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#124 | March 14, 2006
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"Alive! It's alive!"
-- Young
Frankenstein.
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WE'RE LIVE!
GreenCine's new DVD Sales service is now up and running and ready to service all of your DVD collecting needs. As mentioned in this space a few weeks ago, we offer competitive pricing, quick, reliable delivery and the big one: free priority shipping for all orders over $50.
A big thank you to all the members who have taken the time to explore the new homepage features, buy DVDs, ask questions and comment on the service. If there's anything you need to know that isn't addressed on the help page or hasn't been answered by a GC staffer on the discussion boards, please
drop us a line and we'd be happy to help.
We know you have a lot of options when buying DVDs and we appreciate the love you've been throwing our way. There are some big companies out there vying for your hard- earned money, but we think you'll agree that none of them combine
content, community and commitment the way GreenCine does.
Again, we appreciate any suggestions you may have and look forward to being your trusted source for DVD rentals
and sales.
Also, please check back frequently as we are constantly updating the site and will be launching a member benefits package shortly.
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Chappelle's Show:
Season One is the comic uncensored and unrivaled. With his film Block
Party called this year's Wattstax and drawing a lot of critical acclaim (and box
office), it's a good time to revisit the first season of the show that rocketed
him to stardom. It's biting satire of the best kind - with the sketch featuring
Chappelle as Clayton Bigsby, a blind white supremacist who had no idea he was
black, a particular standout. Painfully funny stuff.
Our low price: $20.95
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Studio Ghibli's Pom Poko is lesser known in the States, partially because the company's most famous director, Hayao Miyazaki, didn't direct it - the gifted
Isao
Takahata did - and partially because it's a little
odd, particularly to Westerners unfamiliar with both
Japanese mythology and the stylistic animation. The film
shifts... read
the rest here.
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 "By turns sweet, quirky, comical, and exhausting,
A Sign from God
stretches the tired conventions of the romantic comedy like few films I've
seen," wrote FilmThreat's Merle Bertrand. Greg Watkins' romantic black comedy
depicts a semi- fictionalized day in the life of independent filmmaker Caveh
(the ubiquitous Caveh Zahedi, natch) and his girlfriend... read the rest here.
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More like this: Dave
Chappelle: For What It's Worth | Dave
Chappelle: Killin' Them Softly
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More like this: Grave
of the Fireflies | Catnapped!
The Movie
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More like this: I Don't Hate Las Vegas Anymore | In
the Bathtub of the World
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This week's
new DVD releases
are a short but sweet bunch - or, more accurately, less sweet than dark, but high
quality nonetheless:
 Because David Cronenberg's A History of Violence was nominated
for "only" two Oscars (Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role, William Hurt, and Adapted Screenplay, Josh Olson), the film
played a mere walk-on role during red carpet season. But we're sure the film will endure.
When the Village Voice polled the best critics in the nation at the end of last year, the film came out on
top. "A masterpiece of indirection and pure visceral thrills," Manohla Dargis called it in the New York Times, "the feel-good, feel-bad movie of the year."
"We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home." -- Good
Night and Good Luck. Nominated for six Academy Awards (Best Picture; Best Director, George Clooney; Best Actor, David Strathairn - be sure and catch up with Sean Axmaker's interview if you haven't yet; Best Cinematography, Robert Elswit; Original Screenplay, Clooney and Grant Heslov; and
for Art Direction and Set Decoration), Good Night, and Good Luck pits CBS reporter Edward R. Murrow and his producer, Fred Friendly, against Senator Joseph McCarthy who, of course, was doing his best to cast anyone questioning authority as an enemy of the United States. Not that there might be any contemporary relevance or anything...
Also out this week:
Marebito (2004).
"While it may be no Audition (that conceptual revenge piece's second half was one of the most alarming and confounding catharses put to
film," wrote Reverse Shot editor Michael Koresky,"Marebito keeps its gaze focused and tight, and never bites off more than it can
chew." And a new director's edition of the crowd pleaser Remember the Titans (2000).
New anime:
Planetes Volume 6
(2003). "a very pleasant surprise," writes drseid. "Great animation combines with a great storyline that could reflect our not-so-distant future, and a very likable group of misfit characters that seem real. This is definitely one of the best shows released in recent memory."
A complete list of
this week's New Releases
| Coming Soon | New
Releases Archive | Your Queue
Check
out David Lam's
gripping Hong Kong police drama Powerful
Four (1992), which "underscores the bitter subtext of troubled British-Chinese relations and the part it played in fueling resentment between factions even within the police
force," wrote Eric Henderson in City Pages. "Of course, not everything here is about repression and injustice: Indeed, there's no shortage of balls-on-ice, severed ladyfingers, and bullet ballets to hold even the most bloodthirsty viewer at full attention."
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  "Tristram Shandy, the unfilmable novel, is not so unfilmable after all," writes David D'Arcy, introducing
the conversation
he had with director Michael Winterbottom when his adaptation of Laurence Sterne's 18th century classic, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Primer
coming soon: Pre-code
cinema, by an expert on the subject, film critic Mick
LaSalle. Look for it shortly.
The GreenCine Daily
blog has been on the road, in Austin, Texas, for the SXSW
Fest.
Don't miss our detailed coverage of the whole shebang.
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The GreenCine Genre
of the week: Comic
Books. Believe it or not, the newly released
History of Violence is found in this section,
too - in the "Alternative
Press" subgenre - as it's based on a
graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke. (And,
as we noted above, an Oscar
nominee for best adapted screenplay, which we
suspect could be an increasingly common
occurrence for graphic novels-to-movies.) Superheroes,
from Captain
Marvel to Wonder
Woman, are here, too. So are Barbarella,
and Barb
Wire (and we know which one we'd
choose.) Up up and away!
The member list of the
week is actually several GreenCine-staff created
lists based around film distributors we hold in
high regard: THINKFilm, and
Docurama - the latter's catalog is so voluminous
we made several lists to break it down (Docurama list #1, list #2, list #3 and list #4).
Both companies have an extraordinarily diverse catalog of fine, award-winning
films.
As part of the addition of sales to our site, we've changed the way
our catalog pages work for multi-disc sets. If
you would like to buy a box set, all you have to
do is hit "buy" on its product page,
of course, but if you wish to rent it, or rent
some of the volumes but not all of them: Click
the "rent" button. That will bring you
to a second page, where you can either click on
the "rent all" link, or rent
individual volumes. It's simple!
Answers
to this and lots of other buy-related
and general site-related questions by clicking
through our newly updated help
pages.
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Our next screening at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 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.
Blind Beast is based loosely on the writings of Edogawa Rampo.
Wednesday April 5, 7:30 pm. 701 Mission Street,
San Francisco. $8, $5 GreenCine members, students, seniors & teachers,
$5 YBCA Members.
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GreenCine is proudly sponsoring the opening night film of the 
Our next screening at the 
