lifestyle TUESDAY, MAY 19, 2015 Cannes Film Festival Behind Cannes’s glitz, B-grade movies do booming TV trade ou’ve seen the movie “Black Swan”, ly agree with, is that it can cannibalize their but what about “White Swan”? Or market. But we would completely disagree, Y“Avengers Grimm”? Or “Darker because what would cannibalize their mar- Shades of Grey”? Or “Attack of the ket is a pirated movie of their movie,” said Lederhosen Zombies”? You won’t catch Rimawi. “We’ve all settled in an area where these features at your local movie theatre, we’re not too egregious. It’s clearly a differ- but they and other B and C-grade flicks are ent movie but there’ll be some word or doing booming business in the Cannes term that’s similar to the other ones.” market running in parallel with the film fes- The Asylum has a catalogue of 200 films tival. and makes around 15 a year, each with a Sales to television and video-on- budget of $500,000 to $2 million (436,000 demand companies are strong, with China Euros to 1.7 million Euros) and done mostly emerging as a key customer for the trashy in-house, with hired directors. Apart from niche, producers and distributors dealing mockbusters such as “Age of Tomorrow” with such films told AFP. Those in the sector and Mad Max-inspired “Road Wars”, it also are frank about what they’re selling. “I think makes its own zany horror movies, of which there’s really good independent movies “Sharknado” (killer sharks swept inland by a that deserve to be seen. And outside that tornado) is probably the most famous. there’s a bunch of crap,” said Lawrence Silverstein, vice-president for sales and China hungry for B-grade movies marketing at one Los Angeles-based outfit Other fare, driven by client demand- called Osiris Entertainment. often Japanese-includes “3-Headed Shark Silverstein pointed to a poster of “House Attack” and “Mom, Tommy Made a of Bad” on his stand (plotline: three fugitive Dinosaur”. A zombie series, “Z-Nation”, is sisters with a suitcase of stolen heroin hide showing on the US cable channel SyFy. out in their childhood home, haunted by Films made for TV and video-on-demand their parents) and said, “It’s not a great hor- (VOD) are the main outlets for this fare, ror movie, but it’s not bad.” (Reviews on the though occasionally distributors in small Internet disagree.) But he also showed a territories such as Romania pick them up teaser of a crowd-funded indie horror-com- for theatrical release. edy called “Clinger”, in which an accidental- The massive, recent shift away from DVD ly decapitated teen returns to stalk his sales to VOD has fragmented the market, (From left) US producer Jonas Rivera, US Chief creative officer Disney/Pixar John Lasseter and US director Pete Docter pose during a photocall unrequited love. It looked well-paced and but the players are seeing signs of strong for the film “Inside Out” at the 68th Cannes Film Festival. — AP entertaining. buyer interest from Asian nations, especial- ly China. “There’s a big VOD market in ‘Mockbusters’ China,” said Douglas Price, CEO and produc- Other posters around the Cannes mar- er at D3 Telefilm, which is looking to get Pixar gets ‘Inside’ our heads ket, including one showing a Thor-like around Chinese quotas on foreign film superhero wearing a red cap and brandish- imports by co-producing with Chinese ing a hammer over the title “God of companies. “They have to understand that Thunder”, underlined a whole category in you have to bring more the niche known as “mockbusters”. These American/European actors into the movies- with latest animation knockoffs, made to resemble small-budget they can’t just be all purely Chinese,” he versions of Hollywood blockbusters, ride said. Although the Chinese co-producers ixar went underwater with “Finding Nemo”, anything for anybody. But in the film they are strength to strength with “Monsters, Inc.”, the marketing slipstream of the originals to demand all distribution rights in China, that into the toybox with “Toy Story” and now and that’s a fairly good way of thinking about it,” “Finding Nemo” and “The Incredibles”. In 2006, tempt people looking for something to “is no big problem for me,” he said. “They Pit’s going inside our brains with its latest, he told AFP in an interview. Producer Jonas Disney bought the studio for $7.4 billion. Under watch at home, not at the cinema. will give you the rights for around the “Inside Out”. The US animation studio, now part Rivera added that the team thought: “We like to the Mouse House, it came up with hits in the “We find a similar genre and hint at it in world, which to me I think is a good deal.” of the Disney empire, on