"In the mid-1950s, director Budd Boetticher and actor Randolph Scott teamed up for a series of finely etched, elegiac westerns which count among the greatest glories of American cinema of the time." That's how the New York Film Festival announced the screening of the newly restored Seven Men From Now in 2000, finally out on DVD next week. Between 1988 and 1992, Sean Axmaker conducted a series of interviews with the late director. In these highlights, Boetticher talks about his work with two unique men, Scott and writer Burt Kennedy, 18-day shoots and gunslingers in love.

German filmmaker Veit Helmer has just been named one of twelve finalists in the running for the 2006 Sundance/NHK International Filmmakers Awards. A perfect opportunity to run for the first time a conversation Jonathan Marlow had with Helmer last year about his work with Wim Wenders and his own films, Tuvalu and Gate to Heaven.

'Tis the season on the GreenCine Daily, our award-winning film blog, where year-end best-of "Lists" roll on, updated throughout the day. Also: Morgan Spurlock to tackle Republicans while Studio Ghibli is set to adapt Ursula K. LeGuin.

Video-on-Demand: Foul King (2000).

"Wrestling picture. What do you need, a roadmap?" the producer character in Barton Fink yelled at the titular blocked writer. "Wrestling picture" usually doesn't bode well, but as The New York Times' A. O. Scott wrote, "If you think that the garish pageant of professional wrestling reflects a peculiarly American amalgam of macho aggression and show-biz fakery, the South Korean comedy Foul King may come as a pleasant - or perhaps a disturbing - surprise." In a role that would probably be played by Jim Carrey in an American version, Song Kang-Ho plays Daeho, a klutzy, insecure mess (and mass) of a man who finds himself training to become a wrestling star. "The best thing about Kim Jee-Woon's accomplished and funny movie is its ability throughout to see humor through melancholy and vice versa - sometimes within single shots," wrote Tony Rayns for TimeOut. "It helps that everything from the slapstick gags to the comedy of embarrassment is rooted in a kind of realism, and that Song gives a quite phenomenal performance in the lead." You can enter Foul King's ring now or anytime you wish via GreenCine's rapidly expanding Video-on-Demand service.

GreenCine Staff Pick of the Week: Felicidades (2000).

Despite the fact that it focuses on the sadder aspects of the winter holiday season - namely, loneliness and suicidal impulses - Argentinian sleeper Felicidades is by no means a downer. It's one of those films with multiple-character disorder, overlapping tales with characters crossing paths but not really connecting - but this works to the film's advantage. Set during a particularly hot, muggy Christmas Eve in Buenos Aires, the films's four main characters cross paths but have no real connection: A philandering author out of gas near a nuclear power plant; a lonely doctor tries to hook up with a beautiful woman only to be detained by a manipulative paraplegic; a good-natured dentist shopping for his son's Christmas present is taken by corrupt police and forced to help them with a scheme; and a washed-up stand-up comic, stranded in the middle of nowhere. Not your ordinary Christmas movie by any means, and director Lucho Bender's touch will remind many here of a Latin Robert Altman with some elements of Jarmusch and Fellini sprinkled in for good measure. Felicidades is not only a magical, often beautiful little film, it also takes on another layer of complexity in its portrayal of Argentina's decadence and subsequent economic fall. But the film's ultimate message is one of hope and compassion, not despair. "Felicidades" (casual Argentinian for "Merry Christmas"), indeed. -- Tamara Lees

Our gift-wrapped highlights of this week's new DVD releases (with a few more to be found under the tree on the new releases page):

Vodka Lemon (2003). "A confident [Hiner] Saleem mirrors and reveals the beauty and perseverance of life in the mundane and absurd, and as such his film is really reminiscent of the works of Aki Kaurismäki and Emir Kusturica," wrote Ed Gonzalez in Slant. "Anyone who can powerfully evoke the ecstasy of lovemaking with a shot of gently falling snow is a talent to watch."

