Welcome to the Dispatch of the Living Dead, which is re-animated for you in honor of our new zombie primer. Just one of the little treats GreenCine will toss into your candy bag in the days leading up to All Hallow's Eve.

As mentioned above, a new primer has risen from the dead: Zombies. Liz Cole takes a look at the perpetually reawakening horror genre: "Zombie flicks have enjoyed a popularity and longevity afforded to few other subgenres of horror, thanks largely to the versatility of zombies themselves." Night of the Living Dead and all of George A. Romero's handiwork is there of course, but so, too, are lesser-known gems like Tombs of the Blind Dead and Bio Zombie - not to mention gross-out classics like The Grapes of Death and Junk. And then there's Redneck Zombies - the title "says it all," notes Cole.

And we have yet more on Romero specifically: In 1968, with Night of the Living Dead, Romero not only "turned zombies into metaphors for societal decay," as Cole writes in the zombies primer, he also "[changed] the face of American horror for good." So says Sean Axmaker, who talks with Romero about that landmark film and his latest, Land of the Dead.

Meanwhile, two other new noteworthy articles:

"With a 25-year career in some 70 films and TV shows, the prolific David Strathairn is one of the finest contemporary actors who remains largely unknown to most viewers," writes Axmaker, introducing his interview with Straithairn, before adding, "Good Night, and Good Luck. could change that."

For N.P. Thompson, The War Within is "an insightful, unsparing film about the personal life of a suicide bomber." He talks with actor/co-writer Ayad Akhtar and producer/co-writer Tom Glynn about their creative process and the controversy they've stirred.

The GreenCine Daily covers the world of film, from fests to the year's best. Read it every day to keep up with our breathless pace.

Video-on-Demand: All My Loved Ones (1999).

All My Loved Ones, the debut feature of Czech director Matej Minac, was inspired by his family's own experiences in World War II. It tells the story of a Jewish clan living in Prague on the eve of the war and seems indebted to Vittorio De Sica's The Garden Of The Finzi-Continis. "The tale commands attention," wrote Dave Kehr in The New York Times. The Village Voice adds: "Offers a glimpse of the Solomonic decision facing Jewish parents in those turbulent times: to save their children and yet to lose them. And it traces a sustained and moving portrait of the worldly Sam, whose despair as the society he embraced abandons him is both clear-eyed and devastating." All My Loved Ones is a moving, provocative film and worthy of a watch - which you can do any time you wish via GreenCine's rapidly expanding Video-on-Demand service.

GreenCine Staff Pick(s) of the Week: Dog Soldiers (2002) and Ginger Snaps (2000).

We begin our series of Halloween-ish staff picks with a doubleheader to get you in a howling mood. Werewolf tales are about as old as the moon itself, with movies about them not too far behind (or at least as far back as the early 40's). The British werewolf film Dog Soldiers gives the age-old story a bit of a shake, by depositing it in a modern scenario: soldiers on a routine training mission in the (appropriately) misty Scottish Highlands (although it was actually shot in Luxembourg!), when things go to... the dogs. When the action really gets going, so too does the film, gripping you as tension builds and builds through a series of attacks. You'll gasp at least a few times. As one GreenCine member noted, the editing is a little choppy in spots, with the great momentum it builds eroded a bit as it moves through its second half, but it's still an exciting feature debut for filmmaker Neil Marshall, with enough blood and scares for lycanthrophiles. (Yes, we're making up words.)

The Canadian-made Ginger Snaps wasn't John Fawcett's debut (the lesser, but still interesting, The Boys Club was), but it surely marked his as a name to watch. Credit, too, should go to Karen Walton for her sharp script (in which one character rightly observes "Let's forget the Hollywood rules"). One watch of Ginger Snaps and you'll understand why teenagers have made this a serious cult favorite (right up there with Freeway). The film is full of the kind of black humor teens love and an appreciation for adolescent ennui, stars the realistic kind of goth teens you rarely see in commercial films and television, and is pleasingly anti-authority. It's fairly scary, too, but mostly it's wicked good fun. And the film's central metaphor is perfect - appropriately, uh, bloody and sickly funny. Ginger Snaps is Heathers with a lot more bite. Followed by the surprisingly decent sequel Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed and the prequel Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning.

And if none of these float your boat, there's always An American Werewolf in London, still effectively scary and funny. -- Craig Phillips with Tamara Lees

We bring you highlights of this week's cornucopia of new DVD releases, which feature the return, rebirth even, of one iconic character as well as one iconic director:

Not to, uh, overkill this one, but: Land of the Dead (2005). George A. Romero returns, the zombies he all but reinvented in tow. "Given that US screens are frequently filled with Romero-lite horror fare, it is a treat to see the real McCoy back behind the camera with a reasonable budget and cast," writes Jonathan Marlow. "These upstarts have nothing on the man that essentially (re-)started it all." Adds Cinenaut: "Overall, a must-see for zombie fans. Post-apocalyptic world fans should find something to like as well. Not for the squeamish, natch."

