Pravda: GreenCine Dispatches: May 2006 Archives

May 31, 2006

Dispatch #135

Say so long to May and hello to June (no swooning!), in the latest issue of the GreenCine Dispatch, which has a few children's-themed titles to recommend (though one of them is decidedly not for children). Enjoy!

#135 | May 30, 2006

"You know, for kids." -- The Hudsucker Proxy.

If you're thinking of trying GreenCine's new DVD sales service (and you know you are), this is a high time to read through GreenCine's "Buy FAQ" - a handy list of answers to all the basic questions you may have about the service. Give it a try, and then give it a buy. (Reminder: Free priority shipping on all orders over $50.)

The children's television satire Wonder Showzen is decidedly not for the toddler set (though the show's opening "warning" to this effect is quite funny), but adults looking for something both different, demented and often hilarious should give this one a try. The "Beat Kids" segments, in which child reporters ask people on the street cynical questions, are particularly funny. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll be glad you're not a puppet.

Two discs for $22.95.

Dumbo, even more so than the more famously child traumatizing Bambi, was the movie that really got me as a kid. Not only is there that typical Disney child abandonment theme, but the ugly duckling plot and the circus animal abuse backdrop makes it even more emotionally engaging. It's also one of the studio's best animated features, with... read the rest here.

Buy the new "Big Top" edition out next Tuesday, for $25.45.

Now playing via GreenCine's Video-on-Demand: Independent Exposure: Animation collection, which includes Edie Faig's amusing Side Show, depicted on the cover, the lovely Berio, based on the last interview the composer Berio had given, Steve Whitehouse's Kunstbar, and fifteen other excellent short works of animation.

Watch for only $3.99 a pop.

More like this: The Best of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog | Mr. Show: First and Second Seasons

More like this: Bambi | Alice in Wonderland

More like this: Avoid Eye Contact - The Best of NYC Independent Animation Vol. 1 | Mr. Klek's Triumph

Aye, it's an eclectic bunch, this week's new releases are:

Winter Soldier (1972; $19.45). A stunning record of the testimony of returned vets in 1971 known as the "Winter Soldier Investigation" and documented by a then-anonymous filmmaking collective (including such luminaries as Barbara Kopple). "The afterlife of the Vietnam home front experience indicates that we saw it all in our living rooms, or in Hearts and Minds - but, no, we didn't. A Winter Soldier screening should be a voter registration requirement," writes Michael Atkinson in the Village Voice.

"Freedomland (2005; $25.45) is a sober, unsettling drama that uses the framework of a police procedural to explore matters of individual madness and the collective madness of racism," writes Sheri Linden in the Hollywood Reporter. "Adapting his 1998 novel, Richard Price has fashioned a stripped-down, elegantly written tale that's topical without being heavy-handed. The film is, above all, a moving portrait of hurting souls, brought to life in compelling performances." With Samuel L Jackson, Julianne Moore and Edie Falco.

Clara et moi (2004; $19.95). Ah, to be in love... in France. "[Julien] Boisselier captivates throughout," writes Kim Linekin for Eye Weekly. "Looking like a cross between Peter Sarsgaard and Jeremy Piven, he embodies the complicated man-child qualities of Antoine with such grace and ease that you'd swear he's been playing this role on Broadway for years."

Also out this week: The Uninvited (2003; $19.45); Touch the Sound (2004; $20.95); The Bette Davis Collection (set: $50.45; What Ever Happened to Baby Jane Special Edition, $23.95; other individual titles - The Man Who Came to Dinner, Jezebel, Marked Woman, Old Acquaintance - $15.95); The Flats (2002; $16.95); Kids in the Hall Season 4 ($41.95).

New anime: Ah! My Goddess Volume 5: In Your Eyes (2005; $23.45). Writes Theron "Key" Martin for the Anime News Network: "Long-time fans of Kosuke Fujishima's work will love this series for how faithful it remains to the manga, while newcomers will find a light-hearted and enchanting take on anime romantic comedies."

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

He's gone through war and therapy. He's partied with James Dean over at Gene Kelly's place. He's auditioned in front of Boris Karloff. Most famously, though, he's written plays and movies, among them, Rebel Without a Cause. Stewart Stern's got stories to tell, and he tells more than a few to Sean Axmaker.

