Greeting! Savant's new reviews today are

Hello again ... the year 2006 is on the way out, with a hopefully happier 2007 on the way. We're enjoying the cool but sunny days here in Los Angeles -- clear skies! -- and thinking about the new snowstorm hitting Denver -- how do they get through all that?

What's coming up? A look at the schedule sees a slowish start to another promising year. First Run Features begins with a pair of 1950s German films, Council of the Gods and Rotation, and then there's a Robert Mitchum collection (Angel Face, Home from the Hill, Macao, The Sundowners, The Good Guys and the Bad Guys, The Yakuza), remastered Yojimbo and Sanjuro from Criterion, and a quadruple bill of Richard Gordon thrillers (The Haunted Strangler, Corridors of Blood, First Man Into Space, The Atomic Submarine) from the same company. The first week of February brings interesting shows like Miracle in the Rain, A Summer Place & Blume in Love (Warners), The Heiress (Paramount) and Here Comes Mr. Jordan (Sony).

Some of the Lowry re-mastered 007 films hit in February, but after seeing On Her Majesty's Secret Service I'll be looking before buying. The expensive new transfers pay no attention to OHMSS's original look. Both the opening sunset beach scene and the ending dawn mountaintop battle are color-timed as if they were taking place at high noon, and almost every scene is 'brightened' so that it looks like a Doris Day movie -- the real Alpine locations might as well have been filmed on the Universal back lot. Thanks for reading! Glenn Erickson