It's a slow week, packed mainly with television box sets, but there are a few little-known films you might want to check out.

Please Vote for Me
This was a film that I was dying to see at TIFF last year, but scheduling conflicts kept me from it. Luckily, the highly praised Please Vote for Me is now hitting DVD shelves.

Imagine a group of third-grade students putting Tracy Flick to shame as they hold a democratic election for school monitor. In my day (man, that phrase makes me feel old...), school elections boiled down to some crappy posters and speeches, all resulting in a popularity contest. These Chinese students, however, have taken a cue from the political bigwigs. We're talking political consultants, polling, and exploitation -- basically a real election full of tiny tots.

Unfortunately, the only extra on this release is a theatrical trailer, but considering the reviews and how purely awesome this film sounds, I bet it's still worth it.

Check Out Ryan Stewart's Review | Buy the DVD

Suffering from the Hollywood blockbuster blues? Have I got some indies for you! All three are newly available this week on DVD.

Kim Voynar called Vadim Perelman's The Life Before Her Eyes "a lovely, nuanced film packed with imagery, and bracketed by an intriguing storyline." The story revolves around the survivor of a school shooting; Uma Thurman plays her as an adult and Evan Rachel Wood as a teenager. Kim wrote in part: "I'd expect the director's commentary on the DVD to be intriguing." The DVD does indeed feature an audio commentary by the director, joined by production designer Maia Javan. Also included are deleted scenes, an alternate ending, and several other mini-features. A Blu-ray edition is also available.

Kim also reviewed Tommy O'Haver's An American Crime when it debuted at Sundance last year. Based on the true tragedy of teenage Sylvia Likens (Ellen Page) who was "brutally beaten, burned, starved and tortured to death" in 1965 Indiana, Kim said the film was difficult to watch. "The real question ... is not just how the Sylvia Likens case could have happened, but why situations like this happen at all -- and still do." Catherine Keener and James Franco also star. The DVD doesn't appear to have any supplemental material.

On the lighter side, Bharat Nalluri's Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day "is a nearly perfect piece of entertainment for grownups," according to James Rocchi. Frances McDormand plays a down-on-her-luck British governess and Amy Adams essays her employer, an American singer / actress in late 1930s London. The DVD includes a "making of," deleted scenes, and "Miss Pettigrew's Long Trip to Hollywood."

Brand Upon the Brain!
If you ever loved the artistry of David Lynch, but thought his films were too dark and incomprehensible, there's Guy Maddin to ride in on a sea of comedic absurdity. With his silent film Brand Upon the Brain! he did something entirely different -- he created the ultimate live theater experience, one that can never be replicated at home unless you're ridiculously rich with a live orchestra, group of foley artists, a celebrity narrator, and a castrato at your disposal. But even still, this Criterion release does a fine job of coming close.

But first, the plot. The film focuses on a young Guy Maddin as he lives on a remote island that holds a lonely orphanage. His mother reigns with an iron fist and peeping watchtower while trying to reverse the weariness of age with her strange, scientist husband. Meanwhile, one of the orphans dies, strange holes are found on some of the kids, and some teen detectives come to investigate, all in the pulsing throb of teenage rebellion and sexuality.

While you can't create the live experience at home, Criterion has done everything possible to make this disc like the live experience. Each screening across Canada and the states had a celebrity narrator, and this disc allows you to choose between the seven narrators, which essentially gives you seven different ways to view the film -- from Maddin himself to Isabella Rossellini, John Ashbery, and Crispin Glover. There's also a documentary with interviews, two new short films, deleted scenes, a trailer, and an essay by Dennis Lim.

Check out James Rocchi's Review | Buy the DVD

Comedies don't have an obligation to be particularly insightful, but you'd think an indie aimed at an adult audience would have something to say about its characters. Smart People stars Dennis Quaid, Sarah Jessica Parker, Ellen Page, and Thomas Haden Church; the cast and the multitude of laughs scored at the expense of easy targets might justify a rental, though I liked it much less after I started thinking about it. I'm in the minority -- James Rocchi expressed all kinds of love in his review. The DVD, out on Tuesday, includes an audio commentary by director Noam Murro and writer Jude Poirier, deleted scenes, bloopers / outtakes, and "the smartest people," which I'm guessing is a "making of" feature. It's also out on Blu-ray.

Also out on Tuesday, How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer has been described as "a comedy about three generations of Mexican-American women enjoying their sexuality." I heard all kinds of good things about it when it had some festival play a few seasons ago. America Ferrera, Elizabeth Peña, and Lucy Gallardo star. The DVD looks bare bones, but distributor Maya Entertainment has more about the film on their site.

