So, I’ve got my tattooed self in Berlin as I type this, where I’m running busily from screening to screening at the European Film Market checking out mostly bad, but occasionally incredible, films from around the world which will most likely never appear on screens in North America.  For some reason I enjoy doing this rather a lot.  Now, most of you reading this will never have been to a film market so let me explain:  there are a handful of these events around the world every year where international and independent producers can rent screen space to show their films to prospective buyers, distributors and theater or DVD companies from around the world.  Anybody with the money to rent space can – and does – and so you have to wade through a lot of junk to get to the good stuff, but all of the things that you’ll be hearing about in the next year or so are here now if only you can find them.

Now, I do at least a couple of these events every year – this is my second market in the past four months and there are two more coming by the end of May – and at every one of them I learn a little something new.  Berlin 2008 is where I learned that Photoshop is stealing my soul.  My god, people, there is a lot of fucking horrible artwork out there, even for the good films.

Do you remember the time when film art was considered an essential part of the overall package?  Something designed to create the mood of the film itself rather than being a necessary marketing evil to be knocked out as quickly and cheaply as humanly possible?  When the artwork was produced by actual, you know, artists?  Well, those days are long gone thanks to the digital revolution, the advent of cheap software making it possible for any talentless ass with a computer to declare himself a graphic designer while aesthetically blind marketers concerned more with the bottom line than with anything else are apparently more than happy to line up to give them their business.  God, it sucks.

Quick, name five truly iconic movie posters from the last five years.  That’s only one per year but I can’t do it.  I just can’t.  You can buy books loaded with fantastic hand made artwork from the forties right up through the eighties but anything past that is pretty much a desolate wasteland.  Why do I care so much?  I don’t know … I guess I’m just missing the days when film was treated a little more as a comprehensive package and less as a marketable commodity.  That and I’m sick of the endless parade of three floating heads with actors names arranged from largest to smallest ego.

Luckily there are a small handful of exceptions.  Good Canadian lad Bruce LaBruce is here at the Berlinale proper with his gay zombie flick Otto; Or Up With Dead People (trailer's got naughty bits), and had that smashing hand drawn piece of work you see at the top of this post commissioned just for the event.  Good on you, Bruce.  And check this out:  photoshopped teaser poster for the new Indiana Jones flick versus the hand drawn poster for the new Indiana Jones flick.  One makes me want to see the movie, the other makes me want to hit someone.  Heck, a good poster can even make me want to give a bad movie a chance.  Recent Sundance invite Hell Ride is apparently just atrocious but check out this beautiful bit of work.  Yes, please.

Basically I guess what I’m saying is that the world needs more Drew Sturzan’s and less shmucks who learned design out of a computer textbook.  We can do better than this.