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Murdoch Mysteries: Season 10 has been released on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

It’s hard to believe that the innovative Canadian detective series, initially set in the 1890s, has been around for ten years, churning out thought-provoking murder mysteries week in and week out during its annual run. Retitled The Artful Detective on Ovation TV, the series can be first seen in the U.S. under its original name on Acorn TV’s streaming service.

Most series that last this long routinely undergo major cast changes and while Murdoch has added and lost major peripheral characters throughout its so far ten seasons, it has retained all four of its initial stars in the roles that have endeared them to the show’s large audience. Yannick Bisson, the show’s executive producer and occasional director, is the mostly unflappable square-jawed detective who uses the latest discoveries in forensic science to help him solve murders in late 19th Century and early 20th Century Toronto. Helene Joy is the coroner turned psychiatrist turned lecturer turned coroner again who he finally married two seasons ago. Thomas Craig is the blustery, yet good-hearted inspector who has Murdoch’s back, and Jonny Harris is the savvy constable who never seems to be able to find the right girl.

The eighteen episodes that comprise Season 10 feature the usual mix of grisly, whimsical, and outright funny scenes that have been a hallmark of the series from the beginning. In addition to focusing on the four principals, this season also provides expanded acting opportunities for several peripheral players including Lachlan Murdoch as clumsy Constable Higgins, Mouna Traorรฉ as the apprentice coroner, Alex Paxton-Beesley as private detective “Pink,” Kristian Bruun as brawny Constable Jackson, and especially Daniel Maslany as a quirky new detective. The only downside to the season is the inevitable season’s end cliffhanger in which the lives of three of the show’s four principal players, and several peripheral ones, hang in the balance following the framing of Murdoch on a trumped-up murder charge by crooked politicians and bad cops.

Also in the mystery mode, Warner Archive has released Arthur Penn’s Night Moves on Blu-ray.

The 1975 release was the director’s fourth best known film following in the footsteps of 1962’s The Miracle Worker, 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde, and 1970’s Little Big Man. Different in style than any of them, it is a straight-forward mystery about the search for a missing girl that takes a tragic turn into a full-blown murder investigation.

Gene Hackman, who rose to prominence in his Oscar-nominated role in Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde, was now a major star thanks to his Oscar-winning role in 1971’s The French Connection. He filmed his tough-as-nails private detective in this for Penn in 1973, before he made 1974’s The Conversation which also enhanced his reputation as one of the top actors of the day.

Melanie Griffith, who played the missing girl, received her first on-screen billing for the controversial role in which she has two well-publicized nude scenes. It would be another controversial role in another murder mystery, 1984’s Body Double, that would finally make her a star. Others of note in the cast include Susan Clark as Hackman’s wife, Harris Yulin as Clark’s lover, Janet Ward as Griffith’s has-been actress mother, John Crawford as Ward’s ex-husband, Jennifer Warren as Crawford’s current paramour, James Woods and Anthony Costello as Griffith’s sometimes young lovers, and Edward Binns as a stunt coordinator. Kenneth Mars is featured as Hackman’s contact within the film community.

Hollywood was so shocked that Glenda Jackson could do comedy that they gave the Women in Love Oscar winner a second Oscar for being funny in the otherwise insufferable 1973 film A Touch of Class. She was better in the genre in 1977’s Nasty Habits and 1978’s House Calls and even more so in 1980’s Hopscotch which has just been given a Blu-ray upgrade by Criterion. By then, though, Oscar had stopped caring.

Walter Matthau, who had an Oscar of his own for 1965’s The Fortune Cookie and a recent undeserved nomination for The Sunshine Boys, was Jackson’s co-star in both House Calls and Hopscotch. He is the main star in the latter, in which he is a retired CIA agent on the lamb after writing a tell-all memoir which has the CIA, FBI, and KGB after him.

Jackson plays his girlfriend, a well-to-do widow living in Switzerland. The supporting cast includes Sam Waterston, Ned Beatty, Herbert Lom, George Baker, and Severn Darden. It was directed by Ronald Neame.

Neame, who died two months short of his 100th birthday in 2010, was a true renaissance man. He started out as a cinematographer whose credits included In Which We Serve, Blithe Spirit, and Brief Encounter, all of which brought him Oscar nominations, albeit in other disciplines. He was nominated for Special Effects for the first, and Best Screenplay for the latter two. As a director, he gave us Tunes of Glory, The Chalk Garden, and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie among many others. Hopscotch was his funniest film since the 1958 Alec Guinness starrer The Horse’s Mouth.

We go from the sublime to the ridiculous with Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray release of David O. Selznick’s 1946 epic Duel in the Sun.

Selznick’s attempt at duplicating the success of Gone with the Wind was popular at the box office, coming in second to The Best Years of Our Lives as the year’s most successful film, but was trounced by the critics as over-the-top in both presentation and the dog-in-heat performances of Jennifer Jones and Gregory Peck, glibly sold by Selznick as the antithesis of their screen personas. Jones, at the time, was still best known for her Oscar-winning role of a saint in 1943’s The Song of Bernadette and Peck for his Oscar-nominated role of saintly Father Chisholm in The Keys of the Kingdom. Among the film’s most notorious scenes were Peck’s rape of Jones which turns her immediately into a nymphomaniac, Walter Huston’s ludicrous portrayal of an itinerant preacher called the “sin-killer,” Jones’ degradation scene, and the climactic shootout between Jones and Peck.

The film was officially directed by King Vidor (Stella Dallas), but involved the participation of six others including Josef von Sternberg (Shanghai Express), and was shot by three different cinematographers. Selznick was the film’s only credited screenwriter, although contributions were made by three other writers including Niven Busch (The Postman Always Rings Twice) who wrote the novel upon which it was based.

The large cast also includes Joseph Cotten, Lionel Barrymore, Lillian Gish, Herbert Marshall, Charles Bickford, Harry Carey, and Butterfly McQueen. None of the actors do anything remotely award-worthy, but somehow both Jennifer Jones and Lillian Gish as Peck and Cotten’s mother, whose death scene provides the film with its only class, were nominated for Oscars. Selznick was bitterly disappointed that it didn’t receive more.

This week’s new releases include Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 and the Blu-ray upgrade of Sid & Nancy.

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