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The Amazon Prime Video series “The Summer I Turned Pretty” has made a splash with its loaded soundtrack. By now it is safe to say that “The Summer I Turned Pretty” and Taylor Swift go hand in hand because author and show creator Jenny Han has made it so.

The first season had five Swift songs ranging from her “Lover” album to “Fearless (Taylor’s Version),” and the Season 1 trailer debuted “This Love (Taylor’s Version)” from the yet-to-be-released re-recorded “1989.” Season 2’s teaser was set to “August,” and then the official trailer debuted “Back to December (Taylor’s Version)” shortly before “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” was released July 7. Only time will tell if Season 2 ties Season 1 for how many Taylor Swift songs it contains.

The sequel season’s summer-y soundtrack also contains hits from repeat artists Olivia Rodrigo, Tyler the Creator, Caroline Polachek and more. A Fleetwood Mac ballad punctuates a particularly emotional scene,...

Mitchell Leisen’s great Christmas-time tale has a brilliant screenplay by Preston Sturges and letter-perfect performances by Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray, threading the needle between light cynicism and well-earned sentiment. Sturges’ celebration of ‘country values’ is sincere and heartfelt, as is his affection for the supporting cast. The presentation includes two radio broadcasts plus a star-studded Paramount short subject for war bonds.

Remember the Night

Region B Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1940 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 94 min. / / Street Date December 19, 2022 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £18.99

Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, Beulah Bondi, Elizabeth Patterson, Sterling Holloway, Julius Tannen, Virginia Brissac, Fred ‘Snowflake’ Toones, Charles Arnt, Paul Guilfoyle.

Cinematography: Ted Tetzlaff

Art Directors: Hans Drier, Roland Anderson

Costumes: Edith Head

Film Editor: Doane Harrison

Original Music: Friedrich Hollander

Written by Preston Sturges

Produced by

Directed by Mitchell Leisen

The 1940 feature Remember the Night made its comeback a few years ago just as...

The name talent attached makes this late- Weimar thriller a must-see proposition: Billy Wilder, Robert & Curt Siodmak, Franz Waxman. Their dark murder farce resembles what would later become the self-aware Black Comedy. The trouble begins when a suicidal nice guy can’t pull the trigger, and hires a crook to do the job for him. The satire is clever but the execution is awkward — the filmmakers set up big laughs that the heavy German filming style doesn’t deliver. Just the same, the situations seem extremely progressive, ahead of their time.

The Man in Search of his Murderer

Blu-ray

Kino Lorber Kino Classics Kino Repertory

1931 / B&w / 1:33 flat / 97 min. / Der Mann, der seinen Mörder sucht; Jim, der Mann mit der Narbe, Looking for his Murderer / Street Date April 6, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Heinz Rühmann, Lien Deyers, Raimund Janitschek, Hans Leibelt, Hermann Speelmans, Friedrich Hollaender, Gerhard Bienert, Roland Varno.

The Notebook is covering Tiff with an on-going correspondence between critics Fernando F. Croce Kelley Dong, and editor Daniel Kasman.The Wild Goose LakeDear Kelley and Danny,When this dispatch reaches you, I shall be back in my Californian abode, exhausted and slightly under the weather and elated to have been able to have spent the last ten days immersed in movies and friends. I’ll keep the sentiment short so we can get more quickly to my final viewings, but do know that I wait all year to be at Tiff with you, and that I happily carry your kindness and cinephiliac knowledge and passion with me home.I absolutely get what you mean about that much-needed jolt during the festival, Danny. For me, that came in the form of Diao Yinan's The Wild Goose Lake, an invigorating dive into the Chinese underworld that at times plays like Carol Reed...

Here's a sterling example of what Hollywood excelled at back in the golden age: Robert Montgomery, Evelyn Keyes, Claude Rains and Edward Everett Horton star in possibly the most magical of movies known as Film Blanc. A cosmic goof leaves a man with fifty years yet to live without a body -- so heavenly troubleshooters try to find him a new one. Here Comes Mr. Jordan Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 819 1941 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 94 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date June 14, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Robert Montgomery, Evelyn Keyes, Claude Rains, Rita Johnson, Edward Everett Horton, James Gleason. Cinematography Joseph Walker Art Direction Lionel Banks Film Editor Viola Lawrence Original Music Frederick Hollander Written by Sidney Buchman, Seton I. Miller from the play Heaven Can Wait by Harry Segall Produced by Everett Riskin Directed by Alexander Hall

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Some movies are so entertaining that it's best to tell people,...

Banished by Josef Goebbels and threatened by the Reich, the creative core of the German film industry found itself in sunny Los Angeles, many not speaking English but determined to carry on as writers, directors and actors. More than simply surviving, they made a profound impact on Hollywood moviemaking. Cinema's Exiles: From Hitler to Hollywood DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 2009 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 117 min. / Street Date April 12, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Cinematography Joan Churchill, Emil Fischhaber Film Editor Anny Lowery Meza Original Music Peter Melnick Written, Produced and Directed by Karen Thomas

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Cinema's Exiles: From Hitler to Hollywood is the perfect docu to introduce people to the way film and world history are intertwined... and also to generate interest in older movies and classic cinema. Instead of a story about the making of movies, it's about a fascinating group of filmmakers forced to abandon...

For one night only on Saturday, May 9 at 730pm, Broadway legend Patti LuPone will perform in her critically-acclaimed concert, Far Away Places, conceived and directed by Scott Wittman with musical arrangements by Joseph Thalken at Pace University's Schimmel Center. A Broadway superstar for more than 30 years, Ms. LuPone is a two-time Tony Winner Best performance by a leading actress for Evita and Gypsy an Olivier recipient for her performance in London's Les Miserables and a two-time Grammy winner Best Classical recording and Best Opera recording for Rise and Fall of Mahagonny. She takes us on a musical journey with thrilling renditions of songs by an eclectic list of songwriters, including Stephen Sondheim, Cole Porter, Willie Nelson, Kurt Weill, Edith Piaf, Frederick Hollander, and, even The BeeGees.

(Josef von Sternberg, 1930; Eureka!, PG)

Among the first enduringly great movies of the sound era, The Blue Angel was made simultaneously in German and English versions (both contained in this three-disc set) by the 35-year-old Viennese-born Hollywood director Josef von Sternberg. The great German character actor Emil Jannings, who'd won the first ever Oscar for best actor under Sternberg's direction in The Last Command (1928), insisted on Sternberg being brought to Berlin for his first talking film.

This turned out to be The Blue Angel (based on a novel by Thomas Mann's brother Heinrich), in which Jannings gives an exquisitely detailed performance as the pompous, middle-aged Professor Rath, a high-school teacher whose life is destroyed through his romantic infatuation with Lola Lola, a wilful young singer he meets at the eponymous nightclub. Sternberg cast the little-known Marlene Dietrich as the mercurial enchantress, a role that brought her world stardom and took her to the States,...

There are so many dvds, film books, soundtrack CDs, and interesting blog posts—and so little time to digest them all. Over the past week or so I’ve tried to catch up and want to share some of my thoughts and discoveries. First, I’ve been in the thrall of Frederick Hollander’s marvelous music and Dr. Seuss’ clever lyrics for The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T., a brilliant soundtrack reconstructed by Fsm Golden Age Classics on a bountiful three-cd set. This was a dream project for the gifted composer and pianist (best remembered for writing Marlene Dietrich’s signature songs “Falling in Love…...