To paraphrase from an ad parody on Ren and Stimpy, "Blog, blog, everyone loves a blog." And people seem to be enjoying our blog, GreenCine Daily, as it wraps up the Cannes International Film Festival and all the award winners.

On a sadder note, the fantastic Japanese director and two time Cannes Palme d'Or winner Shohei Imamura passed away yesterday. We highly recommend his films - all of them.

Our genre of the week is Screwball Comedy, and if you haven't yet stopped by to give Gregg Rickman's primer on the subject a read, now's a good time. A bunch of these classic comedies have recently made their way to DVD at last, so we've updated the primer to include more links. In their heyday, these Hollywood romantic comedies spanned from the 1934's The Thin Man, Twentieth Century and It Happened One Night through to Preston Sturges' The Lady Eve and The Palm Beach Story in the 40s, but, as Rickman notes, "it is still very much with us, as a beacon of the giddy achievement possible within popular entertainment."

And thus, our member list of the week is Dunnyman's Screwball Comedies of the Ages list, for a few of their own favorites.

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. In one of his final roles, Robert Ryan stars as an aging criminal trying to collect on a kidnapping plot in Montreal. Jean-Louis Trintignant, Aldo Ray and an uncredited Emmanuelle Béart (in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it role) round out a remarkable cast, photographed by Edmond Richard (Welles' The Trial; Bunuel's Le Fantôme de la liberté). Legendary French auteur René Clément crafts David Goodis' "Black Friday" into a gritty, witty, unjustly little-seen neo-noir. The program includes the exceptionally rare short film The Reason Why, also starring Ryan as a conflicted man with a gun in his hand.

Wednesday, June 7, 7:30pm. YBCA, 701 Mission Street, San Francisco. $7/$5 GreenCine and YBCA Members, Students, Seniors.

We recommend viewing this newsletter in all of its HTML glory; check your e-mail program's settings to view HTML. This newsletter is sent to GreenCine members only. If you do not wish to receive this newsletter in the future, log in to the GreenCine site, click "View Your Profile" then click Edit Profile. Choose "no" on the "Subscribe to the GreenCine newsletter" option and click "Update Profile." Archives of the Dispatch are now available online at GreenCine's Press and Marketing blog.

Posted by cphillips at 5:55 PM

May 23, 2006

Dispatch #134

This week's Dispatch travels through time to bring you the latest news from the future, and past, of film.

#134 | May 23, 2006

"It's some kind of invisible barrier."
"Oh, so that's what an invisible barrier looks like." -- Time Bandits.

Now playing: The GreenCine Core Set - the 250 films rated highest by GreenCine members. The list doesn't need much more of an explanation than that, but it's a great place to start if you're new to GreenCine or just looking to catch up on the DVDs your fellow GreenCiners love. We'll be doing more varieties of these sorts of lists soon. But for now, use this one to help fill up your queue!

War (huh). What is it good for? Absolutely nothing - except inspiring some pretty great movies, with The Dirty Dozen easily in the top dozen. Out now in a spanking new two-disc Special Edition, Robert Aldrich's WWII actioner has lost none of its lustre. It remains as nihilistic (anti-war and anti-everything) as war movies get, but with a terrific cast (lead by Lee Marvin, Donald Sutherland and Charles Bronson), great energy and some needed humor, the film remains a classic. The bonus disc includes the mediocre 1985 made-for-TV sequel The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission, but also two absorbing new documentaries: "Armed and Deadly: The Making of The Dirty Dozen" and "The Filthy Thirteen: Real Stories from Behind the Lines."

Buy for $20.57.

The Cecil B. DeMille Collection: Nine and a half hours of epic 30s-era Golden Age Hollywood on five discs: The Sign of the Cross (1932), with Fredric March, Charles Laughton and Claudette Colbert; Four Frightened People (1934), with Colbert; Cleopatra (1934), with Colbert again; The Crusades (1935), with Loretta Young; Union Pacific (1939), with Barbara Stanwyck and Joel McCrea. "Offers an excellent overview of this often underrated filmmaker's fine work from the 1930's," writes Dave Kehr in The New York Times.

