Diving Bell and the Butterfly fans, take note: Spout is giving away a limited edition one-sheet poster, designed by Julian Schnabel, with an original poem by the painter/filmmaker imprinted on one side. We’ve pasted a detail of the poster above; you can see a larger view here. It’s a very cool prize, but we only have one to give away, so we want to make sure we give it to the right person.

So here’s what we’re going to do: sometime between now and January 29, tell us in 200-500 words why you love Schnabel and/or Diving Bell, why you deserve to win the poster, and where you’ll put it if we pick you. Post your answer, or a link to your answer on your own blog, in the comments to this post. We will review entries the last week of January and announce a winner on Friday, February 1. Good luck!

Bloggy reactions are starting to float in on that whole MPAA vs. Taxi to the Dark Side thing, and although we’re sill seeing the predictable squabbling over ideology, pretty much everyone seems to be united on one thing: the poster itself is far less offensive than the MPAA’s stance on it.

AJ Schnack spoke with Taxi director Alex Gibney, who characterized the ruling as “a cover-up”:

Removing the hood is the ultimate cover-up. [The U.S.] didn’t use to do that sort of thing. Removing the hood sends the same message as the Bush administration with the CIA tapes. It’s OK to do it, it’s just not OK to show it.

Hammering home roughly the same message, The Cinetrix proposes a protest campaign:

This movie needs to be seen. These images need to be seen. Fuck, I’m willing to run the one-sheet image every day here until the decision is reversed.

Meanwhile, the boys at conservative film blog LIBERTAS think that the very idea of the film is reprehensible…which is why they’re mad at the MPAA for drawing more attention to it by giving the poster an air of snuff. In a post broken by images of the World Trade Center aflame, Dirty Harry writes:

…Read more

Writing at The Huffington Post, former SPY Magazine editor Tony Hendra notices that the poster for Michael Moore’s Sicko looks an awful lot like a cover his ex-magazine ran fourteen years ago. Here’s the side-by-side:

Hendra isn’t mad about the alleged “theft”, but he is concerned about what this little coincidence might mean for Sicko’s potential to instigate change:

We all know how things turned out for Hill. It doesn’t bode at all well that Mike chose exactly the same message. I hope I’m wrong. I hope to God Mike has more luck. I hope the HillBills make it back to the Big White House, or Obama-rama does and someone on the side of the angels and that, that proverbial rubber-clad digit is firmly inserted where only darkness dwells and the right people finally squeal like pigs.

Aside: this is the third piece I’ve read in the past week that uses the phrase “on the side of the angels” in connection with Moore (see here and here). I’m sure it’s just another coincidence, but at what point is okay for me to cry sycophancy (no homonymic pun intended)?