GreenCine, the #1 alternative online DVD rental, video-on-demand and DivX service, now has a blog devoted to its press coverage, marketing efforts, events, releases and newsletter. The blog is called Pravda. Enjoy.
With DVD sales added as a GreenCine offering, our Rental and VOD customers can now
buy, rent and download movies all from the same place.
Anyone can purchase DVDs through this new service (so please tell all your friends), but there will be benefits that are strictly available to our faithful members. These will be in the form
of coupons and other promotions, which we'll be updating you on shortly.
There's a long list of reasons why you should buy all of your DVDs from GreenCine (most of which you know already), but we wanted to point out a few highlights of the service to sweeten the deal:
price, distribution and shipping.
Price: very competitive pricing on all your favorite movies
Distribution: 5 centers throughout the U.S., with fast, reliable shipping
Free priority shipping for all orders over $50
The service, community, content and selection you've come to expect from GreenCine just got a little better.
The best movies for your couch, computer and collection!
Available to watch now via GreenCine's Video-on-Demand
service: Part of the
Game (2004), which got lots of good reviews from the audience at Cinequest.
This independent Canadian film, Rick Alyea's impressive debut feature, was called a "a gritty, powerful exploration of Vancouver’s drug underworld"
by FilmThreat. Check it out now or anytime via VOD.
All...heck breaks loose at American Eagle Christian High School when one of its own (Jena Malone) gets pregnant in
the razor-sharp satire Saved! Despite what sounds like the usual high school cliques vs. outsiders scenario, Saved! surprises by rising above the set-up, and by not being entirely the religion-bashing black comedy you'd expect. A
great cast, including a few surprises, add to the charm.
As
June Carter Cash would say, this week's new DVD releases
have got us all revved up:
"In Béla Tarr's Werckmeister Harmonies, a nameless European town is the center of a cosmic struggle," writes Ed Gonzalez at Slant. "Tarr's precise yet effortless command of the long take is so transcendent as to suggest the presence of God. Every stoppage point within each shot becomes a heavenly composite of the film's collective whole."
Nominated for five Oscars, Walk
the Line ambles on to DVD today. Joaquin
Phoenix and Reese
Witherspoon (as Johnny and June) were both nominated and both sang their own
vocals, too. And "what might have been a shallow, sentimental film is given considerable depth by the quality of
[those] two central performances," wrote Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian
(U.K.)
In The Ice Harvest(2005), Harold Ramis directs John Cusack as Charlie, who decides to place his trust in his friend Vic, played by Billy Bob Thornton - which is the first sign of trouble right there.
"The Ice Harvest, which unfolds with faultless ease over 12 increasingly hectic hours in Charlie's life, is a classic guilty pleasure," writes Kevin Thomas in the Los Angeles Times, "a wholly amoral tale in which the viewer is so charmed by the witty and not unkindly Charlie that one pulls for him to escape the escalating danger into which he has plunged..."
It's been fifty years since Lady and the Tramp
(1955) found themselves sucking on the same noodle. Reason enough for Disney to release a two-disc special edition of a true classic. When was the last time you let your heartstrings get plucked?
GreenCine
is proud to announce this week the addition of the 10,000th Video-on-Demand title
to our site. "GreenCine is in the vanguard of the VOD movement because of their dual commitment to thinking outside the box and promoting truly independent films," said
Caveh Zahedi, acclaimed director of A Little Stiff, In the Bathtub of the World and I Don't Hate Las Vegas Anymore, all of which are available through GreenCine's VOD library, and whose I Am a Sex Addict opens in New York and San Francisco on April 5th. "I believe that GreenCine's method of combining DVD rentals and VOD downloads with editorial content and community will replace all current models. As a filmmaker and film enthusiast, I'm proud to be a part of the GreenCine community, and look forward to seeing what they'll come up with
next." You can read more about this on Pravda,
our press blog.
John Esther meetsFelicity Huffman just as she's broken through after years of relative obscurity as an actress. Suddenly, she's got an Emmy for her work in the enormously popular television
series Desperate Housewives and an Oscar nomination for her performance as a man on the verge of becoming a woman in Transamerica.
Our award-winning blog, the GreenCine Daily,
continues to catch its breath before another festival run: a
look at the new issue of MovieMaker,
some eulogies for a few dearly departed actors, and enough short
n' sweet news bytes to keep you busy for awhile.
