Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

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Orlac
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#2251 Post by Orlac » Fri May 27, 2022 7:05 am

Fran Simeoni
Today is my last day @ArrowFilmsVideo
After twelve amazing years I've decided to move on and try my own thing. It's been a hell of a journey that I've been privileged to be a part of, made some amazing friends and had incredible experiences.
I'm so proud of all I've achieved and leave behind a great team who will continue to do brilliant work. I couldn't believe it then and can't now. I got to work on some of my most cherished films and made real discoveries along the way too.
Too many amazing titles to name Dassin, Boro, Bavas, Miikes, Taviani, Night of the Hunter, Rosi, Petri, Sullivan's Travels, Rivette, Ludwig, Thief, noirs, Olmi, Cronenberg, Carpenter, Kieslowski, Jodo, De Palma, Ring, Ferrara, Park, Human Condition, Imamura, Fukasaku on and on...
Arrow will continue to release amazing films but hope you'll check in on my future endeavours @filmsradiance where I'll be focused on BD releases of more favourites and discoveries, with a slightly different bent to Arrow. It's empty now but I'll be adding things as they get done

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Maltic
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#2252 Post by Maltic » Fri May 27, 2022 7:23 am

Was Simeoni considered to be more on the Academy side of things (as the names he mentions would suggest)?

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tenia
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#2253 Post by tenia » Fri May 27, 2022 8:13 am

I don't think so, though I suppose such listing would have been less effective with Nelson, McEveety, Signorelli, Ascher, Louise, Goldman, Friedman, Deubel and Grossman.

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Finch
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#2254 Post by Finch » Fri May 27, 2022 8:40 am

Wishing Fran Simeoni all the best for the new boutique label, and excited to see what discoveries are in store from Radiance Films.

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MichaelB
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#2255 Post by MichaelB » Fri May 27, 2022 9:10 am

Maltic wrote:
Fri May 27, 2022 7:23 am
Was Simeoni considered to be more on the Academy side of things (as the names he mentions would suggest)?
He was in overall charge of the output of Arrow Video and Arrow Academy, although Academy was his personal baby and more closely reflects his own tastes.

Basically, he's the man who ultimately greenlit everything over the last decade or so - including such commercially high-risk projects as Borowczyk and Rivette. The former in particular was a whopping gamble, as Arrow didn't have much of a reputation as high-end film restoration specialists, and indeed it was famously part-crowdfunded after Arrow understandably baulked at the total cost.

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reaky
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#2256 Post by reaky » Fri May 27, 2022 10:15 am

It’s heartening that the Radiance Films profile on Twitter reads “releasing classic films on blu-ray.” Hopefully they’ll leave the 80s horror and such to Arrow.

Orlac
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#2257 Post by Orlac » Fri May 27, 2022 10:18 am

Very few August titles from Arrow - Flatliners UHD and Running Out of Time 1&2 (the latter US only).

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yoloswegmaster
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#2258 Post by yoloswegmaster » Fri May 27, 2022 11:01 am

Arrow will also only be announcing 2 titles for September in order to implement better QC.

Glowingwabbit
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#2259 Post by Glowingwabbit » Fri May 27, 2022 11:04 am

yoloswegmaster wrote:
Fri May 27, 2022 11:01 am
Arrow will also only be announcing 2 titles for September in order to implement better QC.
I like this move. James Flower explains it here: https://twitter.com/jamesflowerfilm/sta ... 6_xMtdPOYQ

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swo17
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#2260 Post by swo17 » Fri May 27, 2022 11:09 am

We're also on the lookout for QC freelancers; please send your CVs to info@arrowfilms.co.uk to be considered.

