Weak 'A Woman, a Gun, and a Noodle Shop' Poster

We've been following the new Zhang Yimou movie pretty carefully. There's now a new poster for A Woman, a Gun, and a Noodle Shop from Sony Classics, and it confuses me a little bit. Watch the trailer and look at the images we posted previously and see how gorgeously rich the colors are. Then there's this, which is heavy on the red and uses a pretty brutal title font. We said when the trailer came out last week that this strategy of tying the Coen Brothers into this because it's a retelling of their breakthrough film, Blood Simple, might not be the best way to go. Not because the Coens aren't great, but because you've got a guy like Zhang Yimou, one of the best filmmakers in the world, and all the studio wants to talk about is that it's a remake, which carries an automatic negative connotation. If all you've seen is Hero and/or House of Flying Daggers, you owe it to yourself to check out some of Zhang's earlier work. The Road Home - Zhang Ziyi's first film - and the comedy Happy Times speak to his ability to do more than sweeping period pieces, although he does those phenomenally well. The Story of Qui Ju is also entirely different from the films we'd associate with him here in the states. We haven't even mentioned his first film, the terrific Red Sorghum or Juo Do and Raise the Red Lantern, which made Zhang one of the few filmmakers nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in consecutive years. So yeah, his stuff is an encyclopedia of damn good filmmaking. Wish Sony would push that a little harder.

Comments

[J.Bradley]

It's a rip of the one used for "Blood Simple"'s 2000 rerelease and was also used for the dvd cover. They're really touting WAY too much that this is a remake of the Coen brothers movie.