This edition of the GreenCine Dispatch is dedicated to our pets, our four-legged, loyal friends who are with us through thick fur and thin times. During these hot summer months, keep your animals indoors or somewhere cool, with plenty of liquids available. (Wait, what is this, Animal Planet?) And sit Rover or Tabby in front of the telly for some good animal-tainment, like Babe (but the second one may disturb both pets and small children), Benji (but not Old Yeller), The Cat From Outer Space (but definitely not this one), and, for the rodent lovers among you, Stuart Little (or this one, if you're a weird rodent lover). And now we'll fetch the rest of this week's news.

A new film aims to school the world about the power of the seminal punk band The Minutemen, whose creative force was at its very peak when brought to a tragic halt. We Jam Econo is a sorely overdue eulogy of sorts, with an excess of musicians, artists and cultural trackers testifying to The Minutemen's legacy. And front and center of course are the dearly departed D. Boon's former bandmates, drummer George Hurley and, most prominently, bassist Mike Watt, who takes the filmmakers on a tour of old haunts in his van, obviously still grieving over the loss of Boon and still touched by having known him. But it's an abundance of footage of The Minutemen in action that will send people out looking for their LPs. Craig Phillips spoke with We Jam Econo co-director Tim Irwin about the making of the film and the power of the music.

The GreenCine Daily, our award-winning blog, is back with full-time, full-on coverage of the world of cinema. You better log on soon if you haven't for awhile; you'll have your reading cut out for you!

Video-on-Demand: Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the... (2005).

This week only! A GreenCine exclusive: Can a movie made for $99 be more entertaining than a $200,000,000 Hollywood mega-flick? That's the question Jim Riffel poses with Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the Bride of the Return of the Revenge of the Terror of the Attack of the Evil, Mutant, Alien, Hellbound, Crawling, Zombified Living Dead, Part 3 - certainly the longest title we have available via Video-on-Demand. Now that Riffel's completed his film, he's challenged Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds to a "War of the Films," claiming his film is the more enjoyable viewing experience. Riffel is asking anyone who watches the films to email their critique to Jim@warofthefilms.com and he'll post it on the site. Watch it now or any time this week.

GreenCine Staff Pick of the Week: In July (2000).

German filmmaker Fatih Akin, whose most recent film, Head-On (Gegen die Wand), was arguably one of the more brilliant films of the past year, previously made a more whimsically enjoyable little film called In July. This summertime treat makes for perfectly appropriate viewing as we wind down its namesake month, but the title also refers to the free-spirited character played by Christiane Paul, who has a secret crush on a Hamburg student teacher (Moritz Bleibtreu, whom you might remember from an obscure little film called Run Lola Run). The road trip movie - which takes us from Hamburg to Istanbul - is enhanced by Akin's playfully non-chronological narrative, beginning mid-narrative and then moving backwards. While for some films, this sort of contrivance only serves to mask other deficiencies, for In July it merely adds to the pleasure, keeping us off-balance but engaged. Both Paul and Bleibtreu are winning presences, who also play their characters as believably imperfect, and it's a further pleasure to glimpse such cinematically underrepresented locales as Hungary and Turkey. You will forgive some coincidences and what may seem on paper a derivative plot, as In July still ends up feeling original and, ultimately, surprisingly deep. -- Tamara Lees

This week's batch of new DVD releases includes a top documentary filmmaker's eagerly awaited back catalog and an anime epic:

Steamboy (2004). "Katsuhiro Otomo's epic Steamboy cost 20.2 million dollars to make, took 180,000 cels to produce and ate up the last ten solid years of Otomo's life," writes Gabriel Reldman for the Anime News Network. "The hype surrounding this film is unreal; could the director of Akira, one of the most popular anime films ever, live up to his own legacy? The answer, thankfully, is a resounding yes. Steamboy outclasses all of Otomo's other films and most of his competitors' films; this is an instant classic, something to be loved and remembered by audiences of every shape and size."