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ryannichols7
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#2261 Post by ryannichols7 » Fri May 27, 2022 6:41 pm

Maltic wrote:
Fri May 27, 2022 7:23 am
Was Simeoni considered to be more on the Academy side of things (as the names he mentions would suggest)?
the question has already been answered, but if his Twitter likes are any indication... those of us that miss academy may be in for a good ride

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swo17
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#2262 Post by swo17 » Fri May 27, 2022 6:54 pm

So the remaining question is: will Arrow itself suffer? I have confidence in James Flower, but hopefully the slight shift of late toward middling '90s studio fare is just a coincidence as opposed to a trend

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yoloswegmaster
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#2263 Post by yoloswegmaster » Fri May 27, 2022 6:55 pm

dwk wrote:
Wed Apr 06, 2022 9:16 pm
So rumor, via the Kung Fu Fandom board, is the "BL Box" for November is in fact a Bruce Lee set for the UK. Nothing more exciting than these films getting re-released for the dozenth time.
It looks like Arrow is releasing a Bruce Lee set in 4K, as Frank Djeng confirmed in this interview (timestamp 30:45) from a couple weeks back that he was working on a Bruce Lee set and even said that it might be on 4K UHD.

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ryannichols7
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#2264 Post by ryannichols7 » Fri May 27, 2022 7:03 pm

swo17 wrote:
Fri May 27, 2022 6:54 pm
So the remaining question is: will Arrow itself suffer? I have confidence in James Flower, but hopefully the slight shift of late toward middling '90s studio fare is just a coincidence as opposed to a trend
that's what I wonder too. Masumura, Chabrol, and Fassbinder have been their only real "academy" releases lately, and while do like Flower (I know he posts here), I know the Hong Kong stuff is often his focus. which is cool but I don't know how much he spearheads that sort of thing (maybe I'm wrong!)

Arrow at this point largely seems to be releasing 90s studio fare, martial arts films, and of course the horror/gore/slasher schlock. the look for anything else is getting increasingly rare. obviously every label can't be everything to everyone but the fact that they did this stuff so well before is what really gets me

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swo17
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#2265 Post by swo17 » Fri May 27, 2022 7:13 pm

Over the Edge was also Flowers' baby, and that release was phenomenal

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MichaelB
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#2266 Post by MichaelB » Sat May 28, 2022 7:08 am

I had a gratifyingly long chat with James last night and there are considerable grounds for optimism - they've got a great production team in place right now and there are some very exciting things coming up, although I'm understandably honour-bound not to identify them.

In particular, everyone at Arrow is acutely aware of the teething problems that they've had with UHD, and they're absolutely serious about resolving them because they're fully aware of the reputational damage that it's doing - something I'm paying very close attention to because it's not exactly a secret that Indicator is revving up for its first UHD discs (promised for the turn of 2022/23, which I suspect will translate as "announced before New Year's Day, released not long after"). Whereas moving from DVD to BD was procedurally very straightforward, moving from BD to UHD has posed rather bigger challenges, ranging from different colour spaces to not being able to work from playable DVD-R or BD-R interim burns in the usual way.

Orlac
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#2267 Post by Orlac » Sat May 28, 2022 7:30 am

yoloswegmaster wrote:
Fri May 27, 2022 11:01 am
Arrow will also only be announcing 2 titles for September in order to implement better QC.
And just in time for my mortgage application, yay!!!! :)

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rapta
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#2268 Post by rapta » Sat May 28, 2022 12:15 pm

swo17 wrote:
Fri May 27, 2022 7:13 pm
Over the Edge was also Flowers' baby, and that release was phenomenal
Was going to say this after reading the above. He also did some wonders when he was working at Soda Pictures (now Thunderbird Releasing) especially with Chris Marker, Kelly Reichardt and Jim Jarmusch box sets, and titles like The Reflecting Skin and Guy Maddin's The Forbidden Room. I think we're in pretty safe hands with people like him involved in Arrow.

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JamesF
Joined: Thu Mar 04, 2010 1:36 pm

Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#2269 Post by JamesF » Mon May 30, 2022 11:19 am

Well, shucks, thanks for the kind words everyone; it's certainly a relief to see you all take the Twitter thread in the spirit in which it was intended, as opposed to some elsewhere who went straight to catastrophising and unwarranted cynicism. Then again, I'm not convinced there's anything that anyone could say to stop said persons from doing so!

