Thanks. Chelsea and Dylan are watching Maleficent right now. I stayed home watching the National Spelling Bee and San Antonio vs. OKC.
The Best Film of 2014 (or, my favorite 2014 release so far)
There was a time when a film’s theatrical receipts were a clear indication of how many people had seen it. Since the 80s, one had to also consider home video purchases and rentals. Nowadays, VOD and other streaming outlets make a film’s popularity even more difficult to gauge. My favorite 2014 film so far is Anthony Chen’s Ilo Ilo, which won Best First Film at Cannes (Camera d’Or) and London in 2013 and recently concluded its very limited theatrical run with a box office take of only $38,461. However, I have no idea how many members of US distributor Film Movement have purchased the DVD or watched it streaming since its release last month, and I wonder how many non-members will watch it when it becomes available for general purchase in September. Perhaps it is too soon to lament the dearth of viewers, because maybe a lot of film lovers will access the film directly through the distributor. Another indicator of popularity is the number of IMdb users that post a rating. So far, Ilo Ilo has been rated by 1210 users, but only 99 of them are from the US. The previous Camera d’Or winner, Las Acacias, was one of my very favorite films of 2012 and went virtually unseen. I plan to make sure I watch the recent Camera d'Or winner, since it seems I am guaranteed to fall in love with it. Here’s Film Movement page for Ilo Ilo. You can watch the trailer there.
http://www.filmmovement.com/filmcata...chandiseID=346
Interestingly, this English-language trailer made by the distributor begins with a text that reads "Singapore 1997" when in fact the film is set in 1998. Naturally many English-language critics have adopted the mistake in their reviews even though there is at least one very clear and specific temporal marker in the film (an insert shot of a letter typewritten by one of the principals). Cognitive psychologists use the term "inattentional blindness" to refer to the phenomena of not being conscious of seeing something that is smack in front of us, usually because we don't expect it to be there and/or because we are attending to only part of what is available for perception (coming up, more about this phenomena as it pertains our understanding of narratives in audiovisual media).
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