Today is the longest day of the year, the first day of summer, the solstice, and we hope it covers you with abundant sunshine. And if it doesn't, you can always rely on the kindness of films from GreenCine. And if it does, you should still be watching movies, because, as Alvy Singer said in Annie Hall (in our monthly Woody quote), "sun is bad for you. Everything our parents said was good is bad. Sun, milk, red meat... college."

And while you're staying indoors, there's still time to download, and vote on, the ten fine finalists in the GreenCine Online Film Festival, which ends its run Sunday.

Artist-actress-filmmaker-writer Miranda July is so hyphenated she's hard to keep up with, and has had to rev herself up even further with the release of her startlingly good feature debut Me and You and Everyone We Know. In conversation with Craig Phillips, July paused long enough to shed some light on the process of making the indie film that both Roger Ebert and Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum tagged the best they saw this year at Sundance.

Up next: An interview with Chris Terrio, director of Heights, a new indie film also arriving in theaters this month, featuring Jesse Bradford, Elizabeth Banks and Glenn Close.

A blog day's journey into night: the GreenCine Daily covers the world of film like a blanket. Among the Daily's new offerings is a fine encapsulation of the latest films from the CineVegas Vanguard Directors series.

Video-on-Demand: Fame Whore (1997).

Now available via GreenCine's Video-on-Demand service: Ever-subversive Hawaii-based independent filmmaker Jon Moritsugu took sheer delight with Fame Whore, an amusing takedown of indie and undie attitudes that Entertainment Weekly gave an "A; his most successfully realized flick." The film is organized as a trilogy of tales about three people who all share the overwhelming desire to excel, no matter the odds: a tennis star, a wannabe fashion designer (Amy Davis, who co-wrote Moritsugu's Scumrock), and an animal activist. "A deadpan comedy that relies on a sense of spot-on accuracy to capture the lives of these fringe-art rebels...refreshingly turned on themselves," wrote the LA Times of this "sweetly mocking comedy about the perils of reaching 30 with little to show for one's avant-gardeness except crazy hair and an ossifying attitude." [LA Weekly] You can watch Fame Whore now or anytime you wish via GreenCine's "hella cool" Video-on-Demand service.

GreenCine Staff Pick of the Week: Me Without You (2001).

Sandra Goldbacher's lovely and underrated Me Without You is one of the few of the spate of recent female bonding pictures to actually get that right (take that, Ya Yas), following as it does two English girls' intense intense friendship (and intense sexual rivalry), on into adulthood over the course of twenty years. As Goldbacher's first feature, the Victorian era piece The Governess, reminded me of a more emotionally complex Jane Austen, Me Without You, even if set in the 20th century, more directly reminds of Austen, in humor, tone and plotting, in which the characters are both appreciably wise and yet self-sabotaging in the way that people are. The male characters are thankfully three-dimensional whereas they could easily have all been conveniently drab louts. Kyle MacLachlan in particular has a great supporting role as the college lecturer both women fall for. But it is Anna Friel and Michelle Williams (American, but with a spot-on accent) who bring the story of this often-toxic friendship fully to life. It may be a "small" film, but Me Without You is large in heart and emotional scope. -- Tamara Lees

Note: A recent staff pick, Go Tell the Spartans, had a last minute release date change which we unfortunately weren't notified about until after newsletter press time. Instead of releasing on that day, May 24, the DVD is now due out on August 30. We apologize for any disappointment this may have caused.

Our own handpicked highlights of this week's new DVD releases include several great documentaries and, even greater, Josephine Baker:

Immortal (2004). One of the week's most unusual releases. Enki Bilal, born in Belgrade and now living and working in France, is a comic-book artist with a highly dedicated cult following. Here, he brings the first volume of his Nikopol Trilogy, La Foire Immortels (The Immmortal Market) to visually spectacular life with the help of a cast that includes Thomas Kretschmann and Charlotte Rampling.

They Came Back (2004). What if 70 million people came back from the dead - zombies, basically - but they weren't particularly interested in chowing down on the living? Suppose they simply wanted to reassimilate themselves back into society? They're not too quick about it, of course, and they have to sort of learn to cope with the sluggishness of their bodies and the forgetfulness of their minds, but they're trying. "It's rather amazing how far the film is able to coast on its uniquely fascinating premise," writes Ed Gonzalez in Slant, "even if it isn't much of a stretch for its director: [Robin] Campillo co-authored Laurent Cantet's incredible Time Out, a different kind of zombie film about the deadening effects of too much work on the human psyche, and They Came Back is almost as impressive in its concern with the existential relationship between the physical and non-physical world."

