Keanu Reeves and Martin Scorsese in 'Side by Side'

Have you ever wondered what your favorite director thought about shooting on digital film? How about actress Greta Gerwig? Have you even considered what the indie actress thought the first time she heard the whirring sound of an actual celluloid camera? What of cinematographers and colorists—how interested are you in exploring their relationships? (Are they adversaries? Do they work as a team? Did they start out adversaries, but thanks to advances in technology, now work as a team?) Have you ever wondered how Keanu Reeves would sound saying such profound phrases as “film has helped us share our experiences and dreams,” or “by the 1980s, Avid had developed digital editing into a cost-effective, computer-based system”?

If the answer to any of the above is “yes—but only if fed to me through a 90-minute documentary”—then you are exactly the niche audience longtime production manager and part-time documentarian Chris Kenneally had in mind for his second feature-length film, Side by Side.

Perhaps that sounds unduly negative. After all, there are many out there for whom portions, at least, of this documentary about the rise of digital film in cinema may be of interest. Side by Side manages the tough task of being an instructive look into the way technology has developed over the years while also being occasionally entertaining. There is a intriguing question prevalent in the movie—which taps the likes of Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Richard Linklater, James Cameron, George Lucas and David Fincher, as well as the special effects guy for Jurassic Park, for answers (and yet, for some ungodly reason, chose Keanu Reeves as its narrator)—one that can be summarized somewhat neatly: Are we at the end of film?

Unfortunately for the producers, that doesn’t take too long to answer. The only people who even try to argue against the relentless march of technology do so purely on an aesthetic basis. Digital film lets you shoot longer, and for less money. It is easier and cheaper to edit. It is better for the planet. The end. As Ms. Gerwig puts it, “They process digital now to make it look like film, as if film is inherently better. Just, we like the way it looks better. Which seems kind of arbitrary, because it’s just what we’re used to.”

Surprisingly, the film chooses independent cinematographers (Reed Morano and Bradford Young) to defend the more expensive, older technology, as if the idea of film reels is now so antiquated that the only people who use them do so specifically so they can talk about how it “feels different.” Hipsters, basically. The film barely acknowledges that most films are still mainly shot on celluloid, with digital cameras filling in occasionally.

With 80 minutes left to fill, Mr. Reeves is left to ask more questions about, you know, movie stuff. Judging from the answers given, the questions range from “Do you remember back when you had ‘dailies’ and had to edit movies by hand?” to “Did Robert Downey Jr. ever pee in jars and leave them around your set as a form of protest?”

It’s not that the answers aren’t interesting: Mr. Lynch, whose last film, Inland Empire, was shot entirely digitally, claims that he will never return to celluloid. Some like Mr. Fincher, on the other hand, recognize that digital film can lead to terrible-looking movies—though he rightly puts the blame on the people who make them, not what equipment they are shot on. And Danny Boyle is perhaps the best example of how an early adopter can turn a public’s interest and make something like digital film mainstream. After watching a Dogme 95 film called The Celebration, which was shot entirely on a Sony Handycam, the director tracked down the film’s cinematographer, Anthony Dod Mantle. The result was 28 Days Later, portions of which were shot with digital cameras. In 2009, their film Slumdog Millionaire became the first movie shot predominantly in a digital format to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Mr. Cameron and Mr. Lucas, meanwhile, are super-jazzed to talk—at length and ad nauseam—about every minutiae of digital editing and special effects. This would be less irritating if they weren’t busy taking credit for everything short of inventing the digital camera itself. Actually, Mr. Lucas comes close, boasting about how his company created the analog computer editing system EditDroid, and the next thing you know, he’s referring to the game-changing digital editor Avid as a “we” endeavor. It would have been good to take note here that EditDroid was a commercial failure and was sold to Avid in 1993 after the Star Wars remakes. Only 24 ED systems were ever made.

Frankly, the movie has too much time on its hands: it spends an exorbitant amount of it talking to colorists, special effects animators, editors and various other people with jobs that you’d only care to hear about if you were really really interested in how films are made. And when someone appears whose only movie credit is the new Joseph Gordon-Levitt feature Premium Rush, you have to wonder what he is doing sharing screen time with Mr. Scorcese.

Finally, in a movie that gets into the nitty-gritty of editing and special effects, you would think the glaring continuity error of Mr. Reeves’s hair length would have been noticed and fixed in post. (It goes from very short, with stubbly beard to very long, with neckbeard, before going short again, then long again, etc. It’s quite distracting.)

But let us not nitpick. It’s doubtful that anyone will leave this movie siding with the celluloid purists, believing that the digital process will be the end film as we know it. Auteurs will continue to shoot in whichever medium they prefer, and there will always be hundreds of forgettable flicks for every great one, no matter what technology is employed—a lesson Side by Side proves simply by existing.

SIDE BY SIDE

Two stars out of four
Running Time 99 Minutes
Directed by Chris Kenneally
Starring: Keanu Reeves, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron,
Robert Rodriguez, Walter Murch and David Fincher

Olympic flame (screengrab)

Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle crafted an epic opening ceremony for the 2012 Summer Olympics. It was filled with uniquely British pageantry, drama, great music and classically quirky humor. At least American audiences afflicted with NBC's tape-delayed coverage of the Friday night spectacular think Mr. Boyle accomplished this. We can't be sure, because the consensus online seems to be that NBC's tape-delayed coverage of the Opening Ceremony was terrible. Screen Rant was pointed:

Appropriately complaining about not being able to watch the Olympic Ceremony live with the rest of the world, many complaints quickly turned to the abundance of commentary that was provided by Today Show hosts Meredith Vieira and Matt Lauer – and later NBC Sports commentator Bob Costas, taking over for Vieira. Stepping over many of the beautifully crafted moments of the Opening Ceremony, it was almost impossible for anyone to have appreciated Boyle’s carefully planned program the same way they could have if it was aired live, uninterrupted, and without such substantial commentary.

Criticism of Matt Lauer, Meredith Vieira and Bob Costas on social media outlets like Twitter was blunt. British journalist and broadcaster Charlie Brooker noted one peculiar wince-worthy quirk in the coverage:

Tell you what though, Britain. You'd love the NBC commentary.Ceaseless, grim list of just how troubled each individual nation is.

— Charlie Brooker (@charltonbrooker) July 28, 2012

Buzzfeed's Andrew Kaczynski was straightforward:

This NBC color commentary is exceptionally bad.

— Andrew Kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) July 28, 2012

Mr. Kaczynski later linked a video clip (now removed from Youtube) that demonstrated how amusingly bad the commentary was. Referring to a scene with  current James Bond Daniel Craig that culminated in Queen Elizabeth appearing to parachute into the venue from a helicopter, Meredith Vieira seemed unaware of the etymology of the term "money shot," saying, "... [The] money shot tonight, the one that I think went viral, was the one with the Queen."

NBC's decision to not offer a live stream of the ceremony was, in hindsight, made for the worst possible reason. The broadcaster's explanation, as reported by the Los Angeles Times:

"We are live streaming every sporting event, all 32 sports and 302 medals," an NBC spokesman wrote in an email to Show Tracker. "It was never our intent to live stream the Opening Ceremony or Closing Ceremony. They are complex entertainment spectacles that do not translate well online because they require context, which our award-winning production team will provide for the large prime-time audiences that gather together to watch them.

The "context" provided wasn't confined only to using terms more common to porno flicks to describe a scene involving the Queen. Meredith Vieira confessed at one point (with no apparent embarrassment) that she'd never heard of the creator of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. HuffPo's Ethan Klapper recorded the moment for posterity. (Update: by Saturday afternoon Vimeo had removed the video clip of Ms. Vieira's commentary, which was originally embedded below.)

Other enjoyable moments of "context" as witnessed by the Observer:

- Bob Costas, noting that Luxembourg is actually the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, innocently asked, "why don't they march in the 'g-spot'?" Mr. Costas was referring to the nation's proper alphabetical position as its Olympians entered the stadium.

- Mr. Costas's "context" for Australia: the country was "originally founded as a penal colony..."

In a serious vein, Deadspin reports NBC also censored a tribute to the victims of the 7/7 terrorist attacks and aired a Ryan Seacrest interview with Michael Phelps in its place.

Emma G. Keller, writing for the Guardian, said the Peacock turned three and a half hours of action "into four and a half hours of tedium." Noting that #nbcfail had begun trending on Twitter, Ms. Keller wrote that the hashtag was "an award rightly earned."

