"when a film was released in the US"

Ben,

As I already suggested, "when a film was released in the US" is also contested. How many places does it have to play? For how long? Meek's Cutoff played in two different U.S. cities in 2010. It then got a "limited" release in 2011. How many cities did it play in then? Not too many. It never got a "wide" release. Some films don't even get a "limited" release beyond NY, LA, Chicago, and a few other places. We're sometimes, sometimes, lucky to see some of the rarer films play at Cornell months later. I remember being glad to see La France a few years ago. It played maybe 3 places in the entire U.S., showed at Cornell for 2 screenings, then didn't make it onto DVD for three years afterwards. It made it on my 2008 list, but no one else besides a handful of big city critics had seen it and even now that it's become available, it never got any kind of attention. No one besides Cinema Scope and the art film snobs in the big cities were talking about it. How do you date something like that? The Mill and the Cross falls here, too. It has been fortunate enough to get an immediate DVD release, but otherwise has had little to no attention and no real "release." If, instead of getting the DVD release, it suddenly got lots of attention and opened wide this month, would it then be a 2012 film?

Enough already. You guys already know my position without me repeating it in a variety of different ways. Bleh.