January proceeds at its petty pace, with exceptional entertainment being released every week. Today, a classic, and some silly fun.

Fox's celebrated and revered How Green Was My Valley is another almost perfect film, John Ford's family saga of Welsh miners whose life is changing under the weight of bad economic times. Ford was a real visual poet, and understanding this classic gives meaning to many of his later, less-lauded work. In beautiful black & white, and (I'm fairly sure) a vintage experimental stereophonic mix.

A&E's bulky boxed set of Stingray: The Complete Series is 39 episodes of marionettes, submarines, evil underwater enemies, and colorful fantasy action. The music is weird-retro and the expressionless wooden-headed heroes may warp your mind. For aficionados and nostalgic members of the 60's TeeVee generation.

Various news: I've been tipped by reader Jack H. that Buena Vista's impending release of The Absent-Minded Professor will be COLORIZED. If it's not so, I'm just spreading needless hysteria, but if it's true, it sure doesn't speak well for the marketers at Disney. Maybe there's two versions of the film on the disc. Just turning off the color in playback isn't a good idea, because it'll look washed-out: Colorized versions use very low-contrast transfers as a way of painting chroma into dark areas. Colorization is apparently one of those discredited ideas that keeps wanting to come back. The way some critics talk, Disney is already re-coloring its animated classics to the extent that their imperfect, original versions are already in jeopardy of being lost. It's commerce, folks, like everything else, and in our democracy, we can vote with our pocketbooks. Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson