The GreenCine Dispatch hereby vows to enjoy the remnants of summer, whether they be dog days or not. We hope this finds you enjoying yours. Enclosed in our latest newsletter, you'll find cool drink recipes, weather forecasts, travel tips, and summer reading. Er, no, actually you won't - but you will find a lot of helpful stuff about film: new and recommended DVD and VOD titles, articles, links and more. Enough to keep you cool for some time to come.

On the occasion of his 80th birthday, veteran documentarian D.A. Pennebaker looks back (and ahead). "The first time I ever held a camera with the intent of doing some real damage was on Daybreak Express." That was 1953. Bob Dylan eventually saw the five-minute short and agreed to have Pennebaker (seen at left with colleague Chris Hegedus) follow him around on his groundbreaking tour 12 years later. The result was Don't Look Back and the rest is film history. David D'Arcy talks to Pennebaker about his work and the future of documentaries in an age when nearly everyone has "a camera in their pocket."

It's summertime, which means things are a little quieter on the article front, but we'll be amping that up imminently.

The GreenCine Daily, our ever-busy film blog, plows ahead with more shorts, links, listening and viewing tips and commentary. We're currently featuring Screening the Past, plus debate over the film Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. Drop on by! And if you have a hot tip for the Daily or GreenCine in general, feel free to drop a line to editor@greencine.com.

Video-on-Demand: Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (2001).

It may sound a little blasphemous to the more devoutly Christian among you, but Lee Gordon Demarbre's Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter is actually too silly to take seriously and since it sees Jesus as a sort of action hero, what's to complain about? Okay, he does battle with bloodsucking lesbians, which probably isn't in too many editions of the Bible, but it's all in good fun. It's also a "Kung-Fu/Action/Comedy/Horror/Musical." And it's, frankly, very cheaply made, seemingly shot for just a few Quadrans. But The Video Graveyard calls it a "professional looking independent effort that's competely tongue-in-cheek and makes you think of 1993's Cannibal! The Musical, only with a hint of blasphemy and only a mere one musical number... This could easily become a cult movie (and should be!) as it's wacky, strange and very entertaining." Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter is available to watch now or anytime you feel so inclined, via GreenCine's rapidly expanding Video-on-Demand service.

GreenCine Staff Pick of the Week: The Man on the Train (2002)

Petrice Leconte's The Man on the Train (L'Homme du train) is simple, elegant and darn near perfect. While all of his films, and this one is clearly no exception, have an almost too-meticulous feel to them, Man on the Train also has a charmingly low-key, frayed, and warmer feel to it, all of which is brought home even further with the rich performances by veteran actor Jean Rochefort (no surprise) and (bigger surprise) rumpled, leather-clad French rock singer Johnny Halladay. (As Roger Ebert wrote in his review of the film, "In American terms, think of James Stewart and Johnny Cash.") Rocherfort plays a lonely, chattery retired schoolteacher due for a triple heart bypass, who intersects with Halladay's bank robber. They become friends over the course of a few days, and, of course, one sees how each could have easily become the other had certain things in their lives transpired differently. For what is essentially a simple two-character study, it's about as well-crafted as they come, with much heart, humor (there are even a few subtle nods to the French New Wave), and, ultimately, spiritual redemption. Man on the Train is also one of the few good, real films about male friendship in recent memory. -- Craig Phillips

This week's new releases include a batch of feisty, even bloody films, all of which make for memorable viewing:

Harakiri. (1963). "Brilliantly directed by Kobayashi Masaki, the plot is driven by a bloody mixture of ritual suicide, honor, and revenge," notes Allen White in our "Samurai" primer. "It is an exquisitely filmed widescreen masterpiece that serves as illustration of some of the core principles of samurai thought and of their conflict with the modernization of Japan."

Another gem from Criterion, which has spiced the disc with new video interviews with legendary star Tatsuya Nakadai and acclaimed screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto and an exclusive video introduction by Japanese-film historian Donald Richie." Bonus disc.

As noted in the introduction to Jonathan Marlow's interview with another controversial figure in contemporary Korean cinema, Kim Ki-duk, "When Park won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes last year for Oldboy, many cheered; some did not." Of the critics denouncing the enthusiasts, Elbert Ventura wrote for the New Republic, "Invoking the self-proclaimed geeks of post-Tarantino cinephilia and the Ain't It Cool News set doesn't just identify the movie's presumptive demographic - it diminishes the movie by association and gives critics an excuse not to engage Park's work seriously." Second, "That original grievances become obscured by the sadism isn't a failing of the movie: It's the point.... His surfaces are so dazzling that it may require effort to look past them."

We recommend you try just that.

