La Misma Luna (Under the Same Moon) [official site] was met with a rousing standing ovation when it premiered at Sundance earlier this year. Now this moving tale of a mother and son separated by the US-Mexico border is opening New York's Latinbeat series and screening at the Toronto International Film Festival before hitting theaters in March 2008.

James van Maanen grabbed a chance to talk with director Patricia Riggen.

Continue Reading Patricia Riggen: Love and Politics Under the Same Moon

"There is plenty of violence and intrigue, but it seems likely that had Mr. Schroeder pitched the project to a Hollywood studio, the story would have been dismissed as crazily implausible," wrote AO Scott in the New York Times from Cannes back in May. He'd just seen Barbet Schroeder's Terror's Advocate, a documentary about one of the most controversial - and mysterious - lawyers of all time, Jacques Verges.

The film has just screened in Telluride, where David D'Arcy spoke with Schroeder, and is now on its way to Toronto.

Continue Reading Barbet Schroeder: "This was the most dangerous movie for me to make."

Cinephiles are also often movie buffs, which means a good deal of you out there are probably also specifically interested in film scores. Still, a remix album of great orchestral film scores from the 20th century might seem like an odd idea – after all, a lot of this music is considered old-fashioned. But Six Degrees Records co-founder and executive producer Bob Duskis knew better: "A lot of electronica producers are huge fans of these film scores," he says. And for the new collection Cinematic, "I wanted producers who had a cinematic sense to their music anyway, or had done soundtracks themselves. We didn’t want DJs just adding beats to the orchestral tracks."

Mission accomplished. Cinematic is full of creative and often provocative arrangements of music by some of the greatest film composers ever – Nino Rota, Ennio Morricone, and Henry Mancini among them. Of course, this music was never satisfied with being accompaniment in the first place; like the best music in any style, these scores suggested their own stories and their own landscapes. No surprise then that they work so well apart from their films. What is surprising is how adaptable these classic scores are, at least when the right producers get hold of them.

Now you can win a copy of the Cinematic CD if you're one of the lucky winners of GreenCine's latest contest. Send us an email to contest@greencine.com, including your name, email address and, if you're a GreenCine member, your username in the email, and "Cinematic" in the subject header (this last step keeps it from getting spam-filtered). Ten winners will be selected at random from all valid entries. The deadline is Thursday, September 13. Winners will be notified by e-mail and announced in future editions of the GreenCine Dispatch newsletter.

Continue Reading Cinematic CD Giveaway!

A host of fine titles are out this week as we usher in September. Provocative features and hilarious TV shows are the highlights of a good week. Click on for more of this week's releases and some more coming soon!

Continue Reading New and Coming Releases: September 4, 2007

Interview By Andrew Grant

Joe Swanberg follows up his previous efforts, Kissing on the Mouth and LOL, with the clever and endearing Hannah Takes the Stairs; a film about a recent college graduate and aspiring playwright, struggling to find happiness in her life through various relationships. Swanberg's feature is a collaborative work that involved prominent indie filmmakers such as Mark Duplass, Ry Russo-Young, Todd Rohal, Andrew Bujalski and others. The film opened at SXSW and there Andrew Grant had a moment to speak with Swanberg about his films.

LOL is now out on DVD.

Continue Reading Young Americans: Joe Swanberg LOLs

Women-centered films, as well as a show about all shapes of Heroes, spastic ice-skaters and spastic air guitar "champs," all highlight this week's new releases. That and the final Prime Suspect series. It's a glorious week! Read on for more of this week's new releases and titls coming soon to DVD.

Continue Reading New and Coming Releases: August 28, 2007

Winner of the Documentary Grand Jury Prize at Sundance earlier this year (as well as the Cinematography Award), Manda Bala "has a lot more to do with fiction filmmaking than with journalism or with much that we expect from documentaries," notes David D'Arcy in his introduction to his long and fascinating talk with director Jason Kohn. This stylized approach may have put off a few critics, but not Kohn's mentor, Errol Morris, who has told him, "This is not a movie about Brazil. This is a movie about the United States in five years."

Continue Reading "Corruption is akin to war crimes." Jason Kohn on Manda Bala.

"Every novice filmmaker aspires to have their first feature praised by their peers. If they're extremely fortunate, their earliest work will be embraced by critics and well-attended by audiences. Less often, their first feature will even be lauded with awards in their home country and abroad." remarks Jonathan Marlow of Florian Henckle von Donnersmarck whose remarkable new drama The Lives of Others has won several German Lola's and has been nominated by the Academy. Marlow had a chance to talk with Donnersmarck here in San Francisco.

And now the film, which won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film, is out on DVD.

Continue Reading Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck: Among The Lives of Others

"That a film this good - smart, accessible, enjoyable - was passed over for theatrical release shows a stunning lack of judgment on the part of current distributors," James van Maanen wrote recently at Guru. "The Big Bad Swim has appeared (and won awards in the process) at national festivals from Tribecca to Maui, Seattle to Rhode Island and internationally from Munich to Karlovy Vary, Avignon and Zurich, and managed one-week releases in Allentown, Pennsylvania and Portland, Oregon, with individual screenings in Chicago and Fort Lauderdale, where it was lapped up by critics and audiences alike. For the rest of us, thank God for DVD."

James talks with director Ishai Setton and screenwriter Daniel Schechter.

Continue Reading The Big Bad Swim is a Small Good Movie.

GreenCine is proud to be a sponsor of an excellent film event in Seattle put together by our friends at The Warren Report: The Act Now series of monthly screenings of stellar, progressive documentaries.

Their first screening was this past Tuesday - the stirring eco-doc The 11th Hour, narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio - at the Seattle Art Museum, but there will be a bunch more throughout the fall. If you're a GreenCine member and would like to get on the guest list to see these screenings for free, email us at pr@greencine.com to let us know. Then we can tell The Warren Report who is coming and how many.

The screening schedule:

Let us know which of these you'd like to attend, your name and GreenCine member name, and an email address, and we'll put you on the list!

Continue Reading Screenings in Seattle: GC members get on the guest list