Buy for $50.45.

Now playing via GreenCine's Video-on-Demand: Two stalwarts of Hammer Horror films - Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing - starred in the underrated Horror Express, though the film is in fact a Spanish production. "Manages to mix the bloodletting of a Spanish horror movie with the Gothic atmosphere of Hammer into a final fusion of science fiction and horror," wrote BritMovie. "With a semi-literate script by Arnaud D'Usseau and Julian Halevy, [and] Spanish director Eugenio Martin keeps it going at a rapid pace."

Watch for only $2.99 a pop.

More like this: Patton (Special Edition) (or previous edition for rent) | The Longest Day (Special Edition) (or previous edition for rent)

More like this: Why Change Your Wife/Miss Lulu Bett | King of Kings (Criterion)

More like this: Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet | Phantom from 10,000 Leagues

Two new Criterion releases and an Oscar-nominated performance highlight this week's new releases:

Harlan County USA (1976; $29.97). In this ground-breaking, Oscar-winning documentary from Barbara Kopple, "there are no after-the-fact summaries, but a persistent present tense of murder, gun threats, crowd violence, poverty, corporate usury, and in the end, astonishing communal solidarity," writes Michael Atkinson in the Village Voice. Criterion has, of course, loaded this disc with all sorts of extras to boot.

Transamerica (2005; $21.45). "If it lives on the page, it lives on the stage," Felicity Huffman told John Esther recently, explaining that it was the script that persuaded her to take a chance on Transamerica - a good move, as it scored her an Oscar nomination. "I thought it was a great story and I was glad it wasn't an 'issue' movie. You know, 'Transgender individuals are people, too.' The part... was just a fantastic opportunity and I hadn't done anything close to that on film."

Viridiana (1961; $22.46). "More than 40 years after its original release, Viridiana still shocks," writes Ed Gonzalez in Slant of this Palme d'Or-winner at Cannes. Criterion's spiffed-up package contains new video interviews with Silvia Pinal and author Richard Porton and excerpts from a 1964 episode of Cinìastes de notre temps on Luis Buñuel's early career.

Metal: A Headbanger's Journey (2005; $18.88). "Both Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi and Motörhead's [Lemmy] Kilmister pop up as the chatty elder statesmen of metal in this vicariously thrilling documentary, which seeks to explain heavy metal's many permutations (glam metal, the new wave of British heavy metal, speed metal, black metal, death metal, Norwegian death metal, ad infinitum) and its sheer endurance over the past 30-odd (sometimes very odd if you count King Diamond or Voivod) years," writes Marc Savlov in the Austin Chronicle.

Also out this week: BloodRayne Unrated Director's Cut (2006; $18.88); Back Door to Hell (1964; $10.95); The Boondock Saints Special Edition (2000; $23.45); Little Britain The Complete Second Season (2004; $27.45).

New anime: Doki Doki School Hours 4th Hour. (2004; $19.45). "While other shows use the Japanese high school as a setting for all sorts of romantic, dramatic, futuristic, horrific, and sometimes just plain soporific adventures, this is one of those oddities where school itself is the adventure," writes Carlo Santos for the Anime News Network. "[C]ute and likable."

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

New primer alert! Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, H.G. Wells - the concept of time travel, appropriately enough, goes quite a ways back. In movies, as Jeffrey Anderson explains in his primer on time travel movies, "only one aspect of science fiction still has potential, infinite potential, and that's time travel... the variations within are endlessly fascinating." Go Back to the Future in a Time Machine with the time travel movies primer. (Captain Kirk, in Star Trek IV, at right: "Everybody remember where we parked.")

Our ever-busy film blog, GreenCine Daily, continues its non-stop coverage of the Cannes International Film Festival, which is in full swing.

Over on the discussion boards are tons of movie (and non-movie) topics just waiting for your contribution. From summer movies to anime fansubs, there's something for everyone. So don't be afraid - come join in!

Our list of the week is Cinenaut's Time Travel Romances list, to go in tandem with our new primer.

Wednesday, June 7, 7:30pm. YBCA, 701 Mission Street, San Francisco. $7/$5 GreenCine and YBCA Members, Students, Seniors.