An appealing romantic comedy set in and around a citrus grove in Sicily, The Orange Thief (pictured) played several film festivals, including Woodstock and AFI Dallas, and is now out on DVD. I'm not going to claim that this low-key charmer is some kind of lost classic, but it's amusing, looks gorgeous, and has the benefit of an incredibly restful, bucolic setting, which make it worth a rental. The DVD from Lightyear appears to feature only the movie.

Men on a mission! Naked women shooting machine guns! Wildly inappropriate hair styles! The recent arrival of Enzo G. Castellari's The Inglorious Bastards on DVD makes clear that the movie is an entertaining, stylish adventure in its own right, justly deserving its reputation as a Eurocult genre gem. Inevitably, it also prompts speculation about what exactly Quentin Tarantino will do with his upcoming version, especially since the DVD features an extended conversation between Tarantino and Castellari about their respective visions.

The 1978 original doesn't have a "bat-wielding Nazi hunter," as one character has been recently described in casting talks for Tarantino's version, though it is set in World War II France. Miscreant Bo Svenson and murderer Fred Williamson are headed to military jail when their convoy is attacked by the Germans. The handful of surviving deserters plan to escape to neutral Switzerland before they end up on a suicide mission for the Allies under the command of Colonel Bruckner (Ian Bannen).

The men take a jaunty trip through a cartoon wonderland constructed out of Hollywood fantasy and Italian wish fulfillment. The film only rarely intersects with real life, instead inhabiting a world of wisecracks and world-weary warriors whose guns never run out of bullets. Castellari is such a brilliant director, though, that The Inglorious Bastards fairly pops off the screen with energetic fervor in nearly every sequence.

As such, it serves as a fabulous blueprint that Tarantino has probably drawn upon, ripped apart, and reassembled.

I've always been a sucker for killer croc movies. But, as Scott Weinberg so eloquently wrote in the recent past: "There's maybe one true 'classic' of the sub-genre (that'd be Lewis Teague's and John Sayles' Alligator, of course), and the rest of 'em are pretty much floating crap." Scott was ranting about the limited theatrical release by The Weinstein Co. (actually, their "dumping ground" subsidiary Third Rail Releasing) for Greg McLean's Rogue, which was limited to ten US cities.

So Scott (and most of you reading this) probably didn't get to see Rogue in a theater, but I did -- even if I had to drive 45 minutes to the only multiplex playing the dang thing. Me and the five (!) other people at that Friday night screening enjoyed a good old-fashioned suspense tale that played very well on the big screen. In a review I wrote for another site, I described it as "a taut and thrilling ride ... brimming with well-earned tension." Radha Mitchell stars as a tour boat captain on a river in the remote Northern Territory of Australia. She and a group of tourists end up being stalked by a killer croc "with an exaggerated sense of territorial possessiveness."

Rogue is out today in an unrated version on DVD. Dread Central got an advance peek and agrees with me that it's a good flick. The DVD includes an audio commentary by McLean, a 46-minute "making of" directed by McLean, and a gallery of mini-docs on the effects, the music, and the setting. Let's declare today "Killer Croc Day"!

The movie DVD choices from this week's release schedule are quite scarce, but there is Abigail Breslin swinging in to save the day.

Nim's Island
In the vein of classic family adventure scenarios, Breslin stars as Nim, a young girl who lives with her scientist father on a far-off tropical island. Life is idyllic until Nim's dad (Gerard Butler) is stranded far away leaving Nim to not only survive on her own, but also fight off the tour companies that threaten her island home. But she needs help and unknowingly turns to the worst person for the job -- the agoraphobic author (Jodie Foster) of her favorite literary adventure character, Alex Rover.

The DVD has a healthy amount of features for those looking to dip behind the scenes. You can choose between two commentaries -- one with Jodie Foster and Abigail Breslin, and the other with directors/writers Mark Levin and Jennifer Flackett. There's also 3 featurettes, a piece called "Abigail's Journey and Working on Water," and finally, deleted scenes.

Read Jeffrey M. Anderson's Review | Buy the DVD

Other New DVD Releases (August 5)

Starship Troopers 3: Marauder
Heavy Metal
Miss Conception
Wasted

Be sure to visit Peter's Indies on DVD for more new releases this week.

Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Stefan Ruzowitzky's The Counterfeiters tells the true story of a Nazi plot to flood the US and UK with forged currency, using concentration camp prisoners to do the dirty deeds. Christopher Campbell thought it was "not quite a great film," while Kim Voynar wrote: "At its core, this is a film about courage and morality." Critical consensus overall was 94% positive, according to Rotten Tomatoes. The DVD includes an audio commentary by the director, deleted scenes, a "making of," interviews, and more. The film is also available on Blu-ray.

Set some two decades after the events in The Counterfeiters, the much lighter, sentimental My Brother is an Only Child "follows two brothers through years of Italian history," wrote James Rocchi. Though comparisons to the more ambitious and effective period family drama The Best of Youth might be inevitable, James said My Brother is still "a handsomely made, brightly charming pleasure in its own right." The DVD appears to be a bare-bones edition without any extras.