We love a good round of blogosphere-led hand wringing, so the news that Vertigo Entertainment is planning a reboot of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer franchise totally tickles our fancy. Rather than include creator Joss Whedon or any of the beloved supporting characters he created for television, Vertigo is relying on the immortal Fran Rubel Kuzui, director of the long-forgotten original Buffy with Kristy Swanson and Luke Perry, to produce a film that “compliments” Mr. Whedon’s niche series. Think Star Trek, if J.J. Abrams kept Captain Kirk but replaced the crew of the Enterprise with some other dudes.

It goes without saying that this is a hilariously misguided idea, but it doesn’t seem worth the apoplectic reactions splattered about the web, specifically with regards to Mr. Whedon’s potential lack of involvement; as an intrepid blogger over at Entertainment Weekly put it: “Worst Idea Ever of the year!” Is it though? Mr. Whedon is talented, sure, but his absence from a Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie doesn’t necessarily mean it will, well, suck (pun most certainly intended!). Fact is, beyond the Buffy-verse, Mr. Whedon hasn’t done anything to warrant his status as a sacred cow; being one of four screenwriters on the original Toy Story is nice, but that achievement clearly gets canceled out by being the only writer for Alien Resurrection.

Anyway, all this got us thinking: Who are some other wildly overrated Hollywood commodities? Here are three of our favorites.

Danny Boyle

There was a meme running through the Oscar season last year which seemed to say that Danny Boyle was “due” for some Academy recognition. Come again? We love Trainspotting too, but this guy is not markedly better than other genre filmmakers in his peer group. And his work on Slumdog Millionaire felt like nothing more than warmed over Tony Scott. Needless to say, that is not a compliment.

James Cameron

Not even we can deny that the King of the World is one of the biggest directors ever: Aliens, T2, Titanic; any filmmaker would love to have one of those movies on their resume, let alone all three. The reason Mr. Cameron skates into the land of overrated, though, is because there seems to be this feeling amongst journalists and tastemakers that audiences are waiting with baited breath for what he does next. But by the time his 3-D-palooza, Avatar, is released in December, thirteen years will have passed from when Mr. Cameron ruled earth with Titanic. Does anyone even remember back that far? And, more important, did everyone forget that underneath all its technical prowess, Titanic was purely a mediocre melodrama?

Peter Jackson

We don’t think we’ve liked a Peter Jackson movie since The Frighteners. His laborious Lord of the Rings adaptations were bad enough, but what really pushes him over the top is King Kong. Here’s an idea, let’s take a fun creature feature and turn it into a three hour prestige picture. Ugh! Perhaps his take on The Lovely Bones, due in December, will fare better. At least in that film, we’ll be assured of seeing no ice skating giant apes.

We first noticed a month ago when The Weinstein Company pushed John Hillcoat's version of Cormac McCarthy's The Road back until 2009 because it wasn't going to be ready for its November 26^th release date. Fine. It's nice to see TWC head Harvey Weinstein show some restraint, right? Unfortunately for The Road, that change didn't happen until after some advanced screenings lead to negative reactions on the internets. Whoops! The Viggo Mortensen downer is now cloaked in uncertainty.

The Reader, Stephen Daldry's adaptation of the acclaimed novel, met a different fate. After a power struggle between the aforementioned Mr. Weinstein and producer Scott Rudin over the release of the film, the film will finally reach theaters on December 12^th. The trailer hit the web this weekend; The Reader is certain to draw awards attention to Kate Winslet, but chances are it won't be a major player. Wouldn't The Reader have benefited from more time? At least Mr. Rudin seemed to think so.

Speaking of time, Slumdog Millionaire could use some extra. Fox Searchlight snagged the rights to Danny Boyle's festival smash and promptly set a platform release starting on November 12^th. Great! A happy ending! Just one problem; the film got an R-rating from the MPAA. Rather than appeal the completely arbitrary decision and try for a PG-13, something that would allow Slumdog to reach a wider audience, Fox Searchlight has abandoned the cause. Any holdup would stick the film in a turnaround and prevent it from making its release date. Doh!

We didn't even mention Baz Luhrmann's Australia, which, three weeks from its debut, is still not finished.

Maybe we're naïve, but we thought the year-end films were coddled and cared for, not thrown into the crowded winter months unprepared to fend for themselves. The Slumdog Millionaire's of the world are being treated no better than their populist summer brethren, rushed in an effort to make the date on the poster. Still, this upside-down and unhappy development has us excited for one reason. Since Oscar films are being treated like summer blockbusters, maybe that means the opposite will happen too. Memo to Christopher Nolan: get your tux cleaned.

