There’s something great about the female-centric advertising coming out of a generic comedy based on an advice book for mothers about to deliver a bun fresh from the oven. The marketing team has faith in the women, and Lionsgate has faith in a woman-driven adult comedy. It’s clearly propelled by the success of Bridesmaids, but the more perverse secondary effect that that raucous comedy had on the studio math world is that crass women now equal box office gold. And thus, the posters for What to Expect When You’re Expecting. Again, it’s great to see women used so overtly for marketing without oversexualizing them (or, using their image months after their being sexualized?), but shoving bad lines with buzzwords in them reeks of desperation to appear edgy without actually having to be edgy. They won’t set back the women’s movement or anything, but they’re at least 10% heinous. Check them out for yourself:

Our wise overlord Cole Abaius recently pointed out one of the most burning questions in Hollywood this year: will The Hunger Games be the next big thing? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself ever since the project was announced. The fanbase is there, but doesn’t come close to matching the Twilight nation. And an even bigger question is whether this adaptation will reach non-fans, which will remain up in the air until the film’s released. The trailer was a mess and I can’t see this run-of-the-mill poster (courtesy of Moviefone) catching the eye of anyone who doesn’t obsess over the books. However, even if the marketing continues to rely on this image of Jennifer Lawrence looking like a plastic doll, my main hope will remain intact. It’s been over eight years since Gary Ross’s last film, so it’ll be nice having him back, franchise hit or not.

The trailer for The Front Line already hit hard, and now the production has released a poster to add another brick to their path toward Oscar. No South Korean film has ever made the short list for Best Foreign Film, and it’s going to be an uphill fight for this war movie, but regardless of how it does with the award-givers, it still looks fantastic. The movie from director Jang Hun focuses on an embattled hill during a ceasefire that took place in the Korean War. It looks appropriately dramatic, and the new rain-soaked poster takes us down into the trenches. Check it out for yourself:

Movie posters can rise to level of works of art, can be tame or daring. They are of course advertising. A good poster makes you want to know more about the movie and the more you want to know the more you’ll want to spend your money to see the film. With that in mind, we’ve assembled our favorites of 2011, broken down into fancy categories for your reading and viewing pleasure.

In The Paperboy, Zac Efron and Matthew McConaughey play reporters from Miami hired to prove the innocence of a death row inmate (John Cusack). The woman who hires them is the highly sexual Charlotte Bless (Nicole Kidman) who has fallen in love with the inmate despite never meeting him. She’s convinced he should be free, and that they should be married. The movie is based on the novel by Pete Dexter (who wrote the screenplay), and it’s being directed by Precious helmer Lee Daniels. With one Oscar-nominated film under his belt, it will be interesting to see if he shoots for a second. It will also be interesting to see if they keep the harrowing ending to the novel, because if they do, things are about to get a lot darker. A new poster for the film is making the rounds, and it’s the kind of artwork that makes most poster artists seem lazy (as if they need help). It’s a fantastic throwback style with a little too much eye-liner. Check it out for yourself:

Lets be honest with ourselves: The Dark Knight Rises is going to be the movie of 2012, no matter what other studios put together or how many superheroes they throw into one movie. The conclusion of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy will be the most highly trafficked, marketed and anticipated film event of the year. There’s no two ways about it. And as it were, any time something new is released from The Dark Knight Rises, that will be the thing of the day. Which makes this big, gorgeous and revealing poster today’s thing. It stars Tom Hardy as Bane, walking away from the broken cowl of our hero. A sign of things to come…

Universal Pictures has released a big tri-scene banner for Snow White and the Huntsman. It’s a very stylish piece, the entirety of which we’ve included after the jump, and it’s here in the lead up to the release of the first trailer this Thursday on Apple.com. The film stars “Kristen Stewart (Twilight) plays the only person in the land fairer than the evil queen (Oscar® winner Charlize Theron) out to destroy her.  But what the wicked ruler never imagined is that the young woman threatening her reign has been training in the art of war with a huntsman (Chris Hemsworth, Thor) dispatched to kill her.  Sam Claflin (Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides) joins the cast as the prince long enchanted by Snow White’s beauty and power.

