This movie poster was used for the theatrical release of Big Fan earlier this year. It's a pretty great image, don't you think? The design is simple and pointed, as a character study should be. Without knowing anything beforehand about the film's concept, you can look at this image and realize that there's a world of subtext behind Patton Oswalt's face paint. It's unsettling while remaining compelling, in the vein of simlilar "lonely man" genre classics like Taxi Driver or Raging Bull. It grabs your attention with striking focus, and conveys so much and so little simultaneously.I was not able to see Big Fan during it's theatrical run, but considering that Robert Siegel wrote my favorite movie of 2008, it's been on my list to check out when the DVD comes out. Last night I found myself thinking that the date would likely be approaching soon, and a few clicks later, Amazon told me that in fact the DVD would be coming out next Tuesday. But that was not the only information I got from the Amazon page. It also provided me with the DVD cover art, which proved to be bothersome on a completely different level.
Observe:
I'm sorry, WHAT MOVIE IS THIS? I clearly must have been off base with my assessment. That first poster had me expecting a gritty and likely troubling character study, perhaps of a social misfit who inadvertently crosses the understood boundary between a fan and the object of fandom, then realizes that he can never quite go back to the ignorance he cherished earlier. But now that I see how this DVD is marketed, I have to assume that Patton Oswalt is playing a kindly retarded man who just wants to score a touchdown of his own...a touchdown in the game of life, we can only hope.
Look at him smiling away in his very own jersey, just dreaming about candy and birds while yearning for the day that maybe he'll be picked to play with those logoless, jersey number-less football players at the bottom of the image! Finally, white people have a Radio of our own! This truly looks like fun for the entire family! If only it had come out a few weeks earlier, it would have made for a terrific impulse buy when doing last-minute family shopping at Target. "Everyone gather around for the annual Christmas night movie! I hope Grandma doesn't fall asleep before Patton gets brutally assaulted in the strip club!"
Big Fan will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray January 12. Right on cue for the playoffs.
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3 comments:
I swear to you, when I saw that DVD cover I immediately thought of Scooter saying, "You can do whatever you want, Radio."
It gets funnier. The DVD cover shows a game in progress, and for the entire movie we do not see a single frame of game time. If a game is in progress, we're hearing about it while watching the fans' reactions. The camera never leaves the fans because it's about *them*, not the game.
The movie has a shockingly low 3 stars out of 5 on Netflix, with over 130,000 people weighing in. I'm guessing because when anyone clicks on the movie, they think it's going to be a feel-good comedy about football, and instead they get a dark, DARK comedy about a man who has (and wants) nothing else in his life other than the NY Giants.
I listened to an interview with patton oswalt on Opie and Anthony and he asked one of the distribution people why they used that DVD cover art. He asked him why they make like he will be going to a football game when there is no football played in the movie. The distribution person said "Well, people like football games." and Patton responds "Yeah, so they will buy this movie and be FURIOUS! By that logic why not just put Robocop on the cover. People like Robocop."
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