Fox Searchlight, the studio that brought you those crowd-pleasing Oscar winners, as well as other audience hits like Napoleon Dynamite, has just acquired the rights to the next movie you'll tell all your friends they have to see and then be sick of by the time they actually see it: Slumdog Millionaire. Danny Boyle's latest, which just screened to a sold-out crowd at the Telluride Film Festival, is already being positioned at 2008's "little movie that could."

We have to admit, despite not particularly liking any of his movies, we've always found Danny Boyle interesting. This probably has to do with his penchant for genre hoping: He's done horror (28 Days Later...), science-fiction (Sunshine), indie darlings (Shallow Grave, Trainspotting) and misfired star vehicles (The Beach, A Life Less Ordinary); an English Richard Linklater, if you will. So it stands within reason that he could take a crowd-pleasing, Capra-like film about an Indian boy who goes on a version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and turn it into something incredibly worthwhile. But, and maybe it's just because we're too cynical, we hate having the "next big thing" shoved down our throats. It feels so inorganic and unnatural. Lest we forget that even smash hit Juno, which now sits in our memory as a cloying tearjerker (but charmingly so!), started out as an indie with modest expectations.

We hope for the best with Slumdog Millionaire; we'll probably see it when it comes out on November 28th, and we'll probably laugh and cry our way to saying it's the "feel good movie of the year!" But can we please slow the hype machine down ever so slightly before it flies off the tracks? Let's not forget what everyone thought about Hamlet 2.

“He’s quite feminine in a way, and I think that’s something quite different than a lot of lead actors sometimes who are butch beyond belief,” Mr. Boyle cooed of Mr. Murphy. “He’s quite, androgynous is not the word … there’s something bisexual about him, and I don’t mean in a preference way, I meant in a … there’s something very feminine about him, but people relate to him as a man. It’s very hard to explain.”

Mr. Murphy, in all his lanky, pale-skinned, freckle-spackled, glacial blue-eyed glory, stars in Sunshine as a physicist leading a team of astronauts in an outer space journey to save the dying sun.

“It should feel like a real-time experience, that claustrophobia of space and the pressure and intensity of that journey and the psychological dimension of coming face to face with the source of all life in our universe,” Mr. Boyle explained. “If you look back at all of our cultures, whether pagan or Christian, the sun … it’s everything. It dictates the rhythm of our existence, and people sacrifice to it, et cetera. The whole idea of the way we set up the film was this obsession, really.”

But don’t be expecting any Aerosmith-soundtracked cheesy moments or a tearful ending, Mr. Boyle warned. “There would be no cheering crowds.” Except, perhaps, for the captivating Mr. Murphy.

Sunshine, starring Cillian Murphy, Michelle Yeoh, Rose Byrne, and Chris Evans, opens at the Landmark’s Sunshine Cinema, 143 E. Houston Street, on July 20.

28 Days Later is a violent British film of apocalyptic cynicism, shot on digital video, about a deadly plague that wipes out Great Britain in one month and is heading for the rest of the world. At a time of hysterical overreaction to all sorts of global viruses keeping cable networks on the air past midnight, the film obviously hopes to cash in on the public fear factor. I prefer to think of it as just another horror flick-heavy on visuals, weak on logic and ultimately pointless. The director is Danny Boyle, perpetrator of the nauseating Trainspotting , a bizarre drug film that made heroin addicts in Scotland appear as surreal as glam-goth Calvin Klein underwear models, and The Beach , a dreadful Leonardo DiCaprio movie so florid and pretentious it even lulled Leo fans to sleep. Mr. Boyle is a specialist in high-energy downers.

As this one opens, a scientific lab called the Cambridge Primate Research Centre is invaded by militant animal-rights activists who are unaware that the caged chimps they set free are infected with a ghastly virus that is secreted in their blood and saliva. Transmission takes only 20 seconds after being bitten, sending every living thing that is infected into an uncontrollable murderous rage. Twenty-eight days later, London has been reduced to a ghost town where only a handful of uninfected survivors fight to stay alive. A bicycle courier named Jim (Cillian Murphy), a resourceful girl named Selena (Naomie Harris), and a father and daughter who are hiding in a flat lit by Christmas-tree lights (Brendan Gleeson and Megan Burns) forge a friendship in the eerie, empty streets, overturned buses and abandoned office buildings and supermarkets of London and band together with one goal-to live long enough to build a future. A voice on a radio promising safety declares: "Salvation is here! You must find us!" The group follows the voice to Manchester in a London taxi cab and finds a small battalion of nine soldiers holed up in one of the stately country manors of England, where they are planning the first steps in the formation of a new civilization. But can anyone be trusted? They offer brandy and hot bathwater, but to start the world over again, the soldiers need women, and the way the nine men in uniform drug Selena and Hannah, then dress them in red ball gowns in preparation for a massive rape scene, you know the virus is not the only thing futuristic females have to worry about.