First broadcast on network television in November 1982, The Executioner's Song left a very strong impression on me. Career criminal Gary Gilmore (Tommy Lee Jones in a powerful performance) tries to go straight, taking up with young Nicole Baker (Rosanna Arquette in a startling, sexy, star-making role) before returning to crime and eventually killing two people in brutal fashion. Sentenced to die, Gilmore insisted on paying the ultimate penalty as speedily as possible.

If you sat through all of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (not everyone did), then you saw Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh engage in a deadly sword battle -- Li as the evil resurrected Dragon Emperor and Yeoh as the good guardian of eternal life. Their skirmish was far too brief to understand why these two have enjoyed so much international success. May I invite you to set aside any fear you might have of sub-titles and enjoy the awe, power, and majesty of Li and Yeoh in their prime?

Tai Chi Master, which was released on DVD in a new Special Collector's Edition from Dragon Dynasty this past week, begins with two young monks in training at the famed Shaolin Temple. Jun Bao is younger, shorter, and kinder; Tien Bao is older, taller, and ambitious. Jun Bao grows up to be Jet Li and Tien Bao transforms into Chin Siu Ho. After they are (perhaps wrongfully) expelled from the temple, Tien Bao turns to the dark side and becomes the henchman for a powerful, evil warlord, while Jun Bao joints a group of rebels, led by Michelle Yeoh, before inventing Tai Chi (!).

Yuen Woo Ping is best known in the US as the action choreographer for The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but in the films he directed on his own (Iron Monkey, Wing Chun), the action is fully integrated into the story. Tai Chi Master is no exception; it's jam-packed with wire-assisted, incredibly intricate movement, sometimes involving dozens of acrobatic martial artists. Some purists despise "wire fu," but I'm not a purist, and Tai Chi Master is dazzling and showcases what Li and Yeoh -- and the oft-spectacular Chin -- could do.

This is a pretty slow week for DVDs, but there are two more TV-themed releases just perfect for the movie world with slices of celebs and Star Wars content.

Spaced
Tim and Daisy are two strangers who meet while trying to find a new place to live. When they find the perfect apartment, one that requests a couple, they fake it and move in together. The pair try to keep this from the alcoholic landlady while dealing with their dysfunctional romantic lives and spending time with downstairs neighbor Brian, Tim's best friend Mike, and Daisy's best friend, Twist. It sounds fun enough, but add in a ton of geeky cultural references, and names like Jessica Hynes, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost, and then the rabid fandom starts to make sense.

While it's a number of years old, Spaced has created a whirlwind in the last year -- one that has stretched well beyond its UK borders. And now, finally, we've got the saucy new DVD. You've probably heard about this release over the last few months, because it's not your everyday DVD release. It's a star-studded event.

The packed disc offers not only commentary from people like Pegg, Hynes, and Frost, but also commentaries from Diablo Cody, Matt Stone, Quentin Tarantino, and Kevin Smith, plus Pegg teaming up with a few others -- Patton Oswalt and Bill Hader. There's also biographies, homage-o-meter, teasers, outtakes, featurettes, alternate endings... and even more.

Buy the DVD

Three intriguing titles top my list of indie films to check out this week on DVD. Coincidentally, two of them feature actors who also directed (or directors who also acted).

Taiwanese film Help Me Eros, directed by and starring Lee Kang-Sheng, became slightly notorious at the Toronto film festival because droves of otherwise hardy film critics walked out of a press screening, either out of boredom or disgust. Ryan Stewart stayed, even though the first scene made him consider vomiting and the film as a whole was an unpleasant experience. Any film that provokes that strong a reaction, of course, makes it a perfect choice for adventurous renters who don't mind gambling a few dollars on the possibility that they'll never finish watching the movie. (The plot doesn't really matter in this case, does it?) DVD extras are limited to various trailers.

The English-language Big Dreams, Little Tokyo, directed by and starring Dave Boyle, is a culture clash comedy. Boyle plays a man who wants to become a language instruction guru, while his Japanese American roommate (Jason Watabe) wants to become a Sumo wrestler despite his slight build. KJ Doughton at Film Threat gave it a four-star rating ("a fresh filmic entree"). DVD extras include an audio commentary, behind the scenes interviews and "making of" footage, deleted scenes, web spots, and more.

French flick Heartbeat Detector (AKA La Question Humaine), directed by Nicolas Klotz, arrives with little fanfare that I can recall, though it did enjoy a brief, limited theatrical run earlier this year, and Scott Foundas admired "its epic sense of humanity" in the pages of The Village Voice. Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) plays a company psychiatrist with odd methods of motivating the corporate troops. DVD extras appear to be non-existent.