In the Realms of the Unreal (2003). An extraordinary and unique documentary about one of the most famous, intriguing and even disturbing outsider artists ever known. Or rather, unknown; though the Chicago janitor left behind 300 paintings and a 15,000-page novel, his work is the only record of a lonely life that ended in 1973. "Was Henry Darger's output the work of a singular artist or the symptom of mental illness?" asks Dave Kehr in the New York Times. "[Jessica] Yu suggests that the question is not only impossible to answer, but also reductive and inappropriate in the face of such a singular achievement. Obscure by nature and unwieldy by design, Darger's work is difficult to confront and consume; Ms. Yu has brought it a little closer, and that is as fine a public service as an art documentary can provide."

Put the Camera on Me (2003). "An amazing, unclassifiable bit of queer Americana," enthused Bright Lights Film Journal editor Gary Morris when he caught this one at the San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival in 2003. "Ever been to a family function and tried to pick out the future gay boys of America by cataloguing the strange behaviors of your young cousins and their friends?" asks Ed Gonzalez in the City Pages. "If so, this film from Darren Stein (Jawbreaker) and Adam Shell is for you."

Bright Leaves (2003). "Hearing Ross McElwee's voice at the beginning of a movie is like getting a phone call from an old friend," writes Ty Burr in the Boston Globe. "The Cambridge-based documentarian is a raconteur of elegiac discursiveness, and films such as 1986's Sherman's March and 1994's Time Indefinite wander from topic to topic with a charming, self-absorbed, and oddly liberating waywardness. Bright Leaves is supposedly about the North Carolina tobacco industry and McElwee's ancestral connection to it, but somehow you don't mind that you end up hearing actress Patricia Neal talk about her enduring love for Gary Cooper."

Siren of the Tropics (1928). No history of Europe between the wars is complete without at least a mention of the woman who electrified the continent, Josephine Baker. While you may have seen clips of her before, there was a lot more to her vibrant persona than a banana dance. She made features as well, and this is her first. The disc also features Josephine Baker: The Performer and more extras. Also out today: Baker's first talkie, Zou Zou, a 1934 "backstage musical" in the tradition of 42nd Street, featuring Jean Gabin who was himself just about to break and break huge around the world; and Princess Tam Tam (1935), which Vincent Canby in the New York Times called "Irresistible... enchanting." The last disc also features Josephine Baker: The Films.

New Anime:

R.O.D. The TV Series. Volume 7: The New World (2005). "A very dynamic series with some interesting characters," says JHeneghan. "A good extension of the R.O.D. OVA."

Fill up your queue. We recommend having a minimum of ten times the number of slots you have, i.e., forty if you're on the four-out plan. If you're having trouble thinking of titles to rent, here are a few ideas: check out member lists (which you can look at chronologically, alphabetically or by average rating) and editorial top lists, browse through primers and our active discussion boards, look at our lists of titles coming soon, among other ideas. So queue away! And if you need to watch something right now, take a gander at our rapidly expanding Video-on-Demand offerings. And for ease of browsing, you can look at our currently available VOD titles by genre; go to the main page for a list of all genres.

We've said it before but we'll say it here again: This is the last week you can download and vote on the finalists in the GreenCine Online Film Festival. Presented by DivX, the festival offers filmmakers a share of the profits and you exposure to some of the best new documentaries and indie features from around the world. So watch 'em, vote on 'em, and spread the word.

Congratulations to the winners of several recent GreenCine trivia contests: The X Files Mythology winners were EricBill0 and Nyetah (the answer was "Trust no one"); Paul McCartney in Red Square winners were bcombo, AnjKay, Yowanda, MDixon, Echan, Sman, dftpnk, mem1170, godumun3 and wldree (the answer was "Maybe I'm Amazed" and each winner will take home a package of the disc, a poster, LP and pin). Take a whack at our next trivia contest giveaway, up on GreenCine this Friday: Nero Wolfe Season 2.

GreenCine's next Yerba Buena Center screening will be on July 6, when we present the Documentary Grand Prize winner of the GreenCine Online Film Festival. The winner will be announced next week and we'll have more details then. Whichever film it is, we guarantee you won't want to miss it!