Serenity (2005)."It probably isn't fair to Joss Whedon's Serenity to say that this unassuming science-fiction adventure is superior in almost every respect to George Lucas's aggressively more ambitious Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith," wrote Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "But who cares about fair when there is fun to be had? Scene for scene, Serenity is more engaging and certainly better written and acted than any of Mr. Lucas's recent screen entertainments. Mr. Whedon isn't aiming to conquer the pop-culture universe with a branded mythology; he just wants us to hitch a ride to a galaxy far, far away and have a good time." Spun off from the late, lamented TV series Firefly.

The Brothers Grimm (2005). Everyone's rooting for Terry Gilliam. The director's raucous imagination never seems to go unpunished by those who step forth to pay him to realize it. If it weren't for an unprecedented campaign launched by critics, we'd never have seen Brazil, and of course, we still haven't seen his version of the Don Quixote tale. Gilliam and the Brothers Grimm seemed like a perfect match, but Gilliam and the Weinsteins, well, probably weren't. Nonetheless, no one misses the mark as interestingly as Terry Gilliam, despite all odds, and there's some good fun to be had here.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005). In the early 70s, churches were horrified that Christians and lay folk alike were getting their Sunday school lessons on demonology from one of the most popular horror movies of all time, The Exorcist. 30 years later, Christians are making their own popular exorcism movies. You have to hand it to director Scott Derrickson, though. He knows what he's about: "In my opinion, the horror genre is a perfect genre for Christians to be involved with," he told Christianity Today this summer. "To me, this genre deals more overtly with the supernatural than any other genre, it tackles issues of good and evil more than any other genre, it distinguishes and articulates the essence of good and evil better than any other genre, and my feeling is that a lot of Christians are wary of this genre simply because it's unpleasant. The genre is not about making you feel good, it is about making you face your fears. And in my experience, that's something that a lot of Christians don't want to do."

November (2003). Courteney Cox stars in Greg Harrison's second feature (his first was Groove), a thriller and a puzzler.

New Anime:

Jubei-Chan 2 Volume 4: Unification (2005). "The true heir to Ninja Scroll," proclaims Carlo Santos at the Anime News Network, "the Jubei-chan franchise, which is a far more convincing adventure than Ninja Resurrection ever was, and we're talking about a show that has schoolgirls. Jubei-Chan 2 continues the proud tradition of the first series, juxtaposing slick swordfights and nonstop gags to form an oddly entertaining mix."

As always, if you want to see a complete, more detailed list of all this week's new releases, do drop by our new releases page.

It's the giving season and what says "I love/like/tolerate you" to the special cinephiles in your life more than GreenCine gift certificate? It's not too late! [In fact, you can give a GC GC all year 'round - but since it's the holiday season, why not go for it now?] Merry Kwanzmasaramadamukkah!

Congratulations to these lucky winners of several recent GreenCine trivia contests: Melinda and Melinda winners were Criticalmv, marxist and WoodyAllenFan90 (the answer was Manhattan, Wally Shawn's first Woody film - and first film, period); Fox Film Noir 3 winners were ddobski, KPFramer, Skippersf, animefool, bandinis and ratherwatchingamovie (the answer was Laura, Fallen Angel, In Harms Way, and Daisy Kenyon). We'll announce more winners of pending trivia contests in this space soon. Oh, and remember how we said there would be no more trivia contests through the end of the year? Well, we lied. Or rather, we couldn't resist adding a couple more at the very end of the month. Look for 'em on the site then.

The member list of the week: ZenBones' "An Alternative Christmas." ("Want some Christmas cheer but tired of the same ol' movies that bludgeon their message? Try these films that subtly warm your heart.") And while we're at it, how about estherjane's "Less Obvious / More Tolerable Holiday Movies" list?

And speaking of lists, why not contribute your own picks for the best films you saw in 2005. (And, if you're feeling grouchy, the worst, too.)

GreenCine's next screening at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts will be on February 1, as we proudly present the criminally under-seen caper classic, Le Clan des Siciliens (1969). The film is the only motion picture to feature all three heavyweights from French tough-guy cinema -- Jean Gabin, Alain Delon and Leno Ventura. More details on this magnifico screening to come!

Finally, please note that the Dispatch will be on vacation next week, returning refreshed and with a flourish after New Year's. Until then, have a safe, happy, healthy holiday season.