Posted by cphillips at 4:10 PM

May 17, 2006

Dispatch #133

Cannes GreenCine keep up with the world's most famous film fest? We Cannes, and do, and this week's Dispatch points you to some tidbits du jour. All this and more in the latest issue of our beloved newsletter.

#133 | May 16, 2006

"I've no regrets. I've been everywhere and done everything. I've eaten caviar at Cannes, sausage rolls at the dogs. I've played baccarat at Biarritz and darts with the rural dean. What is there left for me but marriage?" -- The Lady Vanishes.

If you haven't yet tried GreenCine's personal series feature, now's as good a time as any. A personal series is a group of discs that you want to receive according to how they are ordered in your queue - say, an anime series, or a TV show, or parts one and two of The Best of Youth. This group of discs is created by you for your queue, making these titles go out in the order they are positioned in your queue.

Fruits Basket, or Fruba, as the show's fans like to call it, is a wholly engaging anime series now available either in a lovely gift box set, or individually [Volume 1, 2, 3, 4]. A reviewer on AnimeJump gushed that the show is "like a lovely, breezy spring day...It is something you can watch again and again, not only because it's visually arresting, but because it's so uniquely refreshing. I can't recommend it highly enough." Fans of Shojo anime and of good stories in general should give this one a chance.

Box set: $70.45 (almost $30 off the list price); individual volumes: $21.45 each.

The ninth volume of Mystery Science Theater episodes from Rhino is worth it for the set's fourth disc alone - the Satellite of Love's takedown of the wonderfully awful The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies. The mixed-up director of that cinematic atrocity expanded all his creative talent on the title (which didn't stop him from trying to "act" in it), and it doesn't stop Mike and the 'bots from riffing on it with gleeful, spot-on abandon in one of the best late-era MST episodes. The other three titles in the set... read the rest here.

Buy for $43.95.

Now playing via GreenCine's Video-on-Demand: Ganja and Hess, a fascinating, one-of-a-kind 1973 film directed by actor Bill Gunn that was originally marketed as a black vampire film, but it's also an acid-soaked head trip, and, as EFox wrote, it's also "an art film: a stately, meticulously composed, disturbing, and passionate meditation on the themes of addiction, lust, beauty and mortality... [A] unique, low-budget radical art film for the sensuously and intuitively inclined. Don't miss it." See it now or anytime you wish via GreenCine VOD.

More like this: Boys Over Flowers Vol. 1 | Koi Kaze Vol. 1

More like this: MST3K Vol. 8 | MST3K Vol. 5

More like this: Atom Age Vampire | Carnival of Souls

Several underseen 2005 releases make their way to home video, highlighting this week's new releases:

Duma (2005). Critics wrote and pled and wrote and pled, but couldn't get their readers to come out and see Carroll Ballard's story of a boy and his cheetah. It's a hard sell. It sounds way too Disney-of-old. Too many families had simply forgotten what Ballard is capable of. Duma "could stand tall on the beauty of its images alone," wrote Stephanie Zacharek in Salon, "Even so, it's what Ballard does with this story that makes it sing."

The White Countess (2005). The last collaboration of the all but legendary creative duo, producer Ishmail Merchant (who died last year) and James Ivory, is an adaptation of a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro (who wrote the screenplay as well) and "an appropriate finish to the 40-year partnership: a typical, above-average Merchant-Ivory film," wrote Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle. "This is Merchant-Ivory's kind of showmanship, the unflashy adult variety of movie magic that they made their hallmark." With Ralph Fiennes, Natasha Richardson and - get this - Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave.

The Producers (2005; $21.76) is one of those: when it hit theaters, you said to yourself, "I'll catch it when it comes out on DVD." Well, here it is. Great cinema? No. Loads of fun? You bet. Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick bring their performances in the massively successful Broadway production (an adaptation, of course, of the original movie) to the screen.

"'A very odd thriller' is how Italian director Marco Bellocchio describes My Mother's Smile (2002; $22.45), his uncannily beautiful and deeply humanist exploration of the nightmares that resurface from a Roman atheist's Catholic childhood," wrote Leslie Camhi in the Village Voice last year. With "the ever excellent" Sergio Castellitto.