The GreenCine Genre
of the week: Got your CDs, your credit
cards and a full tank of gas? Hit the road with Road
Movies, both the genre and our brand new road
moviesprimer by
Heather Johnson. The primer serves as a good
intro to the world of cinematic car trips - a
genre featuring Jack Nicholson multiple times
alone, and everyone from Henry Fonda to
Chevy
Chase, Thelma & Louise
and Miles and
Jack. Then make a pit
stop to to look through the road
movies section on GreenCine to see what
other films call your name.
Ah, what the heck - how about another
contest, for old time's sake? We've got one for The
Ice Harvest going up on Thursday.
Tomorrow
Night! GreenCine presents: Marlow's
Cabinet of Curiosities (1903-1968, approx. 90 min, 16mm & digital video).
The beguiling and the surreal, the forbidden and profane - these are the treasures hidden in the Cabinetic archives. Join curator Jonathan Marlow as he leads a one-time-only display of rare, fantastical works by
Yuri
Norstein, Ladislas
Starewicz, Georges Méliès,
Jirí Trnka and other legendary filmmakers, including
Jan
Svankmajer's early short Rakvickarna (1966) and Karel Zeman's stunning Inspiration (1949).
Tomorrow! Wednesday, March 1, 7:30 pm. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission Street, San Francisco.
$7 regular/$6 GreenCine members, students, seniors & YBCA members.
We recommend viewing this newsletter in all of its HTML glory; check your e-mail program's settings to view HTML. This newsletter is sent to GreenCine members only. If you do not wish to receive this newsletter in the future, log in to the GreenCine site, click "View Your Profile" then click Edit Profile. Choose "no" on the "Subscribe to the GreenCine newsletter" option and click "Update Profile." Archives of the Dispatch are now available online at GreenCine's Press and Marketing blog.
GreenCine's Video-on-Demand Service Passes 10,000 Title Benchmark
Innovative Service Now Features More Titles Than CinemaNow, Movielink and Vongo Combined
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- GreenCine (www.greencine.com), the film addict's film site, today announced that its Video-on-Demand (VOD) library now contains over 10,000 titles. Featuring the industry's largest library of independent, international and documentary films, GreenCine's VOD collection includes a wide array of movies starting at less than $2 per rental.
GreenCine's VOD service, which first debuted in September 2003, has steadily grown through a series of partnerships, affiliations and acquisitions. Unlike its major competitors, the service does not have associations with or receive financial backing from any of the major studios. GreenCine has been able to attract independent filmmakers and distributors to its VOD service through its reputation as one of the Web's preeminent sources for filmmaker interviews, festival coverage and film discovery and debate. Recently profiled in The Wall Street Journal ("Consumers looking for foreign or independent films can turn to GreenCine ... "), GreenCine's VOD library contains an eclectic mixture of important and widely-sought titles from such pioneers as Hal Hartley, Andrzej Wajda and Caveh Zahedi.
"Video-on-Demand is the wave of the future. It's the easiest, most convenient and most environmentally-friendly way for people to watch films. GreenCine is in the vanguard of the VOD movement because of their dual commitment to thinking outside the box and promoting truly independent films," said Caveh Zahedi, acclaimed director of A Little Stiff, In the Bathtub of the World and I Don't Hate Las Vegas Anymore, all of which are available through GreenCine's VOD library, and whose I Am a Sex Addict opens in New York and San Francisco on April 5th. "I believe that GreenCine's method of combining DVD rentals and VOD downloads with editorial content and community will replace all current models. As a filmmaker and film enthusiast, I'm proud to be a part of the GreenCine community, and look forward to seeing what they'll come up with next."
"Much like individual film preferences, viewing habits are unique to every person. Not only is Video-on-Demand a convenient way to make the films on our site as accessible as possible, it also affords us the opportunity to showcase films that aren't available in any other format," said Jonathan Marlow, GreenCine's Director of Content Acquisition. "VOD is a perfect complement to our Rent-by-Mail business because it enables us to expand our total catalogue and furthers our mission of broadening the distribution opportunities for motion pictures."
