You Know What's Awesome? This Poster for Shame

My first reaction to the new poster for Steve McQueen's acclaimed drama Shame was natural, perhaps obvious: "But where's Michael Fassbender?" The guy only ran away with the Venice Film Festival award for Best Actor and is on a track for serious contention in this year's Oscar Index and is one of the brightest rising stars in all of cinema and makes women and men alike swoon with his bracing good looks. (To say nothing of similarly absentee co-star Carey Mulligan.) But that reaction seems forever ago, lodged in the hours since I haven't been able to stop looking at it.

The reality is that this speaks to both the serious moviegoer who's familiar with Shame's notoriety and doesn't need faces to sell it to him or her and the casual moviegoer who may or may not have heard a peep about this but knows the implications of a messy bed stamped with the word "SHAME." Sexy! Vivid! Dramatic! It's not just for 10-year-olds who failed to pull up the sheets before dashing to school anymore.

Anyway, we all remember what happened the last time Fassbender went front and center on for the marketers, so technically the critics got what they wanted. It's a perfect poster! Well played, Fox Searchlight.

[via THR]