For the past few weeks, director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody have quietly been bringing special “pop up screenings” of their new collaboration, Young Adult, to small arthouse theaters across the country (and Canada!). Invites were scarce, but those who were quick enough (and savvy enough) to get into one of six screenings was treated to a first look at the film, a special Q&A with its makers and stars, and a unique poster to take home with them. I was lucky enough to get into this week’s Los Angeles pop up screening at the New Beverly, during which Reitman trotted out Cody, Charlize Theron, Patton Oswalt, and Elizabeth Reaser for a pre-screening introduction and a post-screening Q&A. While it’s been widely speculated as to why Reitman didn’t take Young Adult on a more traditional festival jaunt (which he’s previously done for his biggest hits), the director himself explained it simply, he wanted to take the film on its very own festival route, picking cities and venues that fit the film. To add to that festival atmosphere, each pop up screening got its own specially crafted poster, made by a local artist and distributed to the audience at each screening. Young Adult is a departure for Reitman and Cody, shunting aside the sunniness of their previous collaboration Juno for a much darker (and deeper) tale of female maturity gone totally wrong. After the break, check out all six posters for each of the pop up screenings, each taking a different [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

If you’re looking for breathtaking imagery from the new Blu-ray release of Jurassic Park, look no further than this gem provided by our friend Peter Hall over at Fandango. That’s 100% rock star/chaotician beefcake right there. If you’re looking for something a bit more artistically suggestive, check out this beautiful new poster from artist J.C. Richard and Mondo – which you can hang on your very own wall for $45 starting this Thursday. Try doing that with Jeff Goldblum. His appearance fees are astronomical. Especially his Shirtless Appearance Fees.

The horror…the horror… The best part about this poster for New Year’s Eve is either that it features all of the names and pictures of the actors, but not in the same order, or that the catchphrase “Let The Countdown Begin” lets us know that it’s a Doomsday Movie. Garry Marshall, who should be ashamed of himself for directing Valentine’s Day, proves once and for all that he owes some serious men down at the race track by stepping up to direct this sequel which seeks to squeeze even less screen time out for even more famous faces. Also, Homeless Hector Elizondo is kind of cruel considering they made everyone else look halfway decent (except for Ashton Kutcher who clearly didn’t show up for a photo shoot and forced the marketing department to find a paparazzi shot of him smiling). Enough with the words! Check it out for yourself, and feel free to largify it by clicking (if you dare):

Like any great film festival, Fantastic Fest draws attendees for a number of reasons. Some come for the discovery of genre films from around the world, others come for that famous Alamo Drafthouse experience, but some — probably more than you’d think — also come for the art. The advantage of Fantastic Fest comes with the inclusion of Mondo, Alamo’s boutique poster and t-shirt sales machine. Purveyors of prints that geeks the world over would give life and limb to see hung on their collective walls, Mondo has always been a bastion of what is cool in the world of nerd wall-dressings. And for Fantastic Fest 2011, they are taking things to the next level. Names like Olly Moss, Drew Struzan, Jock and Ken Taylor have contributed art to a line-up that will make you drool. Then, unless you’re here in Austin this week, it’s going to make you angry. Because you can only buy them on-site at Mondo. That said, lets take a look at this year’s line-up.

This year’s Sundance Film Festival will likely go down in history as “the one with all the cult films,” meaning literal cult films, like films about cults, not box office flops that later gain traction with college kids who are into dress-up. But in between the more buzzed-about titles like Martha Marcy May Marlene and Sound of My Voice, Sundance 2011 also provided a proving ground for films focused on the intricacies of intimacy – namely, how honesty (and the lack of it) between partners can make or break a relationship. Miranda July’s The Future did it with a twee sweetness, and Joshua Leonard’s The Lie did it with a much darker bitterness. And that doesn’t quite explain the first poster for the film (which Leonard also directed from a T.C. Boyle story and some material from Jeff Feuerzeig that Leonard, Jess Weixler, and Mark Webber cobbled into their own screenplay), which makes the film looks like a new version of The Hangover, starring one man and one “soul crusher” baby. Check it out, along with a mini rant by me about it, after the break.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s nothing more than a nightly film news column that keeps fighting the good fight. The one that celebrates movies, good, bad and otherwise interesting, and is generally optimistic. It doesn’t attack other websites that smear its name. Though if /Film’s Page 2 keeps mean-mugging it, that bitch is gonna get smacked. That’s how we settle things in the streets. As you are about to see, this week’s final News After Dark edition comes on a very slow news night. So it’s all posters, future Blu-rays and articles I found interesting. Including this AV Club Q&A about first R-rated movies. Like AV’s Josh Modell, I’m fairly certain — almost completely certain — that my first R-rated film was The Blues Brothers, a film that has remained part of my beating, movie-loving heart ever since. What was your first R-rated movie? Feel free to let me know in the comment area below and we’ll have some fun discussing. Or not, whatever. I see how it is.