To view a complete list of films available for download from GreenCine's VOD library and/or to learn more about the service, please visit: http://watch.greencine.com/
About GreenCine
GreenCine LLC (www.greencine.com) is the #1 shop and stop for film addicts, featuring one of the largest libraries of independent, international and documentary films in the world and exclusive interviews with the world's most influential filmmakers. GreenCine offers more than 30,000 films for rent through its award-winning DVD Rent-by-Mail service and over 10,000 titles available on-demand from its extensive VOD library from its own site and through its technology partners Akimbo, Google Video and others. Supporting one of the largest film communities on the Internet, www.greencine.com enables members to review and debate their favorite films and connect with other members with similar interests. For further details on GreenCine and its services, please visit: www.greencine.com.
Tips n' tricks and reviews galore in the latest issue of GreenCine's newsletter, now celebrating it's 121st year issue! Read on for more...
#121 | February 21, 2006
This week’s Dispatch is brought to you
one more time by:
"Every time he comes up, he's got no knife, he's got no jacket, he's got no pants, he's got no boots. All he's got is that stupid gun he carries around like John Wayne. " -- The Deer Hunter.
Did
you know that GreenCine ships on Saturdays? In fact, we're the
only major DVD rental service that does so. Our dutiful shippers
work on Saturdays as just one more way to cut down on USPS delays.
And, as we all know, the USPS works in mysterious ways. (But of
course, we don't.)
And open not just on Saturdays, but 24/7: GreenCine's Video-on-Demand
service.
Available to watch now via the aforementioned GreenCine VOD
service: Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde, one of several classic adaptations of Robert Louis Stevenson's
book, but "for silent film buffs," writes Bright
Lights Film Journal, "the 1920 [version] virtually demands to be seen, thanks to
John Barrymore’s bravura set-gnawing in the lead. The Jekyll-Hyde transformation is perhaps the first and still one of the greatest money shots in the history of horror
film."
Iranian filmmaker Bahman Farmanara's film Smell
of Camphor, Fragrance of Jasmine had critics deeming him a Persian Woody
Allen - a self-deprecating comic presence starring in
his own film. "A humorously death-haunted psychodrama," wrote J Hoberman, "in which the filmmaker undertakes an absurd quest to document his own funeral." More: Read Jeffrey Anderson's Iranian
New Wave primer for a fine introduction to the
veritable cinematic revolution coming from that country
over the past 20 years.
Paul
Greengrass' brilliant Bloody
Sunday is a knockout film that feels like a kick
to the gut, so charged is the atmosphere it recreates -
the fateful day in 1972 in Northern Ireland when a civil
rights protest turned deadly. The film captures the chaos
and frenzy of street anarchy better than just about any
film I've seen. Sunday was criticized by some in
Britain for its bias, but this really is cinéma vérité
- gripping, even shocking stuff. Don't miss it.
-- Craig
Phillips.
We sift through this week's new DVD releases, so you don't have to:
Pulse [Kairo] (2001). "Kiyoshi Kurosawa's films vary greatly," writes alexqsub, "and this particular one is a dark movie about (without giving things away) ghosts, computers, death, loneliness, love, and fear. The atmosphere of this film - the sound effects, lighting, and pacing - do an incredible job of building up the suspense." In March 2004, Jonathan Marlow interviewed the director.
Separate Lies (2005). Emily Watson and Tom Wilkinson star in the directorial debut of Julian Fellowes, who wrote Gosford Park and knows his upper and upper middle British classes. "A continually surprising film in its ethical and emotional insights," wrote Philip French in the Observer, "and it rings constantly true, with three superb performances, Rupert Everett's being a version of the role he played as Ruth Ellis's callous lover in Dance With a Stranger."
Short film compilations: Shorts! Volume 3, features some of the best shorts seen at the Aspen ShortsFest and the illustrious festivals in Cannes, Clermont-Ferrand, Sundance, Denver, Telluride, Tribeca and
more, with each short including one or two Film Festival Collection exclusive audio commentaries by the filmmakers; and if you're interested in what the future of cinema will look like, whether you'll be watching it on your iPod or on the side of a building,
some of the short works collected on onedotzero_select dvd4 from
around the world may point the way.