The Upside of Anger (2004). "Part of the pleasure in watching [Joan] Allen and [Kevin] Costner comes from seeing them slip comfortably into the kinds of characters they have always done best," wrote A.O. Scott in the New York Times, "as if, in some parallel movie universe, Crash Davis, the semi-washed-up baseball player in Bull Durham, had hooked up with Elena Hood, the stifled and betrayed wife and mother from The Ice Storm."

This week sees the long overdue release of three landmark documentaries by Academy Award-winner Errol Morris as well as the complete collection of his television series, First Person. "After twenty years of reviewing films, I haven't found another filmmaker who intrigues me more," Roger Ebert once wrote. "Errol Morris is like a magician, and as great a filmmaker as Hitchcock or Fellini."

The Thin Blue Line (1988). As we noted in our introduction to Nina Rehfeld's interview with Morris in 2003, perhaps the most historically significant of his films is The Thin Blue Line: "Significant because Blue Line, by including staged reconstructions of crucial events in its story, challenged the notion of what a documentary could be. And do. Morris himself has called it 'the first murder mystery that actually solves a murder.' The project came about when his filmmaking career was stalled and he'd taken a job as a private investigator. 'Two careers intersected,' John Pierson writes in Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes. 'Errol Morris director met Errol Morris detective just in time to return to filmmaking and clear an innocent man who had been on death row.'"

Gates of Heaven (1978). "It's difficult to tell whether Gates of Heaven is comedy, tragedy, or just plain wacky," wrote John Nesbit at CultureDose.net. "You might end up viewing it with your mouth agape." No matter what, animal lovers will enjoy Morris' "winningly absurdist" (TimeOut) look at pet cemeteries and the people who use them. Morris then traveled to Vernon, Florida in 1981 for some "philosophical slapstick," as David Ansen called it in Newsweek, "a film as odd and mysterious as its subjects, and quite unforgettable."

Errol Morris' First Person. Disc 1. The series ran one year on Bravo, a second year on the Independent Film Channel, and incorporates Morris's trademark interviewing machine, the Interrotron, which allows interviewees to look simultaneously at a live image of Morris and directly into the camera. Again, Morris's knack for finding the people with the oddest yet somehow alarmingly resonant stories to tell and then getting them to tell them fully is on full display here. Disc 2. Disc 3.

Gate of Flesh (1964). 82 years young, Seijun Suzuki is currently wowing old fans and winning new ones with his new feature, Princess Raccoon. It's great to see him back in form again and, as a splendid reminder of what's made him one of the world's most unique directors, Criterion is releasing not one but two features from the mid-60s, the period in which he was rattling the Japanese film industry with films like Tokyo Drifter and Fighting Elegy. Gate of Flesh is "a brilliant, lurid, candy colored film able to evoke profound feelings of sorrow and disenchantment," wrote Keith Allen at Movierapture. Criterion's disc includes a new video interview with Seijun Suzuki and art director Takeo Kimura.

The Story of a Prostitute (1965). "A rule-bending take on the popular Taijiro Tamura novel," writes Criterion. The disc includes new video interviews with Seijun Suzuki, production designer Takeo Kimura and film critic Tadao Sato.

New Anime:

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex Volume 7 (2005). "It's as clever, funny and long-winded as the comics and adds a touch of the poetic artiness of the films," writes brakhage of the first volume. "Great plotting, direction, voice talent... killer production all the way round."

It's always good to keep an eye on your queue to make sure the films you most want to see are at the top. We also 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.

Congratulations to the winners the Manna From Heaven trivia contest: DubTaylor, badfish and BuddyLee (the answer was Silent Night, Lonely Night). Meanwhile, we have a brand new trivia contest up on the home page today and it's our biggest giveaway ever: twenty-six(!) classic titles from Fox Home Video's World War II collection. From the Halls Of Montezuma To The Shores Of Tripoli, and pretty much literally everything in between, these are some of the best war films ever made - so march on over to our home page and enter!

What music are you listening to? Participate in this new member-created discussion thread. Or jump on in to the boards with a new topic of your own.