Layer Cake. (2004). "Layer Cake is a tasty mix of stylistic and character driven plot with exceptional writing by J.J. Connolly and a welcome directorial debut from producer Matthew Vaughn (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch), wrote Melissa McGibbon in Film Threat, going on to call it "an unusual crime thriller that feeds us the dynamic, edgy, and cataclysmic storyline that we hunger for."

Weekend. (1967). You may or may not agree with Larry Gross's assessment of Jean-Luc Godard's later films in Movieline, but he does capture well the significance of Weekend in one of cinema's most significant oeuvres: "Godard tapped directly into the bloodstream of cinema twice in his career: his 1959 deput film Breathless, which announced that a generation of self-conscious cinephiles was preparing to redefine film history, and eight years later with Weekend, his final, disenchanted adieu to commercial narrative cinema. A film that attests to his brave but aesthetically fatal alliance with revolutionary Third World attacks on the culture of the West, Weekend marks the true end of Godard's period of stupefying, creative inspiration. As such, it is comparable to Picasso's farewell to the cubist period, or Dylan's Blonde on Blonde."

And of course, it's a quintessentially 60s-era film, one that will be fascinating to see again now. Will Godard's anger, here at its fiercest, strike a chord?

For Ever Mozart. (1996). For Fergus Daly, writing in Senses of Cinema, "For Ever Mozart is the key to what is new in Godard these last years... Godard drew on three distinct embryonic projects, namely, an homage to Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa; an idea borrowed from a newspaper article by Philippe Sollers about staging a play in Sarajevo; and a project whose point of departure would have been a Keith Jarrett concert. Godard set out knowing it would be the film in construction which would tie all of these elements together. By combining these preoccupations with his desire to express his disgust at the attitude of French intellectuals to the war in the ex-Yugoslavia... Godard, according to Serge Toubiana, managed to forge the most just and accurate political film of recent times."

The Flowers of St. Francis. (1950). "Shooting primarily in exterior spaces, using unobtrusive camerawork, and incorporating natural environment with a cast of non-professional actors (with monks from the Nocere Inferiore Monastery playing the roles of St. Francis and his disciples), Roberto Rossellini creates a sense of timelessness and contemporary relevance to the universal themes of humility, compassion, faith, sacrifice, and community in The Flowers of St. Francis," writes Acquarello at his site, Strictly Film School. "A remarkably lucid and accessible portrait of the interrelation between humanity and spiritual enlightenment."

Boudu Saved From Drowning. (1932). "Jean Renoir's effortless 1932 masterpiece is as informal, beguiling, and subversive as its eponymous hero, a tramp who is saved from suicide by a Parisian bookseller and ends up taking over his benefactor's home, wife, and mistress," wrote Dave Kehr in the Chicago Reader. If that plot sounds familiar, you may have seen Paul Mazursky's 1986 remake, Down and Out in Beverly Hills.

New Anime:

Scrapped Princess. Volume 3: Traveling Trouble (2005). "So many SF/fantasy anime shows start in an interesting fashion and then completely break down as the story becomes fragmented, unintelligible, and often self-contradictory," writes autarch of the first volume. "Scrapped Princess has an interesting story that it manages to hold together throughout the entire series." Adds drseid: "Very nice fantasy show that mixes an interesting premise with some likeable characters. This one should appeal to fans of shows like Fullmetal Alchemist."

The Memory of Oblivion. Volume 2: Monotone (2005). Your fellow GreenCiners are so far giving this new series quite respectable ratings indeed.

Mind your p's and queues: Try to have a minimum of ten titles for every slot you have, i.e., forty titles 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 go out to winners of several recent GreenCine trivia contests: The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, In Old Chicago and Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte trivia contest winners were: TOsborn, garymc and PHenry (the answer was "...tongue"); The Silent Star winners were lusyphur, bkurdali and snooper81 (the answer was First Spaceship on Venus). Meanwhile, Friday's trivia contest will be a two-fer, as we're giving away both The Transporter: Special Edition and Futurama: Monster Robot Maniac Fun Collection. Have at it!

Member list of the week: "Short but Well Worth Your Time," by antionedoinel. (See also: our short films section; it's under "Indie.")

Anybody know the name of this Asian film? (See our message boards.)

GreenCine's next film screening will be on Wednesday, September 7, as we proudly present Finger Man (1955), a little-seen noir by Harold Schuster, better known for his TV work on The Twilight Zone. For folks who like their noir hardboiled, we've gladly tracked down this neglected thriller. Schuster expertly guides the story, pitting government agents against a crime syndicate - undercover reformed hood Casey Martin (the under-rated Frank Lovejoy) versus his nemesis, the sadistic Lou Terpe (played to perfection by the exceptional Timothy Carey). Based on a story by John Lardner, brother of Ring Lardner, Jr. At the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission Street, San Francisco. 7:30pm.