Lawless, the Prohibition-Era Southern drama from director John Hillcoat, is set to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, which is currently monopolizing the Croisette.  With the film finally getting ready for its debutante ball, The Weinstein Company has unveiled seven character posters from movie formerly titled The Wettest Country in the World and the more concise Wettest Country.

These character posters answer a few questions.  First is the question, "How do we let audiences know that our movie stars Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Jessica Chastain, Guy Pearce, Jason Clarke, and Mia Wasikowska?"  Answer: character posters.  The second question is, "How do we let audiences know it's a period movie with action?"  Answer: Give most of the cast revolvers and make sure there's a tommy gun in there too.  The third question is, "How awkwardly can we insert Gary Oldman's face onto a poster?"  Answer: Photoshop.

Late last month, an international poster for The Amazing Spider-Man played on the iconic masked superhero created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko all of fifty years ago.  Now, we're officially in the dog days of summer movie season, and three all-new international character posters eschew the iconic in favor of presenting the three principal characters in Sony's Spider-Man reboot: Peter Parker, Gwen Stacy, and Dr. Curt Connors.

We've been seeing no small amount of images from G.I. Joe: Retaliation as of late, including three official stills just yesterday.  Paramount is opening up the promotional floodgates for its sequel to 2009's G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, and since the film has a big ensemble of characters bearing the names of Hasbro action figures, today there's a new crop of character posters for eight of those action-figures-turned-action-heroes/villains.

2012 might just be the year of the badass cinematic archer.  Right now, there's Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games, next month, we've got Hawkeye in The Avengers, and in June, we'll meet Princess Merida, the heroine of Pixar's Brave.  The thirteenth Disney-Pixar joint is the first to center a lady-hero, a strong-willed Scot voiced by Kelly Macdonald.  The third bullseye-nailing archer in as many months is one of several characters adorning a quartet of new Brave posters.

Last week, a series of character posters promoting Dark Shadows desaturated the color in the faces of the film's major characters and plopped those faces in front of poppy, colorful backgrounds.  Now, a new set of character banners again gives all the players their chance to shine, but this time they're all shown from head to toe.  There's still that interplay between the bright colors and gothic colorlessness, though, as well as the tagline, "Strange is Relative."

Last week, Warner Bros revealed the first theatrical trailer for Dark Shadows, Tim Burton's update of the 1960s-1970s soap opera created by Dan Curtis.  The trailer showed that, instead of being a gothic slog, the film is instead a surprisingly colorful 1970s-set comedy with no small amount of eccentricity.  Today, the studio followed up with nine character posters, one for every member of the sprawling ensemble cast.

The rallying cry of Marvel's preeminent superteam is, of course, "Assemble!"  As far as we can tell so far, assembly is really the entire point of The Avengers, putting a bunch of superheros and government assassins seen in the previous five Marvel Studios releases into one mega-movie.  They'll all learn valuable lessons about teamwork, as demonstrated by the recent The Avengers poster, which put them all together, fighting as one and striking poses on the battle-ravaged streets of Manhattan.  On six new character posters, whoever, the team pairs off to look cool and combat-ready.  Everyone's accounted for, from Iron Man to Black Widow, and one even adds Cobie Smudlers as SHIELD Agent Maria Hill.  You can never go wrong with Smulders.

Remember that international poster for Battleship that waddled its way online last week?  The one with Taylor Kitsch looking every bit an action hero against a background sugesting naval action and alien invasion?  If you were befuddled by the idea that Battleship will be sold around the world as a vehicle starring Tim Riggins from Friday Night Lights, then four new international character posters will lower the eyebrow that you've presumably raised.

Five new character posters from What to Expect to Expect When You're Expecting pretty clearly convey that the movie is about pregnancy by showcasing the five lead actresses in varying stages of knocked-upedness.  Elizabeth Banks, Cameron Diaz, Anna Kendrick, Brooklyn Decker, and Jennifer Lopez are all present and accounted for, and each also gets a little quotation to give you some insight on their character and let you know that the movie is agreeably lighthearted.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 premiered in Los Angeles last night, and it hits theaters nationwide this Friday, so right now, much of America is no doubt fixating on vampires and werewolves with high cheekbones.  A trio of new character posters for The Muppets, however, bring forth the startling notion that the Twilight films could increase their sex appeal by replacing the three lead actors with Muppets, swapping Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, and Taylor Lautner for Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, and Rowlf, respectively.  With The Muppets less than two weeks away from domestic release, you'd think the Disney marketing machine would've finally lost its parody mojo, but these posters show that the mojo remains strong, even without any more spoofy trailers, which seem to drop with like clockwork whenever you think there couldn't possibly be another.