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.