We continue to wrap up the year in film with another look back at a major film festival: Even before the Sundance and Slamdance awards were announced, Jonathan Marlow and Hannah Eaves had landed in Rotterdam, where the International Film Festival, emphasizing more challenging films from Asia and Europe, was already underway.

'Tis the season on the GreenCine Daily, our award-winning film blog: Magazines, blogs and critics' organizations are rolling out their year-end best-of lists. Just about every day at the Daily, an entry called "Lists" goes up, updated as more awards are announced. So far, it looks like a very good year for Ang Lee. Also: NYC critical bash, the story behind Mary Poppins, reviews, interviews and more.

Video-on-Demand: About Baghdad (2004).

The still very timely About Baghdad, which was a finalist in the first GreenCine Online Film Festival, was shot by the D.C.-based collective InCounter Productions and documents the return of Iraqi writer (and InCounter member) Sinan Antoon to the city after 12 years in exile. "While 24-hour cable-news commentators continue to blather non-stop about what it means for the Iraqi people to be free from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein," wrote Ken Fox in TV Guide, "this excellent documentary from Iraqi writer-turned-filmmaker Sinan Antoon presents their hopes and fears directly from the Iraqis themselves." The Christian Science Monitor called the film a "harrowing, informative, conscientiously balanced documentary about the social, cultural, and economic welfare of Baghdad and environs after Saddam Hussein's fall. It's hard to decide which are more saddening - the film's accounts of torture and oppression under the Hussein regime or the evidence of tragedy and privation under American occupation." In short, About Baghdad is a fascinating and important document that makes for incredibly compelling viewing.

You can view a Windows Media 9 trailer for About Baghdad on our site, and then watch the whole film anytime you wish, via GreenCine's rapidly expanding Video-on-Demand service.

GreenCine Staff Pick of the Week: Lantana (2001).

Those seeking meaty, intelligent fare should give a look to the accomplished and underseen Australian neo noir Lantana. Nimbly written by Andrew Bovell, based upon his stage play, and sharply directed by Ray Lawrence, Lantana may center around its compelling murder mystery plot - which is full of red herrings - but out of that comes an intricate portrayal of complex, tense adult relationships, investigating nothing less than the human condition itself. But it never feels like an exercise.

American TV viewers may be familiar with the charismatic Anthony LaPaglia from his work on Without a Trace and Murder One, and may be surprised to know of his fine work in his native Australia (see also: The Bank, for another terrific example). Just as surprising is American actress Barbara Hershey, who plays a therapist caught in a web of dysfunctional relationships - and thusly begins to question her own (the always effective Geoffrey Rush has a small but pivotal role as her husband). The entire cast is in fine form. What really makes this mystery a standout, however, is the way the decisions, revelations and plotting all come from these three-dimensional characters' hearts and muddled minds, rather than filmmaker gimmickry. That's the neatest trick of all. -- Craig Phillips

Among the highlights of this week's new DVD releases are a few films providing us with some much-needed laughs:

The Baxter (2005). "Michael Showalter's [he of the sketch comedy troupe The State and Comedy Central's Stella] directorial debut is an immodestly refreshing crash course in modesty," wrote Ed Park in the Village Voice. "The Baxter has a high huggability quotient, but the points of the central love triangle are pricklier than one might expect."

The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005). "What's distinctive about this male sex comedy is that it's sort of a woman's picture," wrote David Edelstein in Slate. "[T]his is a woman's fantasy of meeting a cute but nonaggressive guy's guy with a richly developed interior life who still needs emotional breaking-in, a guy who can save a gal as she saves him." And he went on to single out a particular performance: "Catherine Keener was the cat's pajamas on first viewing, but a second confirms that she's also the bee's knees. Her combination of womanly earthiness and ethereal loopiness is unique in modern American cinema - and super-sexy." [Widescreen edition.]

Bad News Bears (2005). "Is there a movie role Billy Bob Thornton can't pull off?" Manohla Dargis asked in the New York Times. What's more, "[Director Richard] Linklater guides his story forward as smoothly as he did School of Rock. Filled with small, cute kids and large, goofy laughs and buoyed by fine supporting work from Greg Kinnear and Marcia Gay Harden, the director's latest effort won't rock your movie world, but the fact that he manages to keep the freak flag flying in the face of our culture of triumphalism is a thing of beauty."