Coming soon! GreenCine has not one but two film screenings booked for next month: On August 3 at the Yerba Buena Center, we'll present exploitation queen Doris Wishman's first film, Hideout in the Sun, which was shot at a Florida nudist colony. The screening will be introduced by Grindhouse: The Forbidden World of "Adults Only" Cinema author (and creator of our film noir primer) Eddie Muller.

A week later, on August 10: the winner of the GreenCine Online Film Festival's Narrative Grand Prize, Red Cockroaches, scurries into SF's Balboa Theater.

Welcome to Camp GreenCine, where instead of wallet-making, archery and canoeing, you'll learn Giallo 101, list-making, and on-demand viewing. We're a camp for film geeks, and darned proud of it. Speaking of geeky things, herein we announce some nifty new little site features and tweaks we think you'll like. See below for more.

The film Ushpizin, screening as part of this summer's San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, has been something of a phenomenon in Israel, a film about Hasidim, starring Hasidim - who rarely, if ever, see movies themselves. David D'Arcy, no stranger to controversy himself, talks to self-taught director Gidi Dar about how his seemingly impossible film got made.

More articles and primers are on their way, so keep checking our home page for the latest.

The GreenCine Daily, our award-winning web log for cinephiles worldwide, continues its series of "summer reading" snippets, perfect for July's short attention spans. We'll return to our regular expansive coverage of the world of cinema by the week's end.

Video-on-Demand: Fed Up! (2002).

Didn't think it was possible to examine issues around genetic engineering, the Green Revolution, genetic pollution and modern pesticides in the food industry in an entertaining fashion? You need look no further than Fed Up! Angelo Sacerdote's film uses often hilarious, and downright creepy, archival footage ("a man isn't safe, even at his own dinner table!" one man prophetically warns in an old educational film), balanced by interviews with farmers, scientists, activists and government officials, to tell the story of our often whacked-out food production system. The film also introduces us to organic farmers, presenting community supported agriculture and small-scale organic farming as real alternatives to agribusiness and industrial food. "An eye-opening, provocative video," declared Eating Well Magazine, while the San Francisco Bay Guardian wrote the film "shows why - and how - small producers and everyday consumers should take back control of their food." Get Fed Up! any time of the day via GreenCine's rapidly expanding Video-on-Demand service.

GreenCine Staff Pick of the Week: The Train (1965).

John Frankenheimer is probably most renowned for the original Manchurian Candidate but his long filmography is filled with other terrific thrillers, and 1965's WWII actioner The Train shows the director at the peak of his craft. The film is set in 1944, as Paris is about to be liberated and the Germans are in panic mode while fleeing: a German colonel loads a train with French art treasures to send back to Germany, and the Resistance must stop it without damaging the cargo. Burt Lancaster plays a French (just go with it, okay?) railway inspector more concerned with destroying German weapons than saving a pile of paintings, but who slowly begins to understand, with some convincing from a young Jeanne Moreau among other local citizenry, their importance to France's cultural heritage (which, the film reveals, must sometimes be weighed against the value of human life). But where The Train really excels is the action elements, building like a slow burning fuse on a stick of dynamite towards the pulse-pounding second half. That it looks meticulously authentic - it was shot on location in France, using real trains - further adds to the tension, especially in an awe-inspiring collision sequence. And the intelligent plotting which goes beyond the usual "cat and mouse," involving the hero's problem-solving abilities using the train system as a giant chessboard, refuses to pander to the audience. They don't make 'em like this any more.
-- Craig Phillips

You've heard the term "slow news day"? Well, today is a slow releasing day. This week's slate of new DVD releases is a brief 'un:

Constantine (2005). Tilda Swinton with wings. For some, that'll be the main attraction; for others, it'll be Keanu Reeves once again oozing between parallel worlds. And then there are those who'll see Rachel Weisz in anything. Okay, but what about the movie? "It's basically just got to suck, right?" asked Andrew O'Hehir in Salon. "But here's the thing: Constantine pretty much rocks. It doesn't rock in the sense of 'Dude, I just saw the best action movie ever,' the way you probably felt when you walked out of the original Matrix back in '99. It's a more relative kind of rocking, the rocking that indicates, 'Land o'Goshen, that was much better than I had any reason to expect.' Keanu Reeves is - let me just get this off my chest - very good. And we find out that hell bears a strong resemblance to bad traffic in Los Angeles; who can be surprised by that?"

