The Brave One’s U.S. poster was a gimme for the Jodie Foster’s massive lesbian fan base: it featured a full body shot of the star in a tight, midriff-skimming tee, holding a big, phallic gun down by her tight-jeaned nether-regions. It blatantly sexualized Foster’s quest for vengeance, and it didn’t go unnoticed: AfterEllen.com summed it up with the headline, “Best. Jodie. Movie. Poster. Ever.” But what works for the queer blogosphere does not necessarily an international blockbuster make, and thus Warner Brothers has gone with a very different brand identity for the international rollout. The Risky Biz Blog pegs the change as ratings-board motivated:
In the U.S. — where the MPAA frowns on ads where guns strike too threatening a pose — the main image featured Foster, looking distraught, her head bowed and her gun hanging limply by her side. But in its foreign make-over, The Brave One’s poster…features a full head shot of Foster with her gun raised, aiming to kill. Nothing shy about it.
In other words: the idea that Foster is conflicted about killing has been wiped clean from this ad campaign. It’s gone from “what have I done?” to “look what I’m doing.” It makes sense: when complexity fails to sell, it’s time to go binary.
[Via Movie Marketing Madness]
This is a holdover from the weekend, but it’s worth going back to: Nikki Finke says three people have told her that Warner Brothers is no longer greenlighting pictures build around female stars. This is apparently in reaction to dismal box office returns for The Brave One and The Invasion, but as Finke points out, those weren’t exactly the chickiest of flicks. Ergo, this seems to be less about the female audience and more about the general audience not responding to female stars. Or, it could be about WB looking for scapegoats to cover their own failure to efficiently market genre fare to grown-ups. Regardless: it looks bad, and, if it’s true, celebrity feminist/attorney Gloria Allred (who has been awfully busy lately with Britney Spears’ custody battle) isn’t going to let it slide. She tells Finke:
This is an insult to all moviegoers and particularly women. It is truly unfortunate that women get blamed for decisions which are made by men…If that studio confirms that their policy is to now exclude women as leads, then my policy would be to boycott films made by Warner Bros.
This will probably go nowhere, because if pressed, WB will be like, “Of course we love women!” And it’ll all blow over as soon as Finke finds a tastier string to pull. But at some point, someone is going to have to explain to me how 40 year-old actresses having trouble finding work is anything other than business as usual.
Do edgy American filmmakers of yesteryear go soft after living in Hollywood for a few decades? We look at Neil Jordan’s new film The Brave One, starring Jodie Foster, and ask how it measures up to her grittier predecessor, Taxi Driver. Also, Karina shares her picks from the Toronto Film Festival, including the much-buzzed western, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Anton Corbijn’s Joy Division biopic Control, and two fresh Iraq-umentaries, Heavy Metal in Baghdad and Operation Filmmaker.
FilmCouch #37
The Brave One, Heavy Metal in Baghdad, Operation Filmmaker
Over the next week, I’ll be appearing on several Toronto Film Festival-centric episodes of ReelerTV, which Stu VanAirsdale and friends are producing in collaboration with Spout. In the episode embedded above, Stu hits the red carpet for the premiere of The Brave One, and I recap a batch of Toronto films that I saw in Telluride, including Juno, Margot at the Wedding, and Redacted.