Fran's departure is keenly felt on a personal level by all of us here (though we're all rooting for Radiance to be a huge success!), but for those of you speculating what effect it will have on Arrow's releases to come: Fran would be the first to say that he's not done much of the way of hands-on producing at Arrow for quite a while now, at least since I joined in 2018. Indeed, much of his desire to set up Radiance is wanting to get back to being more hands-on in a way that he's not been able to in recent years, following the rapid growth of Arrow as a company and ceding production responsibilities to colleagues like myself, Michael Mackenzie and Jasper Sharp while he took on more of an upper management position. So if you've enjoyed our releases recently already, that baseline standard isn't going anywhere as the same producers (myself included) as before will be working just as hard.

In terms of acquisitions and the general tone/approach of Arrow's catalogue going forward, I've seen a ton of speculation about whether this will immediately change with Fran's leaving, in addition to the long-standing questions about whether the THG acquisition has affected our choice of titles. I can safely say a big fat "no" in both cases - Fran has overseen deals on a substantial number of films we'll be releasing over the next two to three years, on top of which Kevin Lambert is still very much involved and is every bit as knowledgable and savvy. With regards THG, they have zero involvement or say in our acquisitions and never have done. The trend towards more commercial titles on the whole and the winding down of the Academy label pre-dates the THG deal and is more to do with Arrow now being a company of a certain size that requires a certain amount of profit to cover its overhead (again, even preceding THG) that means less commercial titles are inevitably going to be less frequent.

That doesn't mean we've dumped Academy-style releases altogether though, even if they're in the minority - for one, I'm currently working on a boxset of films by an acclaimed contemporary arthouse filmmaker that is very much within the Academy wheelhouse and I think will make a lot of people on this board happy. The way these things generally work is in cycles, based on whichever bunch of films from a certain deal we're currently working through - so for a while it may be Sony titles, or Toei titles, or Fortune Star titles, then it pivots to Universal titles, or Celestial titles, or MK2 titles, then we get another Sony deal, and another Toei deal, and the cycle begins anew... so basically, hang in there and if there isn't something you're interested in one month, or even for a few months, there will probably be something eventually. Ultimately we're just responding to what's available (not as much as you'd think), what interests us (a lot more than you'd think) and of course what sells well. While I am indeed largely focused on HK action titles at the moment (not entirely by choice, they're just incredibly demanding films to oversee and I'm the one who's become the in-house specialist by default!), there's plenty of variety to go around and I'll be across at least some of it. I'll never understand people (not referring to any posts here, more on Facebook etc) complaining about Arrow not releasing specific types of films anymore or having to change with the times; the amount of companies working in the sector has ballooned over the years and there's an extraordinary amount of choice out there. We can't possibly do all of the films so isn't it brilliant that there are plenty of other labels working hard at picking up the slack where we can't? I suppose in a way it's a backhanded compliment...

Anyway, tl;dr - Fran's left us an incredibly strong foundation over the last decade plus, and we hope everyone continues to follow us while we build upon that foundation, as well as iron out some of the issues we've had recently in terms of quality control. (Now waiting for someone to hysterically accuse me of "damage control" in 3, 2...)

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Finch
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#2270 Post by Finch » Mon May 30, 2022 1:33 pm

Facebook is what it is, ditto Twitter. The pearl clutching on the Arrow US thread at Blu-Ray.com wasn't exactly unexpected either if nonetheless frustrating for you guys. Really appreciate you reaching out, James, and that you've been able to continue releasing Japanese films.

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MichaelB
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#2271 Post by MichaelB » Mon May 30, 2022 2:16 pm

JamesF wrote:
Mon May 30, 2022 11:19 am
The way these things generally work is in cycles, based on whichever bunch of films from a certain deal we're currently working through - so for a while it may be Sony titles, or Toei titles, or Fortune Star titles, then it pivots to Universal titles, or Celestial titles, or MK2 titles, then we get another Sony deal, and another Toei deal, and the cycle begins anew... so basically, hang in there and if there isn't something you're interested in one month, or even for a few months, there will probably be something eventually.
I've singled this bit out because I don't think it gets emphasised enough; when a label signs a bulk deal with a rightsholder, they're often required to release those titles by a certain date, and no matter how carefully you plan your schedules in advance to try to create a broad mix, inevitably something will happen that upsets this.