Sleepless Town (1998). The "Skinny" from Love HK Film: "Set in Japan, this entertaining crime thriller from former UFO director Lee Chi-Ngai makes good use of its gorgeous location and star Takeshi Kaneshiro."

Wishing Stairs (2003). The third in a series of Korean horror films set in all-girl schools, following Whispering Corridors and Memento Mori. "The rookie director Yun Jae-yeon, recruited to the series on the strength of her award-winning short film Psycho Drama (2000), shows a sure hand over the psychological dynamics of the trio of main characters," wrote Kyu Hyun Kim at Koreanfilm.org. "The newcomers cast in these difficult roles rise to the challenge with gusto."

New Anime:

Gungrave Volume 7: To the Grave (2003). Hints of things to come in the synopsis bode well for the many fans here of this fast-moving series: "As Harry flees from the bloody chaos of his imploding organization, he puts himself on a collision course with Grave and their bittersweet past!"

DNangel Volume 6: Ice and Darkness (2005). Your fellow GCers are rating previous volumes on average well above 7 out of 10. "A creative series with both loveable and mysteriously compelling characters who you can't help but laugh and cry with," wrote Anime Obsession. "The story, laid out in 26 episodes is unique and the art is gorgeous. A must see for anime fans!"

Slow releasing week or no, it's always good to keep an eye on your queue to make sure the films you most want to see are at the top. We also 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.

But really, why stop there? We've also just optimized the way your queue loads so it will do so much faster, especially noticeable for those of you with fairly large queues.

But wait! There's more. We've improved the message boards, too, so you can sort the most active discussion threads alphabetically by topic, by topic author, by date posted, by most recent replies, by last post, and by most views. Enjoy!

Congratulations to the winners of the Freaked trivia contest: RCrook and FancyLad (the answer was Hideous Mutant Freekz). We hope to announce more winners for a couple of pending contests here next week (our distributor is a little behind in sending those discs to us). Meanwhile, look for our next giveaway up on the home page this coming Friday, for the underrated little comedy Manna From Heaven.

GreenCine has not one but two film screenings booked for next month: On August 3 at the Yerba Buena Center, we'll present exploitation queen Doris Wishman's first film, Hideout in the Sun, which was shot at a Florida nudist colony. The screening will be introduced by Grindhouse: The Forbidden World of "Adults Only" Cinema author (and creator of our film noir primer) Eddie Muller. A week later, on August 10: the winner of the GreenCine Online Film Festival's Narrative Grand Prize, Red Cockroaches, scurries into SF's Balboa Theater.

We hope our friends in the South are safe and sound in the wake of devastating Hurricane Dennis. May this be the last one for awhile, and may this newsletter find you in good health and safe harbor. Meanwhile, perhaps we can get your mind off other things with a look at the latest happenings in the world of home cinema.

With her award-winning first feature, The Joy of Life, touring the west coast (the Castro Theatre in San Francisco and the Rialto in Santa Rosa), Tamara Lees asked filmmaker Jenni Olson about its making - from the original concept through to the last-minute transfer before its world premiere at Sundance earlier this year. As a bonus, Olson also lists her ten favorite Queer films, and, just for fun, her ten favorite (mostly) non-Queer films, too.

The GreenCine Daily, our award-winning web log for cinephiles worldwide, presents a series of "summer reading" snippets, perfect for July's short attention spans. As well, you'll still find reports from various international film festivals and suggestions for further clicking. Enjoy the Daily poolside.

Video-on-Demand: The Park (2004).

