It was more than a scandal last year when the 2007 Israeli film "The Band's Visit" was disqualified from Oscar contention as the Best Foreign Language Film on a technicality that it contained "too much" English dialogue: That was an outrage.

After that, the only thing that could have redeemed the Oscar judges was for an equally sublime and original film to win in that category. Happily, one did -- a first-rate Austrian drama titled "The Counterfeiters."

Both films are now coming home on DVD, just in time to remind us of the nuance and authenticity more likely found in foreign films these days than in anything coming from Hollywood.

Thanks to home video, movie-lovers will no doubt discover them and bestow upon them their own ultimate award: the highest of recommendations to friends and neighbors. Consider this mine to you.

Don't feel too sad for "The Band's Visit" (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, rated PG-13, $28.96). It may not have gotten the Oscar nods it deserved, but it did win some three-dozen international film awards, including the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at Cannes. The film by Israeli writer-director Eran Kolirin also won eight Israeli Film Academy Awards such as Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay.

It's a sad-sack comedy, of sorts, about the human condition, but picks up depth and poignancy as it proceeds. We track a small Egyptian police band that arrives in Israel to play a concert at an Arab cultural center but gets lost and ends up in a "last stop" desert town. Romance almost flowers, bonds are kind of forged, old wounds are maybe hinted at -- and yet everyone goes away much richer for the experience.

The cast and crew are filled with both Israelis and Palestinians, yet there's nary a note of disharmony nor falseness in anything we see or hear in "The Band's Visit." The sight of the Egyptian musicians in their powder-blue uniforms embarking on a shoe-leather caravan across the desolate wasteland is one of the director's many savory visual gags.

Interestingly, Kolirin is the first to admit there's a fairy tale aspect to his story. It does entertain the dream of all artists, after all, that art might yet bridge the distrust and antagonisms between people and usher in world peace. Yet the band's fateful day and night in that cross-cultural demilitarized zone make for such a resonant blend of comedy and pathos that the aesthetic accomplishment seems complete in itself.

You'll be calling out for encores after watching "The Band's Visit" play out, and the new DVD obliges with a photo gallery and a "making of" featurette that introduce all new fans to a cast of unknown and unforgettable faces.

Across the wide human spectrum -- on the extreme outer edge of larcenous and criminal conduct -- comes "The Counterfeiters" (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, rated R, $28.96), arriving on DVD and Blu-ray Disc Aug. 5. Taken from an account of a little-known Nazi program to undermine Allied economies in World War II, it follows one Salomon Sorowitsch, known to the underworld of Berlin as "king of the counterfeiters."

To avoid the fate of others held in a German concentration camp, Sorowitsch agrees to take charge of a high-priority counterfeiting operation in exchange for preferential treatment by Nazi wardens. Talk about making a deal with the devil!

Not everyone under his supervision is on board with the mission, leading to moments of charged human drama about moral relativism and the virtue of surviving when it means collaborating with evil.

Movies have been taking us inside Nazi death camps for some seven decades now, so it's quite an achievement to find "The Counterfeiters" bringing fresh perspective and new detail to that particular manifest of inhumanity. Director Stefan Ruzowitzky achieves that and more with this riveting wartime thriller.

Bonus extras include a director's commentary track, a "making of" featurette, deleted scenes, an interview with lead actor Karl Markovics and an invaluable visit with his real-life counterpart, Holocaust survivor Adolf Burger.

We had a chance to sample the Blu-ray Disc ($38.96), which has all the same extras. The film appears to have been shot in a variety of media in existing-light conditions. The graininess of the darker barracks scenes seems appropriate for the subject, while the brighter cinematic scenes benefit from the increased detail and sharpness of high-definition video. Blu-ray is no doubt the right way to go for film collectors and others with a serious interest in the subject.

Also new on DVD

"Tyrone Power: Matinee Idol Collection" (20th Century-Fox Home Entertainment, not rated, $49.95). Tyrone Power was to Fox what Clark Gable was to MGM in the 1930s and '40s, so we kept waiting to see him here take on the sort of career-defining roles as those offered in the first Tyrone Power box set, released last year. None of these 10 new-to-DVD titles is owned by Turner Classic Movies, so they have not had the exposure of other studio productions. Mostly, they are light, boudoir comedies and fluffy features, though "This Above All" is a potent World War II romantic drama that addresses class differences and civic obligations against the backdrop of England at war; and "I'll Never Forget You" is a little-seen curio that foreshadows "Somewhere In Time" in the way its time-hopping hero spans the centuries to meet his lady love. Powers' first screen bit in the melodrama "Girls' Dormitory" is here, as is the crime drama "Johnny Apollo" and the fantasy "The Luck of the Irish." They all go to prove that Powers was equally comfortable with comedy and drama, and whether playing flawed characters or perfect swashbuckling heroes. The digital transfers are all excellent, with almost no hiss left in the cleaned-up soundtracks, and good contrast. The five, dual-sided DVDs come in slim line cases that include a featurette on Power called "Prince of Fox," as well as tributes and memorials by some costars and the star's three grown children.

"Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay" (New Line Home Entertainment, not rated, $28.98). It took two discs to contain all the creative energy that went into producing this lightweight comedy. Too bad the gags are more often gag-inducing than mirth-generating, but that's the nature of comedy today. John Cho and Kal Penn are actually kind of sweet as a latter-day Cheech and Chong team of social misfits who find their drug paraphernalia mistaken for a bomb aboard an airliner and are whisked away without further interruption to a paranoid's fantasy of the Guantanamo Bay holding facility. You can probably guess where the filmmakers' default politics and drug-addled brains take them from there.

"Tai-chi Master" (Weinstein/Genius Products, not rated, $19.98). This is the latest in a line of remastered martial arts films on the Dragon Dynasty label, most of them products of the Hong Kong film industry. Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh star in this 1994 film, presented for the first time on DVD in the uncut international version. Commentaries, interviews and featurettes are included. It follows other recent additions to the line: "Come Drink With Me" (1965), an early Hong Kong classic and inspiration for "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"; "Heroes of the East" (1979), Lau Kar-Leung's salute to Japanese martial arts masters, dating from the glory days of the Shaw Brothers; and "Invisible Target" (2007), a "good cops versus bad cops" crime thriller with so many action sequences it takes two DVDs to explore them all.

---

user comments (0)