Also: GreenCine has a word or three to say about "throttling."

Some eagerly awaited titles are the cream of the crop that is this week's new DVD releases:

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.

Also out this week: 

Proof, in which Gwyneth Paltrow and director John Madden teamed up again in the wake of their successful collaboration, Shakespeare in Love, here joined by Anthony Hopkins and Jake Gyllenhaal for an adaptation of an award-winning play by David Auburn; John Ford directs Henry Fonda in Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), a quintessentially American story that critic Dave Kehr called "a masterpiece," and this Criterion disc includes archival audio interviews with both.

New Anime:

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.

A complete list of this week's New Releases | Coming Soon | New Releases Archive | Your Queue  

Some more love-themed GreenCine Video-on-Demand (VOD) titles for your streaming and downloading pleasure: Falling Like This, an indie romantic drama starring Megan Wilson, John Diehl and Patricia Clarkson; provocative teen romance, Polish-style, in Hijacking Agatha; and Kung Fu Hustle star Stephen Chow in the amusing Hong Kong romantic comedy Love on Delivery.

 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 discuss his 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!