Also out this week:
Of The Memory of a Killer (2003), Manohla Dargis, writing in the New York Times:
"an amnesiac killer is an inherently rich conceit, and it's no surprise that an American movie company has already snapped up remake rights"; The Weather Man (2005); Rent (2005) is due today, and a couple of exteriors from it were filmed right around the corner from GreenCine HQ; Left of the Dial (2005),
a doc on the turbulent rise of America's first all-liberal radio network; the snowboarding doc First Descent (2005).
Ultramanic Volume 6: Magical Love (2003). "From the creator of Marmalade Boy, notesEmpressStephanie, "a cute and angsty magical girl anime. Very cute character designs. Awesome ending."
Polish
director Andrzej Wajda
(already a recipient of an honorary Oscar) was just honored at the Berlin
International Film Festival with a Golden Bear Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Some of his films are available via Criterion editions (more on them below), but
you can also download a few of Wajda's classics via GreenCine's Video-on-Demand
(VOD) service for your streaming and downloading pleasure: Revenge
(Zemsta); Promised
Land; and Pan
Tadeusz. The latter is based on an epic poem of love for Poland by the
great poet Adam Mickiewicz and is "an ironic, yet warm portrayal of people,
which, by the way, would not be so if not for the excellent actors," says
Central Europe Review. Revenge stars filmmaker Roman Polanski and sees the
director working in a more humorous vein, while the earlier work Promised
Land is "a wry, incisive, and elegantly realized Dickensian tale of
greed, human cruelty, exploitation, and betrayal" (Strictly Film School).
"Pablo Berger's Torremolinos '73 is one of the funniest and slyest satires ever to come out of Spain," writes Sean Axmaker, who
talks with the director about the political, cultural and sexual repression under Franco - and how his characters find ways to indulge ravenously anyway.
Carlos Reygadas
was in San Francisco this past weekend for a screening of his first feature, Japón,
and of his second, Battle in Heaven (Batalla en el cielo, 2005), which also
just opened in Los Angeles and New York, and then elsewhere in the weeks that follow. Jonathan Marlow spoke with the controversial director at the Sundance Film Festival in January.
Coming soon: Take a short trip with our road movies primer.
Look for it next week!
After nearly round the clock coverage of the Berlinale, the GreenCine Daily blog returns to covering the rest of the film world - including a rather disturbing news bite about the
harassment of actors in The Road to Guantánamo after its premiere in Berlin, a wrap-up of the Baftas, and plenty o'shorts.
The GreenCine Genre
of the week: The
Criterion Collection, a newly created
section for all the fine, beautifully restored
classics* you've come to expect from Criterion
Releasing. From Alexander
Nevsky to Veronika
Voss, Naked
Kiss to Naked
Lunch to Naked,
Criterion is the most reliably high-quality DVD
distributor there is (*Okay,
we're still not sure why Armageddon
got the royal treatment, but to each their own.)
Coming Next Month! GreenCine presents: Marlow's
Cabinet of Curiosities (1903-1968, approx. 90 min, 16mm & digital video).
The beguiling and the surreal, the forbidden and profane - these are the treasures hidden in the Cabinetic archives. Join curator Jonathan Marlow as he leads a one-time-only display of rare, fantastical works by
Yuri
Norstein, Ladislas
Starewicz, Georges Méliès,
Jirí Trnka and other legendary filmmakers, including
Jan
Svankmajer's early short Rakvickarna (1966) and Karel Zeman's stunning Inspiration (1949).
Wednesday, March 1, 7:30 pm. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission Street, San Francisco.
$7 regular/$6 GreenCine members, students, seniors & YBCA members.
We recommend viewing this newsletter in all of its HTML glory; check your e-mail program's settings to view HTML. This newsletter is sent to GreenCine members only. If you do not wish to receive this newsletter in the future, log in to the GreenCine site, click "View Your Profile" then click Edit Profile. Choose "no" on the "Subscribe to the GreenCine newsletter" option and click "Update Profile." Archives of the Dispatch are now available online at GreenCine's Press and Marketing blog.
Happy Valentine's Day, from your pals at the GreenCine Dispatch!
#120 | February 14, 2006
This week’s Dispatch is brought to you by:
"Random thoughts for
Valentine's day. Today is a holiday invented by greeting card companies to make people feel like crap."
-- Eternal Sunshine
of the Spotless Mind.