In what is essentially a genre film with fancy camerawork, Mr. Boyle keeps the pulse tight and the visuals arresting, but when all those ferocious, carnivorous zombies converge from everywhere at once, spewing blood and screaming in a virulent, aggressive and psychotic rage, comparisons to cheap zombie-lust epics like Night of the Living Dead and Zombie Island Massacre are inescapable. There's too much vomiting in all of Mr. Boyle's movies, and the prose turns laughably purple, too. In the old days, a feverish programmer like 28 Days Later would end up on the bottom half of a double bill. Today, I predict it will more likely be welcomed by some reviewers as an antidote to tedium.

Press 'Delete'

On_Line is the kind of thing I dread-a movie about digital technology directed by an expert in interactive media and video games. The only reason I can think of to suffer through it is Josh Hamilton, a talented and versatile actor who has done some first-rate work on the New York stage, but whose movie career seems doomed to indie-prod purgatory. He plays John, a cybersex geek who runs a porno Web site with his roommate-business partner Moe (Harold Perrineau Jr., who played the wheelchair-bound narrator on the now-defunct HBO series Oz ). This is the kind of link where clients can choose their own fantasies from any sexual persuasion, enter a credit card and boffo!-the guy or gal of their dreams appears onscreen in full-motion video, ready to do whatever is desired over a secure, private connection. The object of these horny desires might be across the country or across the street. The point is, the world is a lot smaller than you think. I can remember when the purpose of the movies was to make the world a lot bigger than we thought. Trust me on this one: Reducing everything to the size of a computer monitor is no improvement.

In the course of this dull and exasperating little zero of a film, a group of six obnoxious and deeply pathetic losers conduct their social and sexual lives at their computers, sharing and relating their most personal secrets at a safe distance, without ever touching. Annoying split screens reflect the inability of these poor nerds to concentrate on any given image for more than 10 seconds at a clip. Showing off their personal lives for everyone with a MasterCard to watch, Moe wanders out to hook up with another cyber slut who overdoses on tranquilizers while John stays home manning the terminals and masturbating with a tube sock. Somehow, all of their empty lives woefully intersect with a suicidal gay Ohio schoolboy with fuchsia hair who wants to get spanked and an over-the-hill New York creep with a riding crop who likes to play dungeon master. Mr. Hamilton, who is severely wasted beyond redemption in the role of John, mopes his way through the movie drinking peppermint schnapps and crying over an ex-fiancée who dumped him. Since he's the lazy, arrogant lout who started the whole thing, you can't help but silently cheer when he logs into the self-destructive new fantasy bimbo he's been stalking with a Web cam and finds her in bed with-oh, no!-another woman, who turns out to be … you guessed it!

The first-time director of this chat-room catastrophe is Jed Weintrob, a self-confessed "digital junkie" obsessed with sex on computer screens conducted by isolated neurotics who rarely leave their apartments. If he has the perception or maturity to make a film about any kind of human emotion worth watching, there is no evidence of it anywhere in On_Line . His direction has no style. His story has no narrative. His nasty electronic soundtrack is as cold and ugly as it is impersonal. His dialogue, written with Andrew Osborne, would be laughed out of a creative-writing class for 7-year-olds. ("If I lived in Akron," says the old gay geek to the young gay geek, "I'd snatch you up like oceanfront property!") What I know about technology you could fill in an egg cup and have enough space left over for the egg. But I do know one thing: No computer can take the place of a warm body on a cold night in January, and there is nothing remotely erotic about a tube sock.

