April 18, 2006

Dispatch #129

You've survived Tax Day (we hope) so what better way to relax than to curl up with the latest edition of the GreenCine Dispatch newsletter. This week we've got a tip about our new article on Movie Box Sets, and a lot more.

#129 | April 18, 2006
 
"Nature has a way sometimes of reminding Man of just how small he is. She occasionally throws up terrible offsprings of our pride and carelessness to remind us of how puny we really are in the face of a tornado, an earthquake, or a Godzilla." -- Raymond Burr, in Godzilla '85.

Member lists are one of the most important components of GreenCine's community. These are a great way of pointing your fellow GreenCiners to movies they may have missed, or coming up with a list around a specific theme. If you think your list-making needs some help, don't fret: We've got a few pointers on making a member list all it can be.

That the The Martin Scorsese Collection ($43.51) and the equally excellent Martin Scorsese Film Collection ($38.45) are easily confused in title may be amusing, but if you owned them both that wouldn't matter. Both are essential for fans of the director's work and of the best in 70s and 80s American cinema. The first set includes classics Goodfellas, Mean Streets, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, After Hours and...Read about these and more great movie box sets here.

There are a ton of great (and some not so great) films set in San Francisco, but inarguably one of the greatest is Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo ($16.95), likely the master director's most debated and analyzed film. Featuring one of Jimmy Stewart's finest - and most anguished - performances (the way he says "you were a very apt pupil" still creeps us out), the film is one mystery wrapped inside another, a brilliant... read the rest here.

From the GreenCine archives and available via Video-on-Demand, come several historic film compilations perfect for commemorating the 100th anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The Silent History of San Francisco collection includes "Edison Newsreels: San Francisco Earthquake Aftermath" and "San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge Groundbreaking."

 

More like this: The Spike Lee Joint Collection | The Godfather Collection More like this: Rear Window | The Conversation More like this: World Fairs: San Francisco vol.1 | Historic Travel U.S.: San Francisco - A Jewel in California's Crown (1940s-1950s)

The highlights of this week's new releases include a cinephile's dream set and several British delights:

Breakfast on Pluto is "an exhilarating work, featuring an extraordinary performance by Cillian Murphy as Patrick 'Kitten' Braden" wrote Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. Read our interview with director Neil Jordan, too. (2005; $19.96)

Mrs. Henderson Presents. "The ever-dependable Stephen Frears, who brought his Dirty Pretty Things to Toronto three years ago, returns with another keeper," wrote Michael Rechtshaffen for the Hollywood Reporter. (2005; $21.04)

The Complete Mr. Arkadin (1955; $34.95). Criterion releases more than just a crisp new transfer of three versions of one of Orson Welles' most enigmatic works (which is saying quite a lot), but a package devoted to the mysteries of the film, complete with audio commentary by Jonathan Rosenbaum and James Naremore, interviews with Welles biographer Simon Callow, star Robert Arden, radio producer Harry Alan Towers, director Peter Bogdanovich, and film archivists Stephan Droessler and Claude Bertemes, a doc on the film, three episodes of The Lives of Harry Lime, on which the film is based, plus outtakes, rushes, alternate scenes and so on and so on and so on.

Also out this week: Hostel (2005; $21.28); Michael Palin: Sahara (2003; $26.22); Natural City (2003; $16.95); Irresistible (2005; $21.95), with Susan Sarandon; Coachella: The Film (2006; $25.45). Rock on!

New Anime:
Ultra Maniac Volume 7: Magical Ending (2006). "Has everything a magical girl fan could want: lots of magic, transformation scenes, an animal companion who can talk and change form, cute guys, amusingly awkward situations involving said cute guys, a cute costume idea for cosplay, and even the stereotypical obsessive geeky character," says the Anime News Network.

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

 From Busby Berkeley to Mel Brooks, Herschell Gordon Lewis to Star Wars, there's something for every taste when it comes to DVD box sets. But sorting through all the options can be overwhelming. Heather Johnson helps collectors fill their shelves by picking out some of the best in movie boxes.

Also: Known in the early 90s for his highly unusual (and highly entertaining) approach to music docs (e.g., Half Japanese: The Band That Would Be King), filmmaker Jeff Feuerzeig disappeared for a while only to return with a work that reaches farther and deeper. David D'Arcy talks with him about his moving portrait, The Devil and Daniel Johnston.

Now that the sun's out here, it's a perfect time to put on shorts - or in the case of our award-winning film blog, GreenCine Daily, a lot of shorts. Our wrap-ups of all things film includes a new entry today.

On the GreenCine home page this week, we commemorate the Centennial anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake with films (and links to even more films) set in the city by the bay. That and a whole bunch of movie box sets, in honor of the aforementioned article, make our home page the perfect place to procrastinate at work.

 

The GreenCine member list of the week: dydeth's San Francisco movies list, of course. So, "don't let a stranger wait outside your door, San Francisco, here is your wandering one..."

Our next screening at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts will be on Wednesday, June 7 as we proudly present René Clément's And Hope to Die. More details to follow in forthcoming issues of the Dispatch.
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Posted by cphillips at April 18, 2006 11:00 PM