It's romance day for Savant, with a classic oldie and a Danish import that made the perfect date movie last January.

Miramax's Italian for Beginners is an old-fashioned love soap told from within the Dogme 95 discipline, and comes off exceedingly well. With a cast of 12 or so really charming Danes.

Warner/Turner's The Shop around the Corner is a Hollywood classic from Ernst Lubitsch and screenwriter Samuel Raphaelson that's a beauty on all counts. Indeed, the kind they don't make anymore, in Hollywood, at any rate. With James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan.

Let's see here, what's new? Among the backlog, I have the new MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, which I'll take out of order and review early if anybody would like me to ... and it looks like the Alec Guinness movies I expected to see a month ago are coming in. Late but never too late: I'll have fun writing on those ... what else? I'm being told to get off my ... chair, and to go see an amazing Anime playing in digital projection at the El Capítan, which I just might do. Besides that, up next will be THE THIN MAN .... Thanks, Glenn Erickson