The Island (2005). Boy, was Michael Bay upset when audiences didn't swarm to The Island this summer. But not half as much as some studio execs who suggested that, well, maybe Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson just aren't sexy enough to draw a crowd. Hello? The real reason for the poor performance at the box office might be this: The Island doesn't look like a movie you want to spend ticket, popcorn and parking money on. Instead, it looks like a fun, possibly even silly actioner with surefire effects, a potentially engaging premise and, yes, a couple of sexy leads. In other words, perfect for a relaxing evening at home.

Naked Among Wolves (1963). In a profile of Frank Beyer for Senses of Cinema, Leonie Naughton notes that this "anti-fascist" film made for the DEFA studios (basically UFA during the years of the German Democratic Republic) "has been acclaimed for its 'indelibly written characters,' and has invited 'positive comparison to Schindler's List in its ability to portray the triumph of human spirit.'"

The Beautiful Country (2004). "The idea for the film came from Terence Malick, a good solid start in my book," wrote David Hudson when he caught The Beautiful Country in Berlin early last year. "Malick also wrote the original draft of the screenplay and, after seeing Aberdeen, decided that Hans Petter Moland was just the director who could bring the epic journey of a young Vietnamese man from his homeland to America to the screen - for a mere $5 million. Though Moland likes to joke that if you want to make a film set in the Far East and the States, the obvious thing to do is call in a Norwegian, straight across the board, Malick was absolutely right."

Long Way Round (2004). Road trip! But not just any road trip. Actors Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman fulfill a life-long dream, motorcycling through Siberia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and Alaska on their way to New York. The series of episodes runs nearly seven hours in all, but by all accounts, it's irresistible viewing.

The Five Pennies (1959). Danny Kaye plays jazz trumpeter Red Nichols; the true story takes a back seat, though, to the candy-colored look and the terrific musical numbers.

Fine, go watch some new Anime:

Stellvia Volume 8: Foundation VIII (2005). "Highly recommended for sci-fi and school based coming-of-age anime fans," says drseid.

As always, if you want to see a complete, more detailed list of all this week's new releases, do drop by our new releases page.

Congratulations to these lucky winners of several recent GreenCine trivia contests: Murder One: Season Two winners were tipkin, Jimmycrawfish and bradyg (the answer: Mary McCormack also appeared on The West Wing); Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals winners were Daria, IronS, Orius1, dramachick, lsteele and artifex (the answer was "fa(r), a long, long way to run"); Unknown Chaplin winners were FancyLad, Eoliano and ALittlefield (the answer was The Great Dictator). We'll announce more winners of pending trivia contests in this space soon.

The member list of the week is ZenBones' "22 Reasons Why 1974 Was Cinema's Best Year" ("A time when movies were original, challenging, and gave a voice to those of us non-conformists.") Which reminds us, why isn't 1970's The Conformist out on DVD?

Thanks to those of you who came to last week's enjoyable screening of Mau Mau Sex Sex at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, which was introduced by director Ted Bonnitt and writer Eddie Muller. If you missed it, you can watch the film now via Video-on-Demand.

Meanwhile, even though it's some distance away, we can already tell you our next screening at the YBCA will be the criminally under-seen caper classic, Le Clan des Siciliens (1969). The film is the only motion picture to feature all three heavyweights from French tough-guy cinema -- Jean Gabin, Alain Delon and Leno Ventura. More details on this magnifico screening to come!

GreenCine's loading up new articles and primers for the holidays and beyond, so keep your eyes on the home page for some new presents under the tree/minorah/Festivus bush. Coming real soon: An interview with David Cronenberg.

Meanwhile, with the year wrapping up and the award season ramping up, it seemed a good time to look back to our coverage of this year's Sundance Film Festival - as a lot of those films have now reached wider audiences and to much acclaim. As the line-up for '06 has just appeared, look to our site now for a tantalizing wrap-up of Sundance '05.