Settling the Score

Fortunately, there is good news-not on the screen, but on a series of new CD's that uncover sparkling gems in the dusty vaults where old movie musicals and Broadway shows go to rest. George Feltenstein, one of the good guys in Hollywood, toils in the archives where thousands of movies from MGM, Warner Brothers and what used to be United Artists are stored. He runs old movies in his head during lunch hour, and before he's through, I wager he'll make most of them available to the public in new, improved DVD and other formats. Meanwhile, he's produced six new soundtracks from movie musicals that have been out of print for decades and are now fast becoming collector's items. Every CD contains bonus material: unreleased tracks, deleted musical numbers, interviews, outtakes and orchestral arrangements. Example: Vincente Minnelli's The Pirate includes the never-released Judy Garland vocal of Cole Porter's "Voodoo" as well as dance music arranged for Gene Kelly. Good News , the ultimate 1947 college musical, adds to the already famous score by DeSylva, Brown and Henderson and Betty Comden, Adolph Green and Roger Edens a deleted outtake of "An Easier Way" performed by June Allyson and the dorm coeds of Tait College, led by flapper Patricia Marshall (now Mrs. Larry Gelbart), as well as deleted vocals by Mel Torme, an interview with June Allyson, and selected songs from the earlier, obscure 1930 version of Good News . The 1955 smash It's Always Fair Weather hides several lost treasures by Andre Previn and Comden and Green, including the Cyd Charisse–Gene Kelly dance number "Love Is Nothing But a Racket," and a first-time-ever demo record of Michael Kidd's deleted production number, "Jack and the Space Giants." I didn't know anyone was allowed to cut anything by Fred Astaire (wasn't it against the law or something?), but the Burton Lane–Alan Jay Lerner score for Royal Wedding reveals several surprises, including "We Can't Get Married", a reprise of the jaunty "Ev'ry Night at Seven" and dance arrangements for several other Astaire numbers, plus interviews with Fred and co-star Jane Powell. Another campus musical, Best Foot Forward , which has never previously been honored with a soundtrack album, unveils a number of happy surprises by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, the great songwriting team of "The Trolley Song," featuring Gloria DeHaven, Nancy Walker, June Allyson, the Harry James band and Lucille Ball (dubbed by Gloria Grafton, since Lucy couldn't carry a tune in a shopping bag). Listen closely and you can hear Ralph Blane himself, dueting with June Allyson. (Her voice is lower than his.) The never-released Cole Porter score for the 1936 Eleanor Powell tapathon Born to Dance features a "censored" version of "Easy to Love" that is a collector's item. For making these great soundtrack CD's a reality, and for writing extensive liner notes as bright and peppy as they are informative and intelligent, George Feltenstein is a movie buff's best pal. More, please.

From Broadway, Sony Legacy and Columbia Broadway Masterworks have teamed up to release five dazzling, digitally remastered and stereo-enhanced original-cast CD's no serious collector can be without. For the first time on CD, the historic Harold Arlen–Truman Capote score from House of Flowers is more lush, luxurious and musically overwhelming than ever. In addition to all of the original recordings by Pearl Bailey, Diahann Carroll, Juanita Hall and the illustrious cast, the bonus tracks include "Mardi Gras Waltz", a calypso version of "Two Ladies in De Shade of De Banana Tree" by the great cabaret star Enid Mosier, and a recently discovered demo record of "Ottile and the Bee" performed by Truman Capote. Absolutely priceless! Angela Lansbury, Lee Remick, and sexy songs both playful and priapic by Stephen Sondheim are some of the reasons why Anyone Can Whistle has always been one of my favorite musicals. But this is the first time I have ever heard the five demo tracks from the composer's archives included here, sung and played by Sondheim himself. Also a great and rare opportunity to hear Lee Remick sing "There Won't Be Trumpets", which was deleted in Philadelphia before the New York opening. Barbara Cook singing "Glitter and Be Gay" in full stereo enhances Candide . The previously unreleased tracks on Rodgers and Hart's Pal Joey feature Vivienne Segal talking to Mike Wallace and hoofer Harold Lang recreating "I Could Write a Book" for the 1955 CBS-TV show Shower of Stars . Finally, now that Nine is back in business, it's a fine time to revisit the original 1982 cast recording starring Raul Julia, Karen Akers, Taina Elg, Liliane Montevecchi and others. Never before available, this two-CD set features many restored full-length songs by Maury Yeston, including "Not Since Chaplin," "The Germans at the Spa," "Unusual Way" and "The Grand Canal."

I don't call my passion for the superior scores of movie and Broadway musicals living in the past. I call it enhancing the present, with a smile. Sometimes a little hum-along with Judy, Gene and Fred is just the thing to ensure I endure.