Also out this week: Michael Haneke's Benny's Video, named one of the 13 best films of 1993 by Cahiers du Cinema; Winter Passing (2004), "a promising directing debut from New York playwright Adam Rapp" (Salon); New Police Story (2004); and Game 6, with a script by Don DeLillo(!).

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

While Daniel Clowes and Terry Zwigoff's first collaboration, Ghost World, drew all but universal raves, their second, Art School Confidential, is drawing widely varied responses. Tony DuShane talks with the writer and the director about their latest provocation.

Internationally acclaimed documentary filmmaker Fernando Solanas has won countless awards for the films he's been making for over 50 years now. David D'Arcy, who's been reviewing several docs at GreenCine Daily recently, talks with Solanas about The Dignity of the Nobodies, "a tour of the human landscape shaped by Argentina's economic crisis of the late 1990s, a journey through devastation."

That award-winning film blog of ours, GreenCine Daily, is full of new shorts, fests, events, links, tips and magazine reviews. Look for coverage of this year's Cannes International Film Festival, which gets underway tomorrow.

In honor of Roberto Rossellini, who would be 100 this year, we salute Italian Neo-Realism. Besides the expected tributes for the director's centennial, there's been an unusual one from daughter Isabella in the form of a short, My Dad is 100 Years Old, directed by Guy Maddin. For a quick refresher on the significance of her dad - as well as that of Luchino Visconti and Vittorio De Sica and their impact on early Fellini and Antonioni - look no further than Megan Rattner's primer on Italian Neo-Realism.

Our list of the week is actually our running tally of previous winners of Cannes' Palme d'Or. Appréciez!

Wednesday, June 7, 7:30pm. YBCA, 701 Mission Street, San Francisco. $7/$5 GreenCine and YBCA Members, Students, Seniors.

Posted by cphillips at 4:06 PM

May 10, 2006

Dispatch #132

We salute our moms in particular with this pre-Mother's Day edition of GreenCine Dispatch. Thanks to moms and those with maternal instincts everywhere!

#132 | May 9, 2006

"Will, am I a bad mother?"
"No. No, you're not a bad mother. You're just a barking lunatic." -- About a Boy.

We salute our moms this week, by featuring a few of our own mom's favorite films, and with a list of mother-related films - both on the home page. Check 'em out, and many blessings to mothers everywhere.

"Yasujiro Ozu creates a poignant and exquisitely realized portrait of devotion, separation, and familial love in Late Spring," writes Acquarello at Strictly Film School. "Stripped of a manipulative and artificial storyline, Late Spring reveals a sincere concern for the plight of the common man, an affectionate celebration for the subtle beauty of everyday life, and a profound sympathy for the inevitable passage of time." What's more, this special two-disc edition features Tokyo-Ga, Wim Wenders's tribute to Ozu.

Alexander Sokurov's stunning Mother and Son may be slow of pace but patient viewers will be rewarded with one of the most beautiful and poignant films of the last few years. It is the story of the love shown by a young man who cares for his dying mother, set against a dream-like, storybook backdrop, but describing couldn't begin to do justice to a film that moves the soul . Sokurov moves as an expressionistic painter or poet might and the film is just that - a painting or a poem, at twenty four frames a second. A moving experience.

Now playing via GreenCine's Video-on-Demand: In the madcap farce My Father, My Mother, My Brothers & My Sisters, Victoria Abril plays a free-spirited single mother with three children fathered by different men. When she takes her brood on vacation and encounters all three fathers, the holiday turns disastrous. It's fun for the whole family!

Available only via VOD ($3.99).

More like this: Early Summer | Tokyo Story

More like this: Russian Ark | Father and Son

More like this: Dinner and Driving | He's a Woman, She's a Man

Yet another fine film snubbed by the Academy this year is at the center of this week's new releases, among other highlights:

The New World (2005; $20.98). Though it barely made a dent at the box office and was all but snubbed by the Oscars (excepting one nomination for cinematography), Terrence Malick's The New World "was the movie that inspired the most fervent devotion" among a certain circle of critics last year, as J. Hoberman actually rather understated it in the Village Voice in March. "With the exception of my few dear friends in that august body, [the Academy members] are idiots," wrote Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. Are you getting the idea now that if you haven't seen it yet, you'd damn well better?