Hot topics on the GreenCine Daily, our award-winning film blog: Early word on Terrence Malick's The New World; are King Kong, The Chronicles of Narnia and Memoirs of a Geisha all racist to one degree or another? Also: European Film Awards, Godard at 75 and how James Fotopoulos is helping to revive work by Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco and Harold Pinter.

Video-on-Demand: The Girl From Monday (2003).

Hal Hartley has referenced Jean Luc-Godard before, but his wry indie sci-fi The Girl From Monday goes full throttle into Godard mode, Hartley's variation on Alphaville by way of Masculin/Feminin. Jump cuts, guerrilla shooting, "naturalistic" overlapping dialogue - French New Wave trademarks, and all on display in Hartley's work. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Sean Axmaker called Monday "a snarky satire of consumerism in the guise of pseudo sci-fi. Imagine 1984 by way of The Man Who Fell to Earth with Hartley's trademark dry humor, deadpan delivery and intellectual word games." The Chicago Reader's Jonathan Rosenbaum considers Hartley's first feature in three years to be "flaky, funny, and sexy... Hartley's playful sense of the absurd as he confronts the relation of consumerism to sex is more philosophical than political, less despairing than grimly amused - and more thoughtful as a consequence." You can watch Girl From Monday on Monday, Tuesday or any day of the week, via GreenCine's rapidly expanding Video-on-Demand service.

GreenCine Staff Pigskin Picks of the Week: Friday Night Lights (2004) and The Slaughter Rule (2002).

With football season at its hottest point, playoff races shaping up in the NFL and the college bowl line-up essentially all mapped out, the gridiron game is on our mind. Two recent films about the high school game, Friday Night Lights and The Slaughter Rule, offer up two very different worlds - the unhealthily football-mad Texas, where the high school game is obsessed over with even more intensity than the pro game, and the isolated plains of Montana, where the game is part of a ritual toward manhood (along with fighting and rolling around with older women). The intense Ryan Gosling, in Slaughter Rule, is a long way from his Jewish neo-Nazi in The Believer, giving the young quarterback a raw tenderness, especially in his scenes with the ubiquitous but underrated David Morse - who has one of his meatiest roles yet as the sexually tormented coach.

In the very unsentimental Friday Night Lights, directed with ferocity by Peter Berg and based with veracity on H.G. Bissinger's book, Billy Bob Thornton plays the coach whose life and winning percentage are both under a microscope in a town - Odessa - that has little else to care about (at least according to the film's perspective; surely someone in town doesn't care, but perhaps they are bound and gagged every Friday night). Thornton is mesmerizingly good here, holding the whole film together just as his character holds the weight of the town together. The script, thankfully, only occasionally falls victim to cliche. Interestingly enough, both these films, coming of age stories and slices of small town Americana, as different as they are, remind one of 1972's The Last Picture Show, while The Slaughter Rule's directors (brothers Andrew and Alex Smith) seem influenced by Terrence Malick, too. While their film doesn't have as much dramatic momentum as Friday Night Lights (which has tension built-in around the final football games), it works well as a small-town character study. -- GreenCine Editorial Staff

The weather outside may be frightful, but in here, these picks of today's new DVD releases are fairly delightful:

The Ninth Day (2004). If you've seen Downfall, chances are you asked yourself, Who in the world is that ghoulish fellow playing Goebbels? It's Ulrich Matthes and by now he knows his Nazi-era history. Here, he plays a true-life priest sent to Dachau, where the Nazis popped a brutal moral quandary on him. Volker Schlöndorff (The Tin Drum) directs. "Schlöndorff, born in 1939, kicked off the New German Cinema back in 1966 with his sinister adaptation of Robert Musil's novel Young Törless," David Denby reminds us in the New Yorker. "The German movement has long since declined, but Schlöndorff seems to have survived intact. He has specialized in political films (The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, Circle of Deceit, Legend of Rita) and literary adaptations (of Proust and Günter Grass, among others). Some of his movies have been didactic and heavy-footed, but not The Ninth Day. This film is powerful, concise, fully sustained."