Tony Okun's efforts to get his documentary The Park made were not in vain. The film about a neighborhood park and the meaning it has for a city was at the center of a recent article in the San Diego Union Tribune on how the digital revolution is helping indie filmmakers. The paper called his film "less a political statement than a love letter to urban parks." The Park is "a wonderful production," said Valerie Landes, Series Producer of PBS' Natural Heroes. " Timeless, engaging, thoughtful and entertaining." And from the filmmaker himself: "You're seeing truly independent cinema. I was able to do it exactly the way I wanted to do it, without anyone else's opinion or anybody else's say." It's a lovely slice of life on an aspect of urban life we often take for granted. You can visit The Park any time you like by way of GreenCine's Video-on-Demand service.

GreenCine Staff Pick of the Week: Doomed Megalopolis (1992).

It's rare in the anime world to see a work of historical fiction, but Madhouse’s 4-episode OVA Doomed Megalopolis, based on an original story by Hiroshi Aramato, is precisely that. It's not only visually striking (considering it's now 14 years old), but Doomed Megalopolis is also one of the most chilling anime series I've ever seen. The show is set in Tokyo between 1912 and 1928, where the imperial government begins industrializing and modernizing the city - but an evil sorcerer has other plans. The sinister and often surreal atmosphere will permeate your consciousness in ways Freud would be proud of - I particularly admire the artwork that went into the morphing crows - and several more horrific sequences that reminded me of an anime Exorcist. The one major flaw with this ADV release is that there's no original Japanese language soundtrack, which is a bit odd considering the story is set very clearly in Tokyo, but at least the English language voice cast is quite good. That and a bit of a misogynistic bent are admittedly debits on what is otherwise a very compelling series. -- Tamara Lees

This week's slate of new DVD releases is rife with gems, new and old:

Million Dollar Baby (2004). The Academy, of course, has pretty much provided all the introduction to this film you might need if you haven't gotten around to seeing it yet: Best Picture, Best Actress for Hilary Swank, Best Supporting Actor for Morgan Freeman and Best Director for Clint Eastwood. And if you have seen it and need a reason to see it again, remember that even before the Academy spoke, Million Dollar Baby made the year-end top ten lists of many a critic, including two for the New York Times, A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis.

A Very Long Engagement (2004). Three years after the international smash that was Amélie, director Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Audrey Tautou re-team for a drama set in World War I. "134 minutes long and not one of those minutes fails to contain something magical," exclaimed Film Threat. "This is a movie that has more dazzling sights and ideas than Hollywood sometimes comes up with in a year."

Mondovino (2004). Jonathan Nossiter's documentary about contemporary wine culture is a "must-see," wrote Jonathan Marlow when he caught it at the Mill Valley Film Festival. And you don't have to be a connoisseur to appreciate Nossiter's take on the effects of globalization.

Unfaithfully Yours (1948). Regular readers of these introductory snippets will have noticed that we've taken a liking recently to reviews from, of all places, TV Guide. Frankly, they're better than many found in even some of our very favorite publications. Granted, the opening on this one you might expect: "The last of [Preston] Sturges's Hollywood films, and one of his finest. This farce of misconceptions, infidelities, and murder is a brilliantly stylish work that imaginatively squeezes everything it can from the film medium." But here's where they take it that extra bit further: "Unfaithfully Yours is a near perfect combination of sound and image. Sturges orchestrates the fantasy sequences with care and precision, using editing and performance rhythms that are in perfect synch with the underscoring music." Quotes from Sturges himself follow. Both the movie and the review are recommended. And this Criterion disc, by the way, naturally features plenty of scholarly commentary, but also a video introduction by Monty Python's Terry Jones.

