that felt like a war movie, or a gangster movie — where instruments replaced weapons, where words felt as violent as guns, and where the action unfolded not on a battlefield, but in a school rehearsal room, or on a concert stage.” Mission accomplished and this is a key distinction in appreciating Whiplash, key to surviving the over-the-top moments without an eye roll. Chazelle ratchets up the intensity not because he revels in the melodramatic, but because he’s trying to get across a feeling and an emotion you can’t necessarily evoke without a heightened sense of reality.
You can read the full review right here, the posters can be seen below.