Spanking the Monkey (1994), finally on disc, heralded the debut of a director whose audacity would attract some of Hollywood's (and television's) tip-top stars for future features, none of which would play by the rules: David O. Russell. This one wowed audiences at Sundance to the degree that they bestowed it with the coveted Audience Award (distributors on the prowl care a whole lot more about them than the critics), which is all the more remarkable since the plot turns on one of the last taboos. As Marjorie Baumgarten put it in the Austin Chronicle, the film "ranks as one of the most original 'What I Did on My Summer Vacation' compositions I've ever seen."

Forbidden Games (1952). Depicting the ravages of war through the eyes of children, René Clément's Forbidden Games "is a bittersweet film that shows the devastation of war by touching an emotional cord, without the visual carnage," writes acquarello at Strictly Film School. "Intensely personal, emotionally devastating, and truly unforgettable." The Criterion disc features a collection of new and archival interviews with Clément and actress Brigitte Fossey.

Shoot the Piano Player (1960). "An offbeat crime film that was quiet, romantic, personal and audacious; people weren't sure what to make of it at the time, but its cinematic literacy and cheekiness would inspire future filmmakers (the pulp fiction origins of the story and the inept crooks surely must have inspired Tarantino, among others)," writes Craig Phillips in our French New Wave primer. This new Criterion package is, naturally, bursting with extras. (Bonus disc.)

Fun With Dick and Jane (1977). The remake with Jim Carrey and Téa Leoni will be in theaters just in time for Christmas; meantime, here's the fun original with George Segal and Jane Fonda.

Ladies in Lavender (2004). Maggie Smith and Judi Dench, sisters at last. "Personally, I'd run a mile from Ladies in Lavender if it were the kind of movie its trailer wants us to think it is," wrote Stephanie Zacharek in Salon this spring. "But the movie itself, sensitively but sturdily made, with an ear attuned to the most delicate notes of the story, is the sort of small, independent-minded picture that so much of American indie cinema strives, and often fails, to give us. It's a conventional picture, but it feels so deeply alive that it's practically a novelty."

Berlinguer I Love You (1977). Giuseppe Bertolucci directs a young Roberto Benigni in his debut screen role.

A few new music docs for the retro-leaning audiophile:
New York Dolls: All Dolled Up (2005). Photographer Bob Gruen and his wife Nadya bought a video camera in the early 70s. Stop and think about that a moment. Early 70s. No one had portable video cameras then. But they got one and pointed it at the New York Dolls in New York clubs such as Kenny's Castaways, and Max's Kansas City, and there are also performances caught on tape here from the daring west coast tour. Also out today: Bauhaus: Shadow of Light (1991), in which the British band performs "Bela Lugosi's Dead," Telegram Sam," "Ziggy Stardust" and much more; and Kraftwerk: Minimum-Maximum (1991). Decades ago, a couple of bicycling enthusiasts in the vast industrial regions of what was then West Germany founded what is easily one of the most influential bands in all of pop history: Kraftwerk. Here, they perform such landmark works as "Autobahn," "Radioactivity" and "Trans Europe Express."

As always, if you want to see a complete, more detailed list of all this week's new releases, do drop by our new releases page.

We'll have a flurry of trivia contest winners to announce next week, we promise! Lots of discs are on their way, so check back in this very space next week. Meanwhile, the last trivia contest of the year goes up this Friday, so don't be left out: Where the Sidewalk Ends, the original Kiss of Death and The Dark Corner. What better way to kiss off the year than with three film noir classics?

The member list of the week isn't really by one of our members but it's pretty darned useful: Our David Hudson whipped up a list of critic Joe Leydon's Movies You Must See, which accompanied an interview.

Tomorrow only! GreenCine presents Mau Mau Sex Sex at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, introduced by director Ted Bonnitt and writer Eddie Muller. When GreenCine launched its Video-on-Demand service two years ago, our very first title was this wonderful, unconventional documentary on legendary exploitation film producers Dan Sonney and David F. Friedman. Unlike most bio-pics overwhelmed by clips, the film expertly intermingles their earlier work with candid footage of the gentlemen in their twilight years.

Join us for the fifth anniversary of Mau Mau Sex Sex's release, followed by an extensive Q&A with the filmmakers. Tomorrow, Wednesday, December 7, 7:30pm. $7/$5 GreenCine and YBCA Members, Students, Seniors.