Munich (2005; Special Edition; $28.95). "With his latest film, Steven Spielberg forgoes the emotional bullying and pop thrills that come so easily to him to tell the story of a campaign of vengeance that Israel purportedly brought against Palestinian terrorists in the wake of the 1972 Olympics," wrote Manohla Dargis in the New York Times in December. "An unsparingly brutal look at two peoples all but drowning in a sea of their own blood, Munich is by far the toughest film of the director's career and the most anguished." And, many would argue, among his best.

Writing in the New York Times, Dennis Lim recently called Carlos Reygadas's second feature, Battle in Heaven (2004; $19.45) , "an anomaly among today's explicit art films, which often deploy sex more as a stunt than a subversion." Jonathan Marlow spoke with the controversial director at the Sundance Film Festival in January.

Fateless (2005; $24.45). "Adapted from Nobel laureate Imre Kertész's autobiographical novel of an Auschwitz boyhood, the Hungarian film Fateless has a remarkable absence of sentimentality," wrote J. Hoberman in the Voice in January. "The movie is obviously artistic, but there are no cheap or superfluous effects. It's almost mystically translucent.... This isn't a movie that I'd have thought possible; it's an auspicious opening for the new year."

Also out this week: The 400 Blows (Criterion) (1959; $23.89), a re-release of Truffaut's classic debut; Rumor Has It (2005; $25.45); the original The Poseidon Adventure (1974; $16.45) returns in a special two-disc edition; Queer as Folk: The Final Season (2005; five discs; $72.59); Scrubs: Season Three ($32.95).

New Anime:
Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo Chapter 4 (2004; $23.45). "Gankutsuou, the latest effort from legendary director of Blue Submarine No. 6 and the Last Renaissance segment from The Animatrix, is without a doubt one of the finest anime series ever made," writes Zac Bertschy at the Anime News Network.

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

Author D.K. Holm has given GreenCine an exclusive interview with... himself. But then you'd expect something a little unusual from the author of books on R. Crumb and Quentin Tarantino. The self-discussion includes a few questions about Film Soleil - and about what that means, exactly.

Look for a brand new primer coming your way shortly, as soon as we fix our flux capacitor: Time Travel movies.

Our award-winning film blog, GreenCine Daily offers up dispatches from New York's Tribeca fest, in addition to notes and tips from all over the cinematic world.

"We don't just watch movies - we experience them. We're inhabitants as well as observers, safe in theatres and living rooms yet inwardly out on some emotional limb. We feel by proxy whatever passes on the screen and we like it that way, especially when it comes to the more unpleasant human experiences." That's from GreenCine's Weepies primer, by Marlee MacLeod. And that's our genre of the week, perfect for moms who love those tearjerking classics like An Affair to Remember and Sophie's Choice. Have a good weep with your mom on Mother's Day.

The GreenCine member list of the week is: DVDs with Great Surround Sound Mixes, by oldkingcole. Geek out and rock out!

Also: Join our new discussion thread about the upcoming summer movie season.

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 next week!

Posted by cphillips at 4:43 PM

May 3, 2006

Dispatch #131

Ole! A tip about our new, full and complete list of all the titles new and coming soon kicks off our Cinco de Mayo edition of the GreenCine Dispatch. Vamanos!

#131 | May 2, 2006

"All that other stuff, all that history? To hell with it, right? Forget the Alamo." -- Lone Star.

A new long list of all the titles new and coming soon greets you as you hit our home page. Check it out to keep abreast of all the good (along with some bad and ugly) titles coming your way soon.

The new Tennessee Williams Collection (eight discs, $56.95) set is comprised of six classic films faithfully based on William's sultry plays, most of which had never previously been out on DVD, along with a remastered, new two-disc Streetcar; but the real treat is the exclusive "Tennessee Williams' South", a feature-length vintage documentary that includes priceless interviews with Williams in and around The Big Easy, and scenes from his plays dramatized by Jessica Tandy, Maureen Stapleton, Burl Ives, and others. The set is full of new featurettes, too. As Blanche DuBois said, "Oh look, we have created enchantment."