Monday was present- make movies that have emotion, why not make form of “Ratatouille”, “WALL-E”, “Up” and “Brave”. the title,” said David Rimawi, a producer Certainly the appetite in Asia and the ing its latest cartoon feature at the Cannes Film one about emotions, right?” The English-lan- But in recent years, it has been in danger of and seller at The Asylum, one of the bigger Middle East for B-grade movies is buoying Festival ahead of a June worldwide rollout guage version of the picture features the voices being overshadowed by Disney Animation LA outfits in the sector. Naturally, the big the market. So much so, that-as the tagline expected to do big family box-office business. of “Parks and Recreation” star Amy Poehler, “Twin Studios, which made the top-grossing animation US studios aren’t happy, especially with for the snowbound Austrian flick “Attack of The film delves into the imagination-literally- Peaks” actor Kyle MacLachlan and the ever- of all time, “Frozen”. piracy also squeezing revenues. But the B- the Lederhosen Zombies” says-”it’s all by portraying human emotions of Joy, Anger, adaptable Hollywood actress Diane Lane. Cannes, therefore, is a prestigious fillip for grade merchants are careful to stay just on downhill from here”. — AFP Disgust and Sadness as distinct characters, who Pixar, and market watchers are seeing if “Inside the right side of the line of what constitutes sit at the control panel in the mind Cannes-friendly cartoons Out” can succeed in maintaining its profile a copy and what is sufficiently different. “Headquarters” of a young girl, Riley. Her mind- Although not in the Cannes competition for against the competition it faces-inside and out. “Their feeling, which we don’t necessari- scape also features “cities” representing her main the Palme d’Or, the official screening slot on the For Docter, being part of Disney is only positive. personality traits, and a maze-like memory bank. Riviera on Monday gives valuable and global “Disney, you know, when they bought Pixar, they Director Pete Docter (who also made the media attention to the movie. Other animations were like, ‘OK we paid a lot of money for these Pixar hits “Up” and “Monsters, Inc”) said the that have launched in Cannes in years past guys, we don’t want to break anything.’ And so anthropomorphic approach came from watch- include “Up” from Pixar, and “Shrek” and “Shrek 2” far, it (the studio) really has remained ing his own 11-year-old daughter Elizabeth and from rival studio DreamWorks. autonomous.” — AFP wondering what was going on inside her head. Pixar, founded by George Lucas and financed “Emotions are not really little people running by late Apple boss Steve Jobs, made a big open- around in your head-I hope that doesn’t spoil ing splash with “Toy Story” and went from Film Review: ‘Louder Than Bombs’ n the 35 years since “Ordinary People,” the neurotic academic) seems more well adjust- repeatedly putting herself in harm’s way as being American cinema has told and retold stories ed at first, having just fathered an infant son, worthier than whatever domestic satisfaction she Iof how a death in the family can reveal the though he clearly has no shortage of issues to might take from staying home, but rather the dysfunction no one wanted to admit was there. work through as well. kind that challenges the accepted modes of cine- “Louder Than Bombs” is just such a picture, Frankly, the sight of these characters coping matic expression. One clue (falling on the more studying how a widower and his two sons cope with Isabelle’s death isn’t nearly as rich or ambi- obvious side of things) presents itself when with learning the “circumstances” of the accident tious as another parallel theme that Trier and Conrad relays a lesson learned from his mother, that killed his war-photographer wife, but it also writing partner Eskil Vogt have opted to explore who taught him how changing the framing of a manages to be the opposite of nearly every other with the project: the issue of artistic ambition photograph can completely change its meaning- film in the genre. Directed by Joachim Trier, who’s and how committing to a creative career (or which invites us to reflect on what Trier has certainly gifted enough to have turned in a pas- abandoning it, as the case may be) shapes our cropped out of his own story, a contempo spin (From left) Actress Rooney Mara, director Todd Haynes, and actress Cate Blanchett sive-viewing tearjerker, “Bombs” asks audiences lives and the relationships we maintain with on James Agee’s “A Death in the Family,” com- pose for photographers upon arrival for the screening of the film ‘Carol’.