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  • 'Army of Crime' and predecessor 'Army of Shadows' out on DVD

    The Philadelphia Inquirer
    January 21, 2011 Friday
    JERSEY-C Edition


    'Army of Crime' and predecessor 'Army of Shadows' out on DVD

    BYLINE: By Tirdad Derakhshani; Inquirer Staff Writer


    It's famously known that French filmmakers don't conform to any
    subject matter or genre - they'd rather flout the rules.

    But beginning with René Clément's La Bataille du Rail (The Battle of
    the Rails) in 1946, they have continually revisited one theme: life in
    France under Nazi occupation.

    This tradition has been enhanced by a recent wave of revisionist films
    that look beyond the official story to the contribution forgotten
    individuals and minority groups made to the war effort.

    One of the most notable entries is Robert Guédiguian's intense,
    poetic, real-life story from 2009, Army of Crime, available from Kino
    Lorber Films (www.kino.com or www.lorberfilms.com; $29.95 DVD; $34.95
    Blu-ray; not rated). It stars Simon Abkarian as Missak Manouchian, a
    French Armenian poet who organized a band of 22 fellow immigrants,
    mostly Jews and communists, for clandestine operations for the
    Resistance.

    The title of Guédiguian's film was inspired by Jean-Pierre Melville's
    magisterial 1969 Resistance thriller, Army of Shadows, which is
    finally available on DVD from the Criterion Collection
    (www.criterion.com/; $39.95 DVD and Blu-ray; not rated).

    The third in Melville's Occupation trilogy (after 1949's La Silence de
    la Mer and 1961's Leon Morin, Priest), it draws on Melville's wartime
    experiences with the Free French forces. Set in 1942, the episodic
    tale follows a year in the life of ranking Resistance officer Philippe
    Gerbier (Lino Ventura) and his deputy (Simone Signoret) as they lead
    their cell in dangerous military missions. The drama reaches a fever
    pitch when they discover they may have a mole on their team.

    Other DVDs of note Famed fraternal filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen get
    a Chinese makeover in the irreverent and exciting thriller A Woman, a
    Gun and a Noodle Shop, due Feb. 1 from Sony
    (www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/; $28.95 DVD; $38.96 Blu-ray; rated
    R). Director Zhang Yimou (Raise the Red Lantern) reworks the Coens'
    tale of infidelity, jealousy, theft, and murder, Blood Simple, by
    setting it in feudal China. The result is startling.

    Hammer Films ditched its tried and true - and, by 1970, very tired -
    formula for the 1972 oddball cult classic Vampire Circus, released by
    Synapse Films in a DVD/Blu-ray combo pack (www.synapse-films.com/;
    $29.95; not rated). A revenge tale set in 19th-century Austria, it's
    about a circus of vampires and werecats who plan to destroy a small
    village whose inhabitants had slain one of their kind. The acrobatic
    tricks, psychedelic visuals, and intense sexual tension make this a
    far-out treat.

    Franz Kafka is given the anime treatment in Franz Kafka's A Country
    Doctor and other Fantastic Films by Koji Yamamura, from Zeitgeist
    Films (www.zeitgeistfilms.com/; $29.95; not rated). The 124-minute
    disc collects some of the Oscar-nominated Yamamura's most breathtaking
    shorts, which mix traditional animation with painting, modeling clay,
    and photography.

    Tony Jaa, whose high-impact, rapid form of muay thai has revitalized
    the martial-arts film, may have met his match in Iko Uwais. The
    Indonesian martial-arts master and soccer star showcases his native
    form of combat, silat, in the action spectacular Merantau, from
    Magnolia (www.magpictures.com/; $26.98 DVD; $29.98 Blu-ray; rated R).
    Like Jaa, Uwais does all of his own stunts - including a few that seem
    to defy gravity.

    No single film or TV show has captured novelist Elmore Leonard's
    mordant, crime-and-irony-riddled view of life quite like Timothy
    Olyphant's amazing, hilarious, and yet totally creepy crime drama,
    Justified: The Complete First Season, out from Sony
    (www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/; $39.95 DVD; $49.95 Blu-ray; not
    rated).

    Few fictional thrillers can evoke as many thrills as documentarian
    Alex Gibney's deconstruction of disgraced former New York Gov. Eliot
    Spitzer, Client 9: Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, due Tuesday from
    Magnolia (www.magpictures.com/; $26.98 DVD; $29.98 Blu-ray; not
    rated).

    You've seen British actress Gemma Arterton's sexy side in the Bond
    flick Quantum of Solace and the fantasy adventure Prince of Persia.
    Now discover her - equally sexy - dramatic and comedic talents in two
    new British comedies. Stephen Frears' graphic-novel adaptation, Tamara
    Drewe, due Feb. 8 from Sony (www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/; $28.95
    DVD; $38.96 Blu-ray; rated R), features Arterton as a successful,
    beautiful, plastic-surgery-enhanced novelist who returns to her
    hometown, where she was taunted and teased as a child for her big
    nose.

    In Three and Out, from Entertainment One
    (www.entertainmentonegroup.com/; $24.98; rated R), Arterton plays the
    estranged daughter of Tommy Cassidy (Colm Meaney), who has decided to
    commit suicide with the help of an oddball train conductor.




    From: A. Papazian
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