GreenCine prides itself on having an open, supportive community of movie lovers using our service and our web site, and one of the best places to make yourself "cine" and heard is to post on our discussion boards. If you don't see a topic of interest, start your own thread! (And don't forget to create your own custom icon, too.)
Also: GreenCine has a word or three to say about "throttling."
Animator Hayao Miyazaki's epic Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind is one of his less-appreciated efforts but is as lovely as any of his work and, of course, features many of the expected thematic elements: a plucky heroine serving as the story's conscience, an ecological message, and plenty of airborne action. "Finally," wrote DVD Verdict, "we have a chance to see this magnificent film as it was meant to be watched. If you are a fan of animation, don't let it go unseen any longer."
We're not crazy about the ugly box art for the just-out-on
DVD edition of The
Frisco Kid but won't kvetch - we're just
tickled this fairly delightful, neglected comic Western starring Gene Wilder and Harrison Ford is finally available. Wilder
plays a rabbi from... read the rest here.
Some eagerly awaited titles are the cream of the crop that is this week's new DVD releases:
Well, it's about time Metropolitan (1990) found its way to DVD - and by Criterion no less. "In Metropolitan, writer-director- producer Whit Stillman elected to explore a few winter weeks in the life of a band of young people who seem as estranged as children shipwrecked on the isle of Manhattan, or the members of a religion so obscure even its adherents have forgotten the Word," David Thomson has written in Movieline. "The film is very funny... less a satire than a gentle comedy of manners and errant love in a tradition that goes back to Lubitsch, Jane Austen, Mozart, and Shakespeare (and Babar)."
La Béte Humaine (1938). "What makes Renoir's work unusual among filmmakers, if not unique, is the diversity of the materials he draws upon during the realization of an individual project, and his ability to blend these elements together so that each works on the viewer but none obtrudes," writes James Leahy in Senses of Cinema. Here, Renoir adapts Zola's novel and casts Jean Gabin, a combo that proved quite a success at the French box office.
Samurai Gun Volume 4: The Bitter End (2004). "Cross-breed Batman with a classic samurai movie and mate their offspring to Wild Wild West (the Will Smith version) and the result is Samurai Gun, one of the oddest takes on Japanese pseudo-history yet to make it across the Pacific," writes Theron "Key" Martin for the Anime News Network.
Happy
Valentine's Day, or QuirkyAlone
Day, or however you choose
to celebrate or un-celebrate it. But since love is in the
air, it seems a perfect time to introduce you to our brand
new primer: Modern Romantic
Comedies, by the often outrageously funny Hollis
Gillespie, NPR commentator and author (of Confessions
of a Recovering Slut: And Other Love Stories). She covers the gamut of recent
cinematic love stories, from goofy to irresistable, while reducing them to a template. Be forwarned: It's highly irreverent. If you take your RomComs too seriously, best stay away.
Then go behind the velvet curtain and turn
out the lights to read David Hudson's "Sex
in the Movies" primer. And look through our Screwball Comedies primer for guidance on love gone awry, in the wittiest ways possible.
Meanwhile, following her conversation with James Longley about what the future might hold for Iraq,
Hannah Eaves turns to Eugene Jarecki to
discusshis documentary, Why We Fight, which addresses, in part, how the US ended up over there in the first place. She also asks what it is he admires in Dwight Eisenhower and Frank Capra.
CSA: The Confederate States of America "exhibits a canny aptitude for using its wealth of make-believe details as a prism for our contemporary culture's continuing legacy of tense racial inequality," wrote Nick Schager in Slant. The premise: the South won the Civil War. What happened then? In Kevin Willmott's Parallel America, David D'Arcy talks to the maker of this faux documentary.
The GreenCine Daily continues its tour of film festivals with our own David Hudson's coverage of the Berlinale, one of the world's great fetes.
Thanks to everyone who came to our special The Sicilian Clan screening last week at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. We're secretly plotting more screenings, and as soon as we've booked 'em, you'll see it here first!
We recommend viewing this newsletter in all of its HTML glory; check your e-mail program's settings to view HTML. This newsletter is sent to GreenCine members only. If you do not wish to receive this newsletter in the future, log in to the GreenCine site, click "View Your Profile" then click Edit Profile. Choose "no" on the "Subscribe to the GreenCine newsletter" option and click "Update Profile." Archives of the Dispatch are now available online at GreenCine's Press and Marketing blog.