For the next few weeks we’ll be taking you through the gritty underground fighting world and into the sparkling, brightly lit arenas where the premiere robots brawl it out for fame and fortune. Diary from my top secret time traveling experiment into a Dystopian future or my Real Steel set visit? We’ll let you be the judge. We’ll also let you be the judge of these new character posters. One of the most impressive things about watching them film the movie and learning a bit about it was the design of the robots that act as the non-human centerpiece of the story. The pre-viz, CGI and practical all blended together to make some very, very cool machines which get a fresh introduction to the world today. Meet Atom, Ambush, Midas, and Noisy Boy. Click on all of them to make them way, way bigger:

The trailer for grindhouse throwback Dear God No! makes a bold claim, but it looks like it can easily back it up. It’s a promise that the film will have wanton violence, swinging breasts, and alliteration. Yes, dear reader, roving rapist bike gangs love poetic devices. It’s definitely not for the kiddos, and we’re all working on the honor system here, but the amount of silly brutality in this thing might not even be safe for some adults. The amount of nudity, people will probably be able to handle. Plus, it’s got a handy NSFW poster (from The Dude Designs) to go with it. Go ahead and bask in all its glory:

Please don’t actually hold your lighter up to the screen to try this at home. Seriously. Put it down. This new motion poster for The Hunger Games features the main icon of the series – the Mockinjay Pin – which explodes in flames, but there’s no need to describe it here since it’s probably roasting below right now. Plus, if a picture is worth 1,000 words, this is technically worth 34,000,000. And, honestly, would you put that lighter away?

If there’s one thing we can say about Seth Rogen, it’s that the man is expressive. Be it his laugh or his goofy mug, the guy knows how to convey emotion without actually speaking the King’s English. Or any other version of English, for that matter. And its that expressiveness that makes this new poster for Jonathan Levine’s 50/50 interesting. As you’ll see when you click through to see the entire thing, as released by Summit Entertainment today, the character Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is about to do something radical based on a recent diagnosis of cancer. From early screenings, I’m hearing some fabulous buzz about this one. That in conjunction with the fact that Jon Levine’s The Wackness was one of the better films I’ve seen in a while has me keeping a close eye on this dramedy. Lets all start by checking out the poster.

With Comic-Con right around the corner, summer movie season in full swing and a teaser trailer allegedly just over the horizon, the marketeers at Warner Bros. want you to be thinking about one thing and one thing only: The Dark Knight Rises. So much so that you go see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 seven times just so that you can watch the trailer over and over on the big screen. Also, they want what they achieved with The Dark Knight: almost a year of unending fever-pitch. A long, intricate marketing campaign with viral elements, games, events, twists, turns and engaging pieces that all led to $533 million in box office receipts. It was masterful, and like any great Hollywood institution, they’re ready to go for a sequel. It begins with a simple teaser poster. It begins with Gotham City falling down all around us…

Things have been very quiet on the waterfront for Universal’s prequel to The Thing, suitably titled The Thing. After a scrapped April release date, we’ve seen nothing from the film. No trailer. Only a few images. And no poster… until now. The coolest part of this very well done (and unofficially released) poster is that it shows the movie is indeed coming out this October. With no trailer three months before opening, it seemed as if another delay was coming. Thankfully, that’s not the case.

It seemed only natural that John Carter of Mars would become John Carter – since most Americans hate things from Mars and need to be tricked into seeing movies – but there’s nothing natural about the teaser poster for the film. It’s a red letter attempt at building buzz, but it’s unclear exactly how it will achieve it with only the bare chest of Taylor Kitsch and enough photoshopping to turn him into Michael Shannon. A brand new property is emerging, and another is seeing its final curtain. On the other end of the poster spectrum is this bold new look at the children from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. All grown up and ready to battle. Click on the posters to make them far, far larger: