New York Times critic Bowsley Crowther called The Jackie Robinson Story, back in 1950: "A frank and familiar pursual of the old pluck-and-luck routine, with the hero smacking a grand-slam off Jim Crow in the ninth. What is surprising, however, is the sincerity of the dramatization and the integrity of Mr. Robinson playing himself... [It is] re-enacted with manifest fidelity and conspicuous dramatic restraint. And Mr. Robinson, doing that rare thing of playing himself in the picture's leading role, displays a calm assurance and composure that might be envied by many a Hollywood star." Now, in honor of the anniversary of one of the most important days in the American civil rights movement, when Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's color barrier, GreenCine is proud to offer The Jackie Robinson Story, on-demand, on GreenCine.

Also available to rent.

Continue Reading 60 years ago today: The Jackie Robinson Story

Interview By Sara Schieron

When Flannel Pajamas won over crowds at Sundance in 2006, the press was affectionate as well, offering high-pedigree praise and comparing this exploration of marital challenges to similarly themed films by the likes of Cassavetes and Bergman. Such a comparison is not made loosely as writer/director Jeff Lipsky, a film distributor turned filmmaker, distributed the works of those two greats and so many influential others.

Flannel Pajamas is now available on DVD.

Continue Reading Jeff Lipsky on Marriage and Flannel Pajamas

"Architect Glen Howard Small wanted his daughter, Lucia, to write his biography. Instead, she made a documentary about him. The result is an utterly engrossing portrait of a world-class eccentric and his family's struggle to understand the man." (Tim Merrill, FilmThreat)

"Blithe, brilliant, and intimate...a real-life The Royal Tenenbaums in which dad comes off as insufferable but nonetheless charming and sympathetic, an uncompromising idealist whose failure to 'play the game' exiled him to the margins." (Boston Phoenix)

Continue Reading My Father the Genius

GreenCine's Craig Phillips wrote of this Gallic policier, "while it may remind one a bit of Prime Suspect à la français, this is less about the mystery than it is about the characters." Star Nathalie Baye is "remarkable."

Michael Wilmington called Xavier Beauvois' film "a fine, taut, tough example of the realistic police drama."

Kenneth Turan, LA Times: "A quiet powerhouse of a film, an implacable, uncompromising French police drama, both old-fashioned and modern, that underlines the reasons impeccably made crime stories do so well on screen." 

Continue Reading Le Petit Lieutenant

This is the kind of week for DVD releases that we usually like to call a good week to catch up on other recent releases, since it seems on the surface like a fairly unexciting crop of titles. But there are gems to be had, from a Gallic policier to an odd doc on an eccentric Christian folk-indie-rock group ("a fond portrait, loaded with bizarre, haunting music and off-kilter inspirations" - LA Times) to a multi-character story set around RFK's asassination; from a stand-out stand-up to a quirky romantic comedy about a man, a woman and the personal history that, um, dogs her...

Check out this week's new releases, and more titles coming soon.

Updated! April 11

Continue Reading New on DVD: April 10, 2007

Interview By Jonathan Marlow

"I think that I always wanted to have a brother."

In 1979, a 21-year-old filmmaker warped countless young minds with a terrifying bit of surreality called Phantasm. A quarter of a century later, he's entertaining us with a tale of Elvis and JFK, both alive (yet feeling their age), as crime-fighters. Jonathan Marlow finally caught up with the director on the eve of Bubba Ho-tep's release, long after Don Coscarelli appeared with Bruce Campbell at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival in 2003...

Phantasm has been reissued on DVD.

Continue Reading Elvis, JFK and the Tall Man: a Talk with Don Coscarelli

Interview By Jonathan Marlow

"The mood of making my kind of films is getting stronger here."

The Pacific Film Archive will be screening two of Apichatpong Weerasethakul's films; Blissfully Yours and Tropical Malady, this Friday and Saturday. You can Purchase tickets here. Jonathan Marlow had a chance to speak with Weerasethakul, you can read the transcript of that interview after the jump.

Continue Reading Blissfully Ours: A Talk With Apichatpong Weerasethakul

NPR's Fresh Air had a piece on the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour group, which is comprised of comedians Maz Jobrani, Ahmed Ahmed and Aron Kader (of Iranian, Egyptian and Palestinian descent, respectively). Their special, in which the comics muse on how life changed for them since Sept. 11 with amusement, bewilderment and a touch of self-deprecation (they enter the stage through metal detectors), premiered on Comedy Central last month and is out on DVD this week. [Official site.]

"They are doing for Middle-Easterners what Richard Pryor did for African Americans - Carrying their culture to the mainstream... Very funny and timely." -Newsweek

See: The New York Times piece.

The DVD.

Continue Reading Axis of Evil Comedy Tour: Homeland insecurity

By Sean Axmaker

Mario Bava is a horror original. A painter and cinematographer turned director, a craftsman turned celluloid dreamer, an industry veteran who created, almost single-handedly, the uniquely Italian genre of baroque horror known as giallo, he directed the most graceful and deliriously mad horror films of the 1960s and early 1970s. Always better at imagery than explanation, at set piece than story, Bava's films are at their best dream worlds and nightmare visions. Check your logic at the door.

Continue Reading Mario Bava: Master Choreographer of the Giallo's Dance of Death

By Adam Hartzell

The cinema of Hong Sang-soo "is very much a walking cinema in its pace, in its space for reflection, and in its elliptical nature, each ending leading us into the next film, or returning us to a film, or scene, that preceded it," writes Adam Hartzell, who explains why his recent talk with the Korean director, on the occasion of the release of Woman is the Future of Man on DVD, is not an interview - per se.

Continue Reading Walking with Hong Sang-soo