Batman Begins (2005). One of the first releases in this summer's blockbuster sweepstakes remains, now that all is said and done, one of the best. "It's amazing what an excellent cast, a solid screenplay and a regard for the source material can do for a comic book movie," wrote Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "[W]hat makes this Batman so enjoyable is how [Christopher] Nolan balances the story's dark elements with its light, and arranges the familiar genre elements in new, unforeseen ways." Bonus disc.

Mad Hot Ballroom (2005). The fox trot, the rumba, the tango - swing! As performed by fifth graders. Thanks to the American Ballroom Theater's Dancing Classroom programs, a smash hit among the kids in over 60 schools in New York City. Spurring them on is a chance to compete in the Rainbow Team Match and the result, writes Film Threat, is "an uplifting and inspiring tale." Many have compared the doc to Spellbound, but read what Ed Gonzalez has to say about that in Slant: "Bound to earn endless comparisons to Blitz's crowd-pleasing doc, Mad Hot Ballroom actually feels as if it were intended by director Marilyn Agrelo as a point-by-point rebuttal." Click his name to follow the convincing case.

Landscape in the Mist (1988). "It is a sad indication of the insularity of American cinema that Theo Angelopoulos, a Greek director with international stature, is virtually unknown in the United States," wrote Stephen Holden in the New York Times. In 1990. Not much has changed - yet. We're hoping that, even though the releases are few and far between, this DVD might help rectify this situation. As for this film, "Landscape in the Mist is a poignant, lyrical, and allegorical fable on the human struggle for identity and connection," writes Acquarello at Strictly Film School.

Tell Them Who You Are (2004). "Mark Wexler has decided to steer a lens toward his famous father, and it's no small measure of their stormy relationship - and the film's prickly, fascinating texture - that Haskell in turn aims his camera right back. The men duel it out in scene after scene with shoulder-propped video cams," reports Michael Atkinson in the Village Voice. The result is "an ingenuous portrait of a thoroughly Four-Square Artist, Assembled With Love And Rockets Inside A Family's Spite-Tainted Gates." Among the interviewees: George Lucas, Jane Fonda, Paul Newman, Milos Forman and Conrad Hall and on and on.

Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film (1894 - 1941). "When the smoke clears, this amazing seven-disc set, which comprises 18 hours and 47 minutes of material, will undoubtedly stand as one of the major monuments of the DVD medium," wrote Dave Kehr in the New York Times back in September as he was previewing the season's major releases. True, if for no other reason than the fact that many of the films here really had gone unseen for decades until curator Bruce Poznar collected them in a program that's been traveling across the country - and can now be seen in any home. The first volume is The Mechanized Eye: Experiments in Technique and Form, featuring work by, for example, early cinematographer James White, shooting in Paris in 1900, and photographer Walker Evans.

Also: The Devil's Plaything: American Surrealism, featuring works by Douglas Fairbanks and Victor Fleming, William Vance and Orson Welles and Joseph Cornell; Light Rhythms: Music and Abstraction, featuring works by Man Ray, Ernst Lubitsch and Busby Berkeley; Inverted Narratives: New Directions in Storytelling, featuring work by D.W. Griffith; Picturing a Metropolis: New York City Unveiled: "Busby Berkeley's 'Lullaby of Broadway' sequence combines city-symphony footage, elaborate choreography, and dream imagery in a showcase of Hollywood-style surrealism." (City Papers); The Amateur as Auteur: Discovering a Paradise in Pictures, featuring work by Joseph Cornell; Viva La Dance: The Beginnings of the Cine-Dance, featuring work by Oskar Fischinger and Norman McLaren.

Lifeboat (1944). Based, as CPurvis notes, on a story by John Steinbeck (he started the screenplay as well; Jo Swerling wrapped it up and Ben Hecht screwed several scenes even tighter), Lifeboat, like Rope, say, can be seen as one of Alfred Hitchcock's formalistic experiments conducted on his mainstream audience: the entire film takes place on the boat. It works. The cast is terrific, the dialogue sharp, the tension Hitchcockian. Look fast, too, for Hitch's cleverest cameo.

New Anime:

Tenjho Tenge. Round 03 (2005). "Tenjho Tenge turns out to be one of the stronger entries in the 'hot schoolgirls who fight a lot' genre," writes Carlo Santos for the Anime News Network. "With eye-popping action and just enough plot to make things intriguing, this is a series that defines the meaning of guilty pleasure."

For a more detailed list of this week's new releases, go here.

Congratulations to the lucky winners of several recent GreenCine trivia contests: John Wayne contest winners were HanShann, transom and Dgray (the answer was True Grit). Guerilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst contest winners were velvetonefusion and Jerry Stine (the answer was "Tania/Tanya"). Meanwhile, join the butt-kickin' trivia two-fer now up on the GreenCine home page for your chance to win the Bruce Lee Ultimate Collection and Elektra: Unrated Director’s Cut.

The member list of the week: In honor of Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit, we give you Cinenaut's Scary Rabbits list. Bunnies! Who knew?

We'll announce more upcoming GreenCine-sponsored film screenings and other events in this space soon. Keep checking back!