Did you know that you can toggle the genre list on the right side of the GreenCine site open or closed? Simply by clicking on the minus ("-") link next to "Genres," you'll collapse that menu down, decreasing the amount of scrolling required by your tired mouse hand. You can then open up the genres again by clicking on the plus ("+") link. Another way to see all the genres all at once is to go to the genre index page - either by clicking on the word "Genres" itself or bookmarking this page: http://www.greencine.com/genre. 

Meanwhile, brace yourself: as mentioned last week, GreenCine's new DVD store is coming your way imminently. Start spreading the news...

All aboard the cat bus as we take you to this week's new DVD releases:

Plus: at long last, a re-release of Miyazaki's classic My Neighbor Totoro [bonus disc] worthy of the wonderfully whimsical film; and the first time release of Studio Ghibli's Whisper of the Heart, which Miyazaki penned for the late director Yoshifumi Kondo (a protégé of Miyazaki's who died tragically young), based on the manga by Aoi Hiiragi.

And now for something completely different: two on Iraq. "Is Jarhead (2005) a realistic film?" David D'Arcy asked Anthony Swofford, author of the book, back in November. "I think so," he replied. "Obviously, in the script and the movie there are some compressions, there are some amalgamations of characters, but the look, the feel, the sound, the training, the desert, the feeling of being a Marine, for me rings very realistically. It's a film, but as far as a film goes, as a narrative, trying to capture that space, especially the emotional psychological center, I think it succeeds quite well." The documentary Occupation: Dreamland, meanwhile, is "a fair-minded (but hardly apolitical) grunt's-eye view of the war in Iraq that trusts the audience to draw its own conclusions," wrote Joshua Land in the Village Voice.

"Japanese critics voted Seijun Suzuki's elusive ghost drama Zigeunerweisen (a.k.a. Tsigoineruwaizen, 1980) as the key movie of that entire decade," wrote Robert Keser in 24fps, "yet few Westerners saw this indelibly haunting film at its scattered festival showings." That's about to change.

Also out this week: 

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005); Prime (2005) (a light, intelligent comedy many have compared to 70s-era Woody Allen); The Warrior (2001); and Suzuki's Kagero-Za (1981) and Yumeji (1991).

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

New to GeenCine's Video-on-Demand offerings:  We go ampersand happy with Hope & Play, Coffee & Language, and Love & Plutonium - all fine independent offerings. Variety called Coffee & Language "liberating and emotionally striking." The Daily Tribune called the superhero satire (set in Suburbiaville) Love & Plutonium "an original tale of comic book villainy... strangely accessible and sweetly compelling."

GreenCine’s VOD library is now over the 10,000 title mark (read more about this on Pravda, our press blog.)

 Last August, in an interview with Sean Axmaker, Gus Van Sant talked about how, watching the films of Béla Tarr, he could imagine "a parallel cinema" growing up alongside, say, D.W. Griffith's. That partly explains why, as Peter Hames has written in Kinoeye, Tarr is "set to mark the first genuine international breakthrough by a Hungarian auteur since Miklós Jancsó in the 60s." Now, Jay Kuehner talks with Tarr about Werckmeister Harmonies, just out on DVD.

In "The Oscars Numbers Game," GreenCine's Casey Lewis debunks a few myths about the box office and gives a round of applause for what amounts to a great year for independent film - as vindicated at the Oscars. And the numbers don't lie, either.

Our Oscar-winning, er, award-winning, blog, the GreenCine Daily, says goodbye to the Academy Awards with a final round up of reactions. Start your clicking now. 

And hey, screw the Oscars; the Independent Spirit Awards were announced this past weekend, too, and we've updated our Spirits page, too.

Congratulations to the winners of GreenCine's Ice Harvest trivia contest: Mctrudy and Msimoneau (the answer was Pushing Tin).

We'd like to thank everyone who came to GreenCine's special film event last week. Marlow's Cabinet of Curiosities, featuring the beguiling and the surreal, the forbidden and profane, was a big success, with great fun had by all. Thank you again!

Our next screening at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco will be on April 5 as we proudly unleash Blind Beast vs. Killer Dwarf. The film is by notorious Japanese director Teruo Ishii, known in some circles as the "King of Cult Movies," who single-handedly crafted some of the strangest motion pictures ever released. More details on this special screening will be forthcoming in this very space.