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.

The Dispatch newsletter is now archived for easy accessibility on GreenCine's new Press and Marketing blog. Bookmark it!

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!