Le Notti Bianche (1957). Luchino Visconti directs Marcello Mastroianni and Maria Schell (who passed away just weeks ago) in an adaptation of a story by Dostoyevsky, "transposed by Visconti from mid-1800s St. Petersburg to a modern Italian town of meandering canals, its romantic mood counterpoised by a group of prostitutes, pickpockets, and motor scooters," wrote - that's right - TV Guide. "Filmed entirely in the studio, the sombre, misty sets are reminiscent of the murky mood pieces of Marcel Carne. Illusory, dreamlike flashback memories mingle strangely with the realities of the rock 'n' roll cacophony of the dialog-free dancehall scenes. A deliberately artificial exercise by a director who had previously specialized in neorealism."

Cry-Baby (1990). Johnny Depp stars in John Waters's musical homage to the 50s, out on disc at last in a Director's Cut. "Far more energetic than Grease," wrote Movieline, "and more consistently enjoyable than any of Presley's oeuvre.... Giggly treats include Willem Dafoe in a cameo appearance as a slimy, sadistic prison guard; former sex bombs Joey Heatherton and Joe Dallesandro as Bible-thumpers; and unrestrained turns by Susan Tyrrell, Iggy Pop, and Troy Donahue."

The Stone Raft (2002). "Veteran director George Sluizer travels to the far tip of Europe with The Stone Raft, his sly, visionary adaptation of the novel by Nobel laureate and Portuguese author José Saramago," wrote Leslie Camhi in the Village Voice. "Sluizer manages to strike a delicate balance between magical realism and biting political satire in this engaging allegory of failed pan-European aspirations."

New Anime:

The Place Promised in Our Early Days (2004). Makoto Shinkai made a huge splash with his indie anime project Voices of a Distant Star a few years ago. In his first feature, he's "brought a new level of sophistication and maturity in terms of the content of his films, which distinguish them from the better known landmarks," wrote Cinema Strikes Back. "Shinkai has created unabashed love stories, more forlorn than full of joy, but still sweet and charming. In so doing, the works have the potential to reach a much broader audience and raise the genre as a whole to be taken more seriously as an art form."

Elfen Lied: Vector 2 (2005). "I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something about this anime that seems very unique," writes Battie of the first volume. "I'm always, always, going to love any movie or series with a character(s) that isn't totally good or evil. The greyer the area, the more I enjoy it. Elfen Lied is one of the best examples I can think of now, and it's entirely creepy due to the extremes of the characters' actions. As for the plot that drives everything that I've seen so far... I consider it quite distinct and incredibly interesting. Even if I weren't fascinated by the stark characterization, the plot would get me."

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'll announce a new batch of GreenCine trivia contest winners in this space next week. Meanwhile, look for our next giveaway up on the home page this Friday, for Alex Winter's cult flick Freaked.

GreenCine has not one but two film screenings booked for next month: On August 3 at the Yerba Buena Center, we'll present exploitation queen Doris Wishman's first film, Hideout in the Sun, which was shot at a Florida nudist colony. The screening will be introduced by Grindhouse: The Forbidden World of "Adults Only" Cinema author (and creator of our film noir primer) Eddie Muller. A week later, on August 10: the winner of the GreenCine Online Film Festival's Narrative Grand Prize, Red Cockroaches, scurries into SF's Balboa Theater.

We hope everyone had an enjoyable Fourth of July, getting your fill of both downtime and fireworks. Even here in San Francisco, we saw fireworks for once without the hindrance of fog. Meanwhile, the red, white and blue gives way to the green, black and white, as GreenCine gives you the low-down on the latest happenings in the world of home cinema (DVD + VOD, with TLC).

Nearly twenty years ago, Sherman's March became one of the most unusual art-house hits in movie history. Now Bright Leaves, just out on DVD, is winning accolades and new audiences for documentary filmmaker Ross McElwee. Sean Axmaker talks to him about his mentors and his uniquely engaging form of first-person narrative.

Twist of Faith, a documentary from award-winning director Kirby Dick and producer Eddie Schmidt that opened this past week, was nominated for an Academy Award, screened as part of the documentary competition at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and won the audience award at the recent Amnesty International Film Festival. The film follows the intimate psychological journey of Tony Comes, an Ohio firefighter, who survived years of sexual abuse at the hands of a Catholic priest, and was deemed "an intimate, sensitive movie about a brutalizing subject." Francine Taylor attended the Los Angeles premiere and the subsequent Q&A, which included producer Schmidt and four individuals involved in some aspect of clergy abuse cases. She summarizes the film and the fascinating discussion for us in "Twist of Faith is their story."