Netflix’s "throttling" technique was profiled in several articles over the last few days. For those who haven’t heard, throttling is a strategy that delays shipments and limits the selection of "heavy renters,” giving preference to "infrequent renters," because it's been established that Netflix makes more money from the renters who only watch between 1-5 DVDs a month (the company made $688 million in 2005, by the way).
"In determining priority for shipping and inventory allocation, we give priority to those members who receive the fewest DVDs through our service," Netflix's revised rental policy now reads. To read more about throttling go here:
At GreenCine, we’re far too busy interviewing filmmakers, recommending our favorite movies, pushing the envelope with Video-on-Demand and trying to connect our members with new films to spend time devising ingenious ways to limit their access.
Our members have given us plenty of reasons why they left Netflix to join GreenCine over the years, well here’s one more: at GreenCine there is no 'preferential rental strategy,' just great films, great content and great customer service.
Tell your friends about throttling. Let them know that when they’re ready to expect more from their rental service, we’ll be here...
You've no doubt been wondering about those little "Raw Sugar" icons that recently appeared on each DVD's page on GreenCine. We've been experimenting with something new by teaming up with the innovative folks at Raw Sugar. Their new "social" search engine is accelerated by guiding results with member-designated tags. Raw Sugar has tagged and shared over 135,000 URLs in the two months since opening their public beta. GreenCine fosters thinking forward; our own beta test with RawSugar is a way for users - particularly those running their own blogs - to extend the GreenCine experience through tagging. For more information, scan their FAQ.
Available to watch now via GreenCine Video-on-Demand
service: Save the Forest, a satire of ‘80s teen movies by director Michael Field, or, as the filmmakers themselves put it, "Where else can you get 80s nostalgia, vulgar employees, beer pong, and porn?" In Save the Forest, that's where.
The Canadian black comedy Léolo seemed born for cult status from its very inception, and the tragic early death of Jean-Claude Lauzon, its brilliant director, only adds to its mystique. The film is a funny, disturbing, even bizarre coming of age story of sorts, and completely without parallel. It tells the story of...read the rest here.
No Man's Land, which won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2002 (upsetting Amelie), is a brilliantly conceived black comedy set in the midst of the Bosnian-Serbian War, of which this film serves as a sort of microcosm. Satirizes not just the futility of war, but modern media's coverage of it. Absolutely scathing and devestating. Don't overlook this one.
By jove, we've got some highlights culled from this week's new DVD releases:
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005). "Animation by hand and from the heart (you can literally see Aardman animators' fingerprints on some of the clay characters). Whimsical and hilarious, with perfectly realized set pieces," wrote Craig Phillips, placing Wallace and Gromit's first feature-length adventure at number ten on his year-end best-of-05 list.
The Best of Youth (2003). Placing it at the top of his best-of-05 list (as did many, many other critics) in the New York Times, A.O. Scott called this six-hour made-for-Italian-TV drama tracing the diverging fates of two brothers from the 1960s through to the near-present "an intellectual as well as an emotional feast, with dozens of superb performances." (Don't forget the second disc.)
Also
out this week, and worth putting in your queue, too:
Twitch calls The Call of Cthulhu (2005) "a loving homage to the [H.P. Lovecraft's] work, a direct adaptation of the original story short as a black and white silent, holding as tightly as possible to the techniques that would have been employed when the story was originally written in 1926... and it works fantastically well"; filmed in 1986 at a Maryland concert arena parking lot before a Judas Priest show, Heavy Metal Parking Lot is an unvarnished anthropological study of American metalheads in their mid-80s glory. The VHS bootleg was a favorite among musicians, movie stars and cult-video fanatics worldwide, who will be pleased by this limited-edition DVD with a pristine digital-video transfer of the original uncut 16-minute film, plus over two hours of exclusive new stuff.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) returns to DVD in a special two-disc edition with a doc on the film's making and audio commentary featuring director Philip Kaufman, screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, editing maestro Walter Murch and co-star Lena Olin; Eros is three short films by three acknowledged masters in the three wildly divergent fields they've claimed for themselves, each addressing the titular theme, and just about everyone agrees that Wong Kar-wai's segment, The Hand, revisiting the atmo of In the Mood for Love and 2046, is the most successful.
