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Omensetter wrote:Addendum: It's frustrating that there have been essentially no pick-ups!

Its going to be ironic if they all end up on Netflix.

lol Arrow bought Climax

Why is either A24 or Arrow buying that so funny?

I think for A24 its an incredibly uncanny decision very unlikely to produce a return, when other conpetition titles wouldn’t struggle as much. I have a lot of faith in A24’s ability to turn something unexpected into profit at the domestic box office (Menashe was a hit - grossing more than A24’s own Ghost Story despite playing in half the theaters) but just don’t see the money in this. I just thought it’d be amusing to repeat that structure for this acquisitions from one of this forum’s other favorite distributors.

Planting my flag: I think it'll make $15 million at the domestic box office by the time its run is over, and it'll be a cult hit on home video for years. Enough people know Noe at this point that while surely it's a risk for A24, I don't think it's a given that it'll be a money loser, based on descriptions of the film. They can market the hell out of it and get an It Comes at Night-level gross.

I know that Arrow have for quite some time been trying to release Noe's films on Blu. I think it's great that they have finally managed it. I only like a couple of his films, but I look forward to this and hopefully other Noe titles getting the Arrow treatment rather than someone like AE. You only have to look at the AE DVD only release LOVE to see that this is good news.

I'm not an enormous fan of Artificial Eye releasing so many films on DVD only (Jupiter's Moon being a recent example) but they definitely released Love on Blu-ray initially (though I don't think they released it on 3D-Blu-ray!). I wonder why only the DVD is available now.

A24 would not have picked up a foreign film if they didn't think it could perform at the stateside box-office. That's just how they are.

Relevantly....Gaspar Noé has won Fortnight's top prize after starting the festival with a (still) pathetic poster.

It’s A24’s first foreign film, weirdly.

Ribs wrote:(Menashe was a hit - grossing more than A24’s own Ghost Story despite playing in half the theaters) but just don’t see the money in this.

Did you see the money in Menashe? Brooklyn-set film involving orthodox Jews that primarily played in Brooklyn and NYC, home of one of the world's largest populations of orthodox Jews? I can see it and clearly A24 saw it. If nothing else, A24 is good at business (not expanding Florida Project aside] and branding.

The movie's already loved; they've had their test screenings, essentially. It's French, genre, and features ostensibly just choreographed dancing to famous techno cuts.

I don't really agree that A24 is particularly good at their business - like, yes, you have a Menashe or The Lobster that does well, but they've seriously screwed the pooch on 20th Century Women, Green Room, Swiss Army Man, and (most especially) A Ghost Story. Menashe had an obvious in to a lot of major markets with Jewish populations, but even still it probably exceeded their wildest projections, which is great (and I think a similar effect might be going on with Bleecker Street's Disobedience's relatively promising return so far, but that obviously has the virtue of two recognizable stars boosting its profile).

I do not believe in any scenario in which this movie released by any distributor makes $15 million domestic, just because by virtue of it being a foreign language film it won't go into wide release. The goal is probably for like $5 million, but I can also imagine a path for this movie where American audiences just don't want to go see the weird sex thing and it makes less than $2 million and doesn't expand beyond 150 screens.

Yeah, $15 million is a hell of a lot. I’d be seriously impressed if it made that number.

I have to admit I don't understand this assumption that religious Jews watch movies?

knives wrote:I have to admit I don't understand this assumption that religious Jews watch movies?

The synagogues bring their members for a special trip to the movies by watching something that's reflective of their theology.

They don’t. I lived in Brooklyn for many years. The neighborhood I grew up in bordered with an orthodox jewish neighborhood. They clearly stay to themselves, have there own forms of entertainment and are very strict at keeping popular culture out of their community. However, Williamsburg, Brooklyn which is another neighborhood that has long been the so called capital of ultra orthodox Jews has gone through a bit of a renaissance over the last 10 to 15 years, in which it has been infiltrated by young professionals, artists and hipsters that has caused a gentrification to it. I’m not familiar with the film, but that is probably the basis for the film.

FrauBlucher wrote:They don’t. I lived in Brooklyn for many years. The neighborhood I grew up in bordered with an orthodox jewish neighborhood. They clearly stay to themselves, have there own forms of entertainment and are very strict at keeping popular culture out of their community. However, Williamsburg, Brooklyn which is another neighborhood that has long been the so called capital of ultra orthodox Jews has gone through a bit of a renaissance over the last 10 to 15 years, in which it has been infiltrated by young professionals, artists and hipsters that has caused a gentrification to it. I’m not familiar with the film, but that is probably the basis for the film.