The GreenCine Daily slows down its usually breakneck pace to allow for vacations and so on, but in addition to a series of summer reading snippets, plenty of cinematic news and commentary will still flow forth - so keep checking back.

Video-on-Demand: The Bride With White Hair 2 (1993).

"Finally, a Hong Kong sequel that lives up to its precursor's premise (sort of)," wrote the Austin Chronicle's Marc Savlov of Ronnie Yu's The Bride With White Hair 2. "Bursting with gorgeous cinematography and stunning set pieces (the fiery, tragic climax puts you in mind of the final moments of John Woo's The Killer), the film is a powerhouse feast for the senses, and a passionate, albeit blood-drenched, love story to boot. This is what Hong Kong filmmaking can be when all the stops are pulled. Forget the moldering Once Upon a Time in China series, this is the real McCoy." You don't need to have seen the first one (but you can add that to your queue) to appreciate the gloriously colorful sequel, another over-the-top fantasy feather in the hat of Ronnie Yu. You can watch The Bride With White Hair 2 anytime you want via GreenCine's rapidly expanding Video-on-Demand service.

GreenCine Staff Pick of the Week: The Apple (1980).

Well, this is it. The Apple is indisputably the worst musical ever made. Menahem Golan (who later brought us many of the decade's most bloated action films) ushered in the 1980s by officially, if inadvertantly, killing off disco with this absolutely fabulous(ly awful) example of oversparkled costuming, unchoreography, bizarre plotting and misguided religious symbolism. A fine example of the latter is in the unforgettable image in the final scene, in which we discover what make of car God enjoys. But if you're in a giggly mood, it's also a complete riot. We don't condone or support the use of hallucinogenic drugs to enjoy the film, and, frankly, that won't be necessary, as the film's own rainbow of fashions and uncatchy yet catchy songs (including one with the lyrics, "America, the land of the free / Is shooting up with pure energy / And every day she has to take morrrrrre—speed!") will give you many of the same effects. Set in "the future" - 1994, which, thankfully didn't look like this, with the exception of certain parts of Las Vegas - the story, if you care, is about two wholesome folksingers who are split apart by a devilish cult, and its melange of drugs, orgies, lamé, and satin, I mean, Satan. Perhaps it's all meant to be a metaphor for the dark side of the music business, but that'd be giving the makers too much credit. The Apple makes Xanadu look like a heyday-era MGM classic; don't say you weren't warned, but, we dare say, don't miss it, either. -- Craig Phillips

The highlights of this week's new DVD releases come on a fairly slow releasing day (next week's is much larger), but there are still a few intriguing titles to be found:

Bride & Prejudice (2004). Coming off her indie hit, Bend It Like Beckham, Gurinda Chadha shoots for an international crossover hit by casting one of Bollywood's biggest stars, Aishwarya Rai, in an all-singing, all-dancing adaptation of one of Jane Austen's most beloved novels. "Indescribably wonderful," wrote Flick Filosopher MaryAnn Johanson, "one of those rare films that I never wanted to be over."

Land of Silence and Darkness (1971). Werner Herzog is back in the news - and in theaters - this year, following the release of a remarkable string of documentaries. Though he's made some extraordinary fictional features, of course, it's almost as if he's rediscovered a calling. In this early doc, he focuses on Fini Strauberger, a 56-year-old deaf and blind woman who has dedicated her life to helping the similarly afflicted. "From their first flight on an airplane to a day at the zoo, Herzog captures the joys and struggles of those who have been isolated from the world around them," writes Gary Tooze at DVDBeaver.com. "Land of Silence and Darkness is a tribute to the triumphant nature of the human spirit and a glimpse into an existence so intense and abstract that at times it seems to reach great lyrical heights."