New Anime: Samurai 7 Volume 4: The Battle for Kanna (2004). "Wrapped in a brooding, stylized cover, Samurai 7 screams hard-boiled samurai action," writes Sean Broestl for the Anime News Network. "But beneath the cool exterior is a show that is trying hard to conceal the fact that it knows how to smile, even laugh at times. To the uninitiated, Samurai 7 may end up being this year's surprise title."
We've added some new titles to GreenCine's rapidly expanding Video-on-Demand (VOD) service, including a handful
from 70s erotic auteur Nick
Phillips.
And for those Mandarin-speakers among you, we are proud to offer exclusively on-demand the fabulous Chinese historical series Dynasty of Chian Lung. Meanwhile, learn martial arts with Five Forms to Black vol.1, with masters from 20 different disciplines show you what they know, teaching you how their moves work and why.
Since we're on the subject of erotica, and preparing ourselves for (or preparing to avoid) Valentine's Day: on our sister adult site, BlueCine, renowned sex advice columnist Isadora Allman contributes her thoughts on some of the sex education videos currently available.
Next week: Look for a primer that fits the subject in the air on February 14th.
Meanwhile, on to more somber topics: Having completed Gaza Strip, James Longley then spent two years making Iraq in Fragments, which has just picked up prizes for best Documentary Directing, Excellence in Cinematography and Documentary Film Editing at Sundance. In November, Hannah Eaves spoke with co-producer John Sinno; here, days before the premiere of Fragments, she spoke to the film's director.
The GreenCine Genre
of the week: Marionation.
Sure, it's the style that Team America used and abused (in
addition to poking fun at just about everything and everyone else), but the
best stuff from this old-fangled animated style came from
Britain, and specifically from the talents of puppetmaster Gerry Anderson. Check out Thunderbirds and Supercar, and all of Anderson's fun action series. We think marionation is, well, super. For background reading, try our interview: "Let's Get Small: a talk with Gerry Anderson."
The member list of the week: What the heck, we'll plug one of our own here. Check out our brand new compilation of recent GreenCine Staff Picks, in easy-to-digest member list format. It's an eclectic bunch of films, but each one's a favorite of GreenCine staffers. We'll create more compilations soon.
Thanks to everyone who came to our special The Sicilian Clan screening last week at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. We're secretly plotting more screenings, and as soon as we've booked 'em, you'll see it here first!
We recommend viewing this newsletter in all of its HTML glory; check your e-mail program's settings to view HTML. This newsletter is sent to GreenCine members only. If you do not wish to receive this newsletter in the future, log in to the GreenCine site, click "View Your Profile" then click Edit Profile. Choose "no" on the "Subscribe to the GreenCine newsletter" option and click "Update Profile." Archives of the Dispatch are now available online at GreenCine's Press and Marketing blog.
"And the nominees for Best Soft Drink Product Placement are... Star Trek: The Pepsi Generation, They Call Me Mr. Pibb, and Snow White and the Seven-ups." - a quote from... [read on for more]
#118 | January 31, 2006
This week’s Dispatch is brought to you by:
"And the nominees for Best Soft Drink Product Placement are... Star Trek: The Pepsi Generation, They Call Me Mr. Pibb, and Snow White and the Seven-ups."
- Futurama.
Available to watch now via Video-on-Demand: With Wong Kar-wai's lovely 2046 garnering many year end nods (including an appearance on Craig Phillips' Top 15 list), why not vist one of his earlier masterful works? Ashes of Time, Mark Pollard wrote in his Wuxia primer, is "undoubtedly one of the most challenging and ultimately rewarding wuxia pian available... Wong combines dramatic non-linear storytelling, the sumptuous cinematography of Christopher Doyle, powerful action direction from Sammo Hung, and a first-rate cast." Watch it now via GreenCine's Video-on-Demand service.
Robert Connolly's The Bank is a well-made, tense little thriller from Down Under which manages to make the world of finance and math interesting, even to those of us who don't religiously follow NASDAQ. The opening credits, reminiscent of Vertigo, pull you in, the Philip Glass-like music hypnotizes you, the Wall Street-like morality debate will fascinate. While some of its elements don't feel all that fresh (and listening to the director's fairly pretentious audio commentary won't change your mind), The Bank is presented in a fresh way, the acting... read the rest here.