Damiano Damiani's A Bullet For the General (a.k.a., El Chuncho, qui�n sabe?, 1967; $15.45) is one of the best, or at least most underrated, Spaghetti Westerns, on par with any of Sergio Leone's work in the genre, and certainly more politically radical. Set on the fringes of the Mexican revolution, the film is the story of the friendship of two mercenaries and ends with one hell of a call to arms. Don't miss this one.

Now available via Video-on-Demand: Gather your sports-happy kids around the computer to Learn Baseball from the Pros, with an instructional program that teaches younger players all about hitting, fielding, pitching, and base running. Advanced instruction from professional Major League scouts and trainers makes this the perfect program for any team or individual striving to excel at baseball.

Available via GreenCine VOD ($3.99).

More like this: Splendor in the Grass | Suddenly Last Summer

More like this: Companeros | And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself

More like this: Vegetarian Cooking with Compassionate Cooks on VOD | Touching the Game on DVD

Feast your eyes on the highlights of this week's new releases, starting with two staff favorites out on disc for the first time:

Delicatessen (1991; $21.71). "Set in some sort of post-apocalyptic Parisian deli o' the damned, this lunatic's take on the future of man is so delightfully warped that it's impossible to shake it out of your head and go get a decent night's sleep," wrote Marc Savlov in the Austin Chronicle of Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's cult classic when it hit these shores in 1992. "It's not a very pretty picture of the future, but God, what fun it is."

Modern Romance (1981; $10.95). "Not [Albert] Brooks's best film, but one of his funniest," writes DVD Verdict. "Those who have ever weathered the world of relationships will immediately relate to Robert's struggles with finding, keeping, and then losing the woman of his dreams."

The Warrior (2001; $21.76). Appropriately enough, we suppose, this DVD release was announced, then delayed (the Weinsteins snapped up the rights years ago, but the film only saw a limited release in theaters last summer). But finally, we can see it, "a minimalist but strikingly beautiful tale of renounced violence told with uncommon precision and depth," as Laura Kern wrote in the New York Times.

Also out this week: The Family Stone (2005; $21.95) with a wonderful cast including Diane Keaton, Sarah Jessica Parker, Luke Wilson and Claire Danes; Kokkuri (1997; $11.95), a "strikingly filmed example of new-generation Japanese cinema" (Variety); Hoodwinked (2005; $25.45).

New Anime:
Fullmetal Alchemist Volume 9: Pain and Lust (2006; $21.45). "Burgeoning love - the more I see of Fullmetal the more enamored I am," writes Ursus. "The quality intrinsic in this series' execution is undeniable, growing more and more as time passes. Well written, and executed."

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

The writing team of Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi had written several well-regarded scripts before tackling Aeon Flux, an adaptation of the popular MTV animated series. While the finished product garnered mixed reviews, a talk with the affable writers gives a new appreciation for the process of creating a big budget adaptation, as well as the hard road to becoming a working screenwriter.

Sisters in Law, which has screened at Cannes and over 120 other festivals, continues its tour in the US. Next stops: San Francisco, Boston, Seattle and Chicago. David D'Arcy talks with Kim Longinotto about the award-winning documentary she's made with Florence Ayisi - and about discovering aspects of faraway places we rarely see.

Our award-winning film blog, GreenCine Daily is even more action-packed than Aeon Flux; you've gotta keep checking it to stay caught up.

We celebrate Cinco de Mayo this week by popping into our Latin American film section, for peliculas de Mexico. From Amores Perros and Angel de Fuego to the old school classic The Woman of the Port (and don't forget Santo films like The Vengeance of the Mummy), Mexican cinema may be experiencing a renaissance in recent years but it goes way back.

Speaking of which, the GreenCine member list of the week is: Cinema Latino Collection, a handy guide by SergDun to the Fox collection of movies from Spain, Mexico and Argentina. (We particularly like Todo el Poder.)

Also, congrats to the winners of our Heirloom, Pray and Natural City trivia contest: Ccapers, Thermal, Criticalmv, Hanimal, Mrpooru and Dasherman.

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.

Posted by cphillips at 3:26 PM