Ramin Bahrani has followed up his widely acclaimed Man Push Cart with Chop Shop, and we've been watching the accolades pour in at GreenCine Daily. Currently screening at New York's Film Forum through March 11, this "low-budget vérité triumph" (David Edelstein, New York) will make its way throughout the country over the next several weeks. David D'Arcy talks with Bahrani about Abbas Kiarostami's admiration for the film, how it differs from the Dardenne brothers's work, nailing the sound of New York and about why kids could get just as much out of the movie as adults. Read the full article >>

Into the Wild  Rent 

Sean Penn's moving adaptation of the Jon Krakauer best-selling true story made it to many best of 2007 lists, including GC's Craig Phillips', but was basically overlooked by the Oscars. "Spell-binding," raved Roger Ebert. Adds Scott Foundas: "An unusually soulful and poetic movie that crystallizes [Chris] McCandless in all his glittering enigma, and allows us to decide for ourselves whether he was the spiritual son of Thoreau, Tolstoy, and John Muir, or the boy most likely to become Theodore Kaczynski." "Captures the majesty and terror of the wilderness in ways that make you catch your breath," wrote Peter Travers. And at the center of it all, Emile Hirsch is quite stupendous.

5 Centimeters Per Second Rent  

Makoto Shinkai directed this beautifully conceived anime tryptich. "If this were a run-of-the-mill, if cartoony, seishun eiga ("youth movie") there wouldn't be much reason to celebrate," wrote Japan Times. "But Shinkai, who has been hailed as the 'next Miyazaki' since the 2002 release of Voices of a Distant Star -- an awarding-winning, best-selling sci-fi short he created entirely himself on a Mac -- is an extraordinary talent." Adds Seattle Weekly: "Often breathtakingly beautiful."

Also out today: Eleven Men Out; Half Moon (more below); Horton Hears a Who (the original 'toon); Human Giant: The Complete First Season; 101 Dalmatians (Two-Disc Platinum Edition); Her Name Is Sabine (read more here >>); The Kill Point; Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium; My Kid Could Paint That; Rarescope: Amazons and Supermen; Things We Lost in the Fire; Automaton Transfusion; The Hogfather; TCM Archives - Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol. 2; Blood+: Vol 1 ; Flag Vol 3; Kanon: Vol 3; Naruto Vol 21.

New and Coming Releases lists | Your Queue | Discuss! | GreenCine's review blog: Guru | GC Member Reviews and Lists

State of Play Rent  Read  

Much like the terrific Traffik before it (later turned into Steven Soderbergh's Oscar-winning Traffic), State of Play is the latest miniseries from the UK that will shortly be made into a feature stateside (starring Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck). The miniseries casts a jaundiced eye at politics and journalism, two professions at least as disgraced as the drug trade. Written by veteran British television scribe Paul Abbott (Cracker) and directed by David Yates, best known in these parts as the fellow who's directing the final three Harry Potter films, State of Play is packed with a cast at least as good - and almost as well-known - as the upcoming U.S. adaptation.... read review here >>

More like this House of Cards | Chancer

Half Moon Rent Read  

If you're already a fan of the work of Kurdish Iranian writer/director Bahman Ghobadi (Marooned in Iraq, Turtles Can Fly), you won't need much of a push to place his new film Half Moon in your queue. If Ghobadi is new to you, Half Moon is a good place to begin your appreciation, for it's his most disciplined and productive movie yet. Ghobadi's a filmmaker so marvelously attuned to visuals and music that you'd best prepare to have your eyes and ears quietly ravished... read review here >>

More like this Blackboards | Taste of Cherry

Radiant City  Rent  

This creative indie semi-documentary on suburban sprawl could have been deadly dull, wrote Aaron Hillis in the Village Voice, "But in the hands of Canadian co-directors Gary Burns and journalist Jim Brown, a forceful buckshot of damning animated statistics and talking-head rants from urban theorists (including iconoclastic author James Howard Kunstler) energizes a satirical day-in-the-life narrative mock-doc starring the fictitious, newly suburbanized Moss family." Adds the NY Times' Matt Zoller Steitz, the film is "an acerbic position paper on the cultural damage done by postwar architectural fads."

More like this Waydowntown | The End of Suburbia

Brace yourself for an onslaught of coverage of Austin's SXSW on GreenCine Daily later this week and throughout the fest. GreenCine's David Hudson will be there himself, and we'll also be getting loads of podcasts from - speaking of - Aaron Hillis. All in all, it'll almost be like being there yourself!

Congrats to the newest GreenCine Member of the Month! Kaream will receive an Amazon gift certificate in thanks for contributions made to the boards and the GC community. You can be the next winner, by posting in the forums, and creating lists and reviews.

Lastly, a request: If you happen to receive a damaged disc, please leave us a note on the envelope indicating the nature of the damage by checking the appropriate box (skips, broken, won't play, send replacement). Please do not deface the discs by writing directly on the disc or sleeve itself. Thank you for taking care of your GreenCine rentals, we appreciate it!