Also out today: Herzog's debut feature, Signs of Life (1968), which picks up on themes he explored in two previous shorts, themes we'd see again in such later films as his international breakthrough, Aguirre, the Wrath of God. The sheer power of nature pushes our protagonist, Stroszek, a soldier, over the edge - to the point that he sets out to kill his newly wed wife and blow up the entire Greek island where he's supposed to have been recovering from his injuries.

Twenty Bucks (1993). First, what a cast for a comedy. Among the stand-outs: Linda Hunt, Christopher Lloyd, Elizabeth Shue, Brendan Fraser, Gladys Knight (no, really), William H. Macy, Spalding Gray and Steve Buscemi. In no particular order. Though there is an eerie, not quite random order to their appearances as we follow a $20 bill from hand to hand in a story written all the way back in 1935. "Fresh, witty and thoroughly unique to look at," wrote Marc Savlov in the Austin Chronicle.

Prozac Nation (2001). "Yes, it's a very difficult film to make emotionally," Christina Ricci told Nina Rehfeld in our interview. "It's probably the one I'm most proud of, that is, my performance in it. It's very close to my heart. And I'm very rarely the kind of person who says I'm good in something. And: I'm good in it. So, I'm proud of it." Of course, she said that nearly three years ago and over a year after she'd made Prozac Nation, the adaptation of Elizabeth Wurtzel's bestselling memoir. Miramax held it and held it; and to be perfectly honest, it probably would not have done all that well in theaters. But at home, where we're less inclined to be running away from our daily lives, many of us are more than willing to face a young woman's depression and its devastating consequences.

Gantz Volume 6: Sudden Death (2005). "At first glance, Gantz seems like it's made out of two pieces," proposes Bamboo Dong at Anime News Network. "The first piece is a discordant dissection of the human mind, examining the private thoughts and emotions that run through the heads of society. The second piece is an alien-hunting game, Men in Black style. Combine the two and you get a series that leaves you in awe the entire time. Each individual scene seems disjointed and bizarre, but like the pieces of a jigsaw scattered across the floor, everything eventually comes together in an all too fascinating show."

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.

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Congratulations to the winners of the just-concluded Gray Matter trivia contest: tlamb, Navi and DamnitJanet (the answer was Metallica: Some Kind of Monster). Why, yes, we do work fast! We'll announce more winners in this space soon, and our next trivia contest will appear on the GreenCine home page this Friday: Shingu.

[Late correction: Due to a last minute change at the distributor, this contest will now be for the film Balseros, instead.]

Tomorrow night, July 6: GreenCine proudly presents the Documentary Grand Prize winner of the DivX, Inc., Presents the GreenCine Online Film Festival. Colum Stapleton's Empire of Juramidam is a haunting exploration of Christianity's strangest offspring, The Santo Daime Church (a.k.a. the Church of the Eclectic Universal Flowing Light), whose ceremonies are based around the consumption of a bitter hallucinogenic 'tea' called Ayahuasca. The apocalyptic doctrine and churches originated in their present day headquarters in the heart of the Amazon. They are now spreading discreetly and illegally into many parts of the world. Their story has never been uncovered before.

As an added bonus, we'll open with the Festival's special Eclection Award winner, Peep Show (46 mins.): A momentous rediscovery of a previously lost film from the notorious cult director J.X. Williams, Peep Show is a noir confessional that uncovers a secret history of the Kennedy administration, revealing a Mafia plot to hook Frank Sinatra on heroin! From the director of Psych-Burn and Virgin Sacrifice. Originally produced in Copenhagen in 1965, Peep Show was restored in 2004 by film scholar Noel Lawrence with the cooperation of the Williams Archive.

Join us for this very special double-bill! The lights will dim at 7:30 PM. Ticket prices are $7, or $5 for GreenCine and YBCA members, seniors and students. The screening will take place at the Yerba Buena Center, located at 701 Mission Street, at Third, in San Francisco. We hope to see you there!