Another good evening to all. Savant rounds the week out with a Billy Wilder comedy about the Cold War, a positive docu on America's Cuban Cold War boogeyman, and a guest review of a gargantuan music docu disc from Region 2 in the UK.

MGM's One, Two, Three finally gets the great video presentation it deserves in this new MGM encoding. The fast-paced laugh machine is still a riot of topical and political references from 1961, made just as the Berlin Wall went up, and people stopped laughing about this stuff. James Cagney is magnificent in one of his last performances.

First Run Features' Fidel is a docu on the Cuban revolutionary and strongman that takes a tack opposite the opinion of our State Department - the POV of the dictator as seen by the rest of the world. Definitely a partisan affair, it presents Castro as an important leader, without the rhetoric. Savant thinks America is great because writers and filmmakers are allowed to make statements like this.

Northern UK correspondent Lee Broughton gives us a detailed look at an enormous disc set called The Strange World of Northern Soul, an exhaustive study of the 70s trend in England of reviving 60s American soul music and its performers, even many who hadn't much success in the states originally. The dance hall movement seems to correspond roughly to our Disco craze, but sounds a lot more interesting. Region 2 and PAL, of course.

Still no Warners genre discs ... maybe tomorrow. Thanks, Glenn ("thinking carrot") Erickson