Covid-19 is a good example of something that caused a major industry-wide upset, but another example was when the BFI suddenly found out that they couldn't renew their Jacques Tati cash cows - so they immediately rejigged their schedule and prioritised BDs of the Tati releases that they hadn't yet bumped up to high-def, just so they could catch another Christmas cycle before they lost the rights, but a lot of other titles got delayed as a by-product. Similarly, both the BFI and Indicator announced they were working on Targets and Revenge of Frankenstein and then found out that 4K restorations were in the offing, so had to massively delay the release (indefinitely in the case of Targets).

And more recently people were complaining about the apparent glut of obscure British titles from Indicator in recent months and speculating as to whether or not this was a change of overall plan - well, that's because those were the hardest ones to put together under lockdown, so they got delayed from their original release dates (significantly delayed in the case of The Pemini Organisation and Voices, as you can tell from their startlingly low spine numbers relative to other things that are coming out now). Conversely, the Columbia Noir sets got accelerated releases because their handy combo of existing masters, archival extras and audio-only commentaries were much easier to put together under lockdown.

And of course labels would be foolish not to capitalise on a surprise hit, even if it means further rejigging of the overall schedule. Or something might suddenly become available after years of failed attempts, but available to multiple labels in several territories, so there's a need to rush that out as quickly as possible too.

Basically, as James says, you won't get an accurate impression of a label's overall ethos on a month-by-month basis. You'll get a better picture if you look at the pattern over six months, and an even better one if you look at it over a year (where it might bear more of a resemblance to what was originally planned!), but a month's output really doesn't reveal anything especially useful.

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dwk
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#2272 Post by dwk » Mon May 30, 2022 2:37 pm

Finch wrote:
Mon May 30, 2022 1:33 pm
Facebook is what it is, ditto Twitter. The pearl clutching on the Arrow US thread at Blu-Ray.com wasn't exactly unexpected either if nonetheless frustrating for you guys. Really appreciate you reaching out, James, and that you've been able to continue releasing Japanese films.
To be fair to those posters, history is full of larger companies buying smaller companies and destroying what made the smaller company successful. And key personnel jumping ship or being forced out is a red flag that that is happening.

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dwk
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#2273 Post by dwk » Mon May 30, 2022 3:07 pm

Stephen R. Bissette said in a podcast that he has recorded commentaries for new Arrow releases of Count Yorga, The Return of Count Yorga and The Dunwich Horror.

Calvin
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#2274 Post by Calvin » Mon May 30, 2022 5:59 pm

JamesF wrote:
Mon May 30, 2022 11:19 am
That doesn't mean we've dumped Academy-style releases altogether though, even if they're in the minority - for one, I'm currently working on a boxset of films by an acclaimed contemporary arthouse filmmaker that is very much within the Academy wheelhouse and I think will make a lot of people on this board happy.
Sounds good, James!

(Did we ever find out what 'LM Box' was? Fingers crossed for Lukas Moodysson...)

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MichaelB
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Re: Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

#2275 Post by MichaelB » Mon May 30, 2022 6:49 pm

dwk wrote:
Mon May 30, 2022 2:37 pm
To be fair to those posters, history is full of larger companies buying smaller companies and destroying what made the smaller company successful. And key personnel jumping ship or being forced out is a red flag that that is happening.
Nobody's been "forced out", have they? I was at Fran's leaving do last week and...

...well, it was sharply different from mine at the BFI eleven years ago, which I shared with a number of people who really had been forced out (mass redundancy), so you can probably imagine what the atmosphere there was like!

I think it's crucial to stress that the present production team - James Flower, Michael Mackenzie, Jasper Sharp and Neil Snowdon (sincere apologies if I've left anyone out; I'm rather out of the loop these days) - is every bit as capable as their predecessors, if not more so; I've known all of them for years and have worked directly with most of them on more than one occasion. In fact, right now there's a particularly good balance between seriously heavyweight film knowledge and hands-on technical skill, which certainly wasn't always the case in the past.

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