The teaser poster for Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained" that hit the Internet Thursday is heavy on atmosphere, but short on clues about the plot of Tarantino's spaghetti Western-inspired film, a so-called "Southern."
"Django" hits theaters on Christmas Day and reunites the filmmaker with his "Inglourious Basterds" star Christoph Waltz. Audiences loved the pair's last genre-mashup, and "Django" seems destined to provide a bit of the old ultra-violence in addition to Tarantino's crackling dialogue.
It centers on a German dentist turned bounty hunter (Waltz) who teams up with a freed slave (Jamie Foxx) to take down a plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio).
Kerry Washington, Kurt Russell and Sacha Baron Cohen co-star in the film, which will be released by The Weinstein Company.
The poster features the dark outlines of two figures (Waltz and Foxx?) striding purposefully across a field. The broken chains and stylized look of the teaser seem to harken back to graphic designer Saul Bass' posters for classic films like "Anatomy of a Murder" and "Vertigo."
That reference to Hollywood's golden age is fitting, as Tarantino's movies always have a foot firmly planted in cinema history.