The Bank Job
It sounds like your run of the mill caper movie. It stars Jason Statham, which means that it could go either way. Yet this flick fell safely on the positive scale -- nabbing itself a 78% fresh rating. Our Jeffrey M. Anderson said of the film: "The Bank Job doesn't add anything new to the genre, but it delivers everything we loved about it in the first place."

Statham plays a hustler in debt named Terry who is trying to even the playing field and go on with life in 1971. One day, an old friend and model (Saffron Burrows) pops by with a tasty, albeit illegal, proposition -- there's a bank that is getting its alarms changed, leaving it open for a nice case of robbery. However, instead of taking the monetary goods, they'll hit the safe deposit boxes. Terry does it, but ends up coming across a lot of dirty secrets that reach from the mob to the British government. Oh yes, and it's a true-ish story.

On the 2-disc DVD, you can sift through a commentary with director Roger Donaldson, Saffron Burrows, and composer J. Peter Robinson, plus deleted/extended scenes, and a few featurettes -- "Inside The Bank Job" and "The Baker Street Bank Raid." The first tackles details about the film, while the other tackles the real crime for those curiosu about historical particulars.

Check out Jeffrey's Review | Buy the DVD

It's what I call a low fever week on DVD shelves this week, but let's see what we can find. Kim Voynar described Penelope as "a charming but fluffy little fable about a girl born under the shadow of a family curse." Christina Ricci stars as a woman with the face of a pig (!). James (Wanted) McAvoy, Reese Witherspoon, Catherine O'Hara and Peter Dinklage are also featured. The DVD includes a "making of" feature.

Other indie releases of interest this week: The Curiosity of Chance; Meet Bill; Monsieur Vincent; Never Forever; Times and Winds; The Year My Parents Went on Vacation.

Now that's we've covered the official business of this weekly post, let's talk oddities. The Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell is a wild post-apocalyptic comedy that other people have enjoyed much more than I did (which is to say not at all), but what I find really odd is that the DVD comes complete with "National Lampoon Presents" plastered at the top. Now, the National Lampoon label has never embraced comedy that I'd call "nervy." Gross out comedy? Yes. Bad attempts at parody? Yes. Endless pale imitations of frat house laughers? Yes. Beach Party may not have succeeded for me, but at least it tries to push the boundaries of what it's OK to laugh about.

Get ready for JiJa-mania! First, though, we have to decide how to spell her name. JiJa Yanin (as her name appears on a Hong Kong DVD, JeeJa Yanin as it's spelled at IMDb, Yanin 'Jeeja' Wismitanant according to film writer Wise Kwai) is a whirling dervish of a woman warrior in Prachya Pinkaew's Thai action flick Chocolate. And you can order it on DVD today, as long as you can play foreign-region DVDs, can understand Thai, and/or don't mind the lack of English-language sub-titles.

I'd rather understand everything that's going on in the movie, but there's been no word on a US distributor and I've grown impatient since first hearing about Chocolate back in February, when it was released in its native Thailand. Even without sub-titles, though, it's easy to follow the narrative.

A gun-toting female debt collector has an affair with a Japanese man, which enrages the gang leader who considers the woman his personal property. She is forced to raise her autistic daughter alone. Her daughter becomes an enfant terrible as far as kick boxing and martial arts are concerned, and soon is demonstrating her uncanny ability to catch flies and whatever is thrown at her -- baseballs, tennis balls, knives -- on the streets of Bangkok.

Mom gets sick, though, and the young girl who loves chocolate discovers Mom's book of old debts and decides to start collecting from a nefarious collection of criminal businessmen. Of course, they don't want to pay, and they all employ dozens of henchmen all too eager to viciously attack a young, pretty teenager, and so our young heroine must fight back the only way she knows how.

When Kimberly Peirce gave us Boys Don't Cry, it was a critical explosion. She came, she moved us, and Hilary Swank came out of it with an Oscar. The film raised our expectations, and they rested there as Peirce moved out of the spotlight and worked behind the camera. The wait lasted almost a decade, but after nine years, she was finally back with Stop Loss -- another film in the cinematic, Iraq War whirlwind. While it was destined to fall under the weight of Iraq apathy, it was another example of Peirce's commitment to personal stories.

Stop Loss is the fictional account of a real problem: over a hundred thousand soldiers have been denied release when their time in Iraq is up. Instead of best wishes, they're sent back to Iraq, and life beyond the war's struggles becomes a distant, vague hope, rather than a present reality. Ryan Phillipe stars as Sgt. Brandon King, a man who is headed towards the end of his time in Iraq, or so he thinks. First, his unit is tricked and attacked. He loses some of his men, and struggles with the realities of warfare -- dead friends, and the fact that no matter how hard you try, innocent people will fall in the fight.