Isn't B&H operated by orthodox Jews? I'm not that familiar with the culture but this seems amusing given how popular B&H is with the entertainment biz.

And just to add to what FrauBlucher has said about Williamsburg, it's basically hipster central, and it's slowly becoming an overpriced collection of boutiques aimed at tourists - even the thriving indie rock scene that was here when I moved to NYC has been gradually shrinking. (TV on the Radio even moved to L.A. not that long ago.) One reason why I haven't been crazy about the American independent film scene is that 99% of it seems to center around hipsters in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. There's nothing wrong with making a film about that world, but when you see it in film after film after film, it gets old really fast - you're dealing with a microscopic (and very privileged) sliver of the population.

They do. Just like J&R Music World was. There are also different sects of the orthodox/Hasidic community that allows for slightly more liberal activities than others. But being in business is a little different than partaking in entertainment value. It’s very similar to the ones that work and own diamond businesses on 47th street. But you never see them walking around wearing opulent jewelry.

My goal in life is to start discussions about Menashe that will inevitably be spun off into the infighting forum

Dead or Deader wrote:

knives wrote:I have to admit I don't understand this assumption that religious Jews watch movies?

The synagogues bring their members for a special trip to the movies by watching something that's reflective of their theology.

As Fraublucher said they definitely don't. Maybe a few stray weirdos would protest it, but otherwise I wouldn't be surprised if they simply didn't know it existed. Some of these people, mostly the Burrow Park sort than the Williamsburg sort, are basically Amish when it comes to film with even nature films being considered a waste of time and potentially inappropriate. The hipsters that live with them might be attracted to smugly watch though.

Nadine Labaki's Capernaum is getting some best-of-the-festival notices on Twitter and being hailed as a strong Palme d'Or contender, although two or three criticize its sentimental third act. A 15-minute standing ovation was reported.

Ribs wrote:I do not believe in any scenario in which this movie released by any distributor makes $15 million domestic, just because by virtue of it being a foreign language film it won't go into wide release. The goal is probably for like $5 million, but I can also imagine a path for this movie where American audiences just don't want to go see the weird sex thing and it makes less than $2 million and doesn't expand beyond 150 screens.

Just to put things into context, $15 million would make it the highest-grossing non-Indian foreign-language release since Instructions Not Included in 2013, and $5 million would put it roughly even with the most successful such release of 2017 (Your Name). I can't imagine $15m even if A24 were crazy enough to give it a wide release, given how The Grandmaster ($6.6m) and The Raid 2 ($2.6m) fared on over 800 screens.

I would say more than two or three, although I've been skeptical from the start upon reading its synopsis, that it's from Labaki, The Kid comparisons, and everyone tripping over each other to pick it up. I'm sure there's much to recommend in it---I haven't seen it after all---but I really don't trust it to not be needlessly maudlin. It seems a nice consensus and might recency effect its way to the Palme, but it seems the jury can do better with this apparently great edition of Cannes. Again, I obviously haven't seen it, but the thing screams Friendly Foreign.

In other news, even though it's just a handful of critics, Burning topped Toni Erdmann's ScreenGrid record at 3.8.

Poetry topped my top ten list for that year, but I hadn't followed Lee's career since then, so I was quite surprised that not only was Burning his first film in all that time but that he had actually been blacklisted by the same disgusting administration whose president was convicted and imprisoned. (Apparently he and thousands of others were blacklisted because the minister of culture was told that film industry was moving too much to the left and needed to shift to the right.)

I'm so excited for this movie and am really hopeful it finds US distribution ASAP - hopefully through IFC or Kino like his last two and not SPC or something that might resign its eventual US release to the MOD state of the previous record-holder.

I'm a little bemused by how many movies are premiering to "instant favorite for Palme" reactions from here and elsewhere - in the several years I've really been paying any attention to the films playing I can't remember such a diverse group of generally well-liked films. However, Cannes since 2014 has thrown a bit of a curve ball each year with the Palme winners, so I really so no reason to make any predictions at all, as it's just as likely to end up being the Christopher Honore film then any of the things that seem to have gotten a bit more attention. Which is totally fine - the point of the prize isn't to be a consensus favorite, and if it goes to something weird it could result in something getting distribution that wouldn't otherwise.

2016 was really the only outlier. 2015 still gave two of the three top prizes to Competition's most acclaimed (Assassin, Son of Saul) and there seemed to be some sort of a dispute between Dolan and the Coens over Carol, perhaps resulting in Dheepan. There wasn't much enthusiasm at that post-awards press conference. Last year, You Were Never Really Here picked up two prizes, BPM snagged the Grand Prix, and The Square was near-the-top of best received.

But yeah, they could just as easily go all-in on Dogman.