We bid January farewell (so long, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye) with these highlights from this week's new DVD releases:
One of Tim Burton's loveliest films yet, the stop-motion animated Corpse Bride is far more than The Nightmare Before Christmas revisited. It's also a nominee for a Best Animated Film Oscar. A good deal of credit evidently goes to character designer Carlos Grangel. There's much, much more than nodding to Edward Gorey and Charles Addams going on here. The film's underworld is lively, colorful and, as composer Danny Elfman told one interviewer, there's "a link to that kind of old jazz, and a little bit of a Max Fleischer, Betty Boop kind of influence."
"[René] Clément's first feature film, La Bataille du rail, is both a characteristic and anomalous work in the director's career, pointing forward to the intimate detail of many of his best films while drawing on the distanced ethnography of his pre-war work in documentary," writes Adrian Danks in Senses of Cinema. "Several critics have made connections between Clément's groundbreaking film and the work of Italian neo-realists such as Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio de Sica."
Massacre in Rome (1973). NoShame, the label that's been releasing lesser known Italian gems on DVD, scores again with this harsh tale of Nazi revenge on the citizens of Rome for an uprising in the waning days of the war. "This film greatest strength is its amazing cast which features Marcello Mastroianni playing a character that is in direct contrast to the type he normally does," writes Michael Den Boer at 10K Bullets.
Also out today:
The casting in 1937's The Good Earth, of Paul Muni and Luise Rainer (who won a second Oscar for her performance) as poor Chinese farmers, might strike us a bit odd today (though we've recently seen Chinese actresses portraying Japanese geishas), but once you get over it, this widely lauded adaptation of Pearl S. Buck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is pretty impressive - particularly the justifiably famous locust infestation scene and Karl Freund's Oscar-winning cinematography; Art City (1996), three outstanding docs from 1996, each focusing on a different corner of the art world; another movie about some swashbuckling masked guy; and in the anime department, oh, my goodness, it's Ah! My Goddess Volume 3: With or Without You.
With the Oscar nominations now out this morning - and we mean out - this is as good a time as any to see which of the previous Academy Award-winning Best Pictures you've seen.
Coming real soon: An interview with filmmaker James Longley, whose documentary Iraq in Fragments just won a bunch of awards at Sundance (and whose earlier film Gaza Strip is available on-demand, and for rent, on GreenCine).
Speaking of Oscars, our own award-winner, the GreenCine Daily blog, has a rundown on that list of happy nominees, as well as on the Sundance and Slamdance winners, while Adam Hartzell previews the batch of films submitted for consideration for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.
GreenCine Tip of the week: And while we're on the subject... If you haven't done so already, it's high time you joined the GreenCine community. Fill out your member profile, give yourself your own unique icon, and then post to the discussion boards, make lists and write reviews. It's fun, it's easy, it's a great way to connect to other cinephiles. Make yourself at home - on GreenCine.
Our contests are taking a little bit of a break, but we'll have more of 'em coming your way again soon. Keep checking back!
Tomorrow night! GreenCine proudly presents the criminally under-seen caper classic, Le Clan des Siciliens ( The Sicilian Clan; 1969). The film is the only motion picture to feature all three heavyweights from French tough-guy cinema -- Jean Gabin, Alain Delon and Lino Ventura.
The Sicilian Clan, by Henri Verneuil (118 min., 16mm, French with English subtitles)
At San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Wednesday, February 1, 7:30pm.
$7/$5 GreenCine and YBCA Members, Students, Seniors.
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GreenCine Presents Le Clan des Siciliens (The Sicilian Clan) at the Yerba Buena Center
Tonight! GreenCine proudly presents the criminally under-seen caper classic, Le Clan des Siciliens ( The Sicilian Clan; 1969). The film is the only motion picture to feature all three heavyweights from French tough-guy cinema -- Jean Gabin, Alain Delon and Lino Ventura.
The Sicilian Clan, by Henri Verneuil (118 min., 16mm, French with English subtitles)
At San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Wednesday, February 1, 7:30pm.
$7/$5 GreenCine and YBCA Members, Students, Seniors.
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