By Steven Suskin
13 Dec 2009

That Meryl Streep is an actor beyond classification is at this late date no surprise; I don't know that I've ever seen her give any performance that wasn't fascinating, and that's going back to Tennessee Williams' 27 Wagons Full of Cotton in 1976. Not a typical Streep role, I guess you could say, but that's the point. At any rate, here she is as Julia Child, and needless to say she is convincing.

Julie and Julia [Columbia/Sony] is the confection, and it is pretty tasty. Amy Adams serves as co-star (playing Julie); Stanley Tucci offers strong support as Julia's husband Paul; Nora Ephron wrote and directed. And now my kids have taken to standing by the stove shouting "more butter, more butter." Special features on the Blu-ray disc include "Family & Friends Remember Julia Child"; a tour of Child's kitchen; cooking lessons featuring Child and other chefs; and recipes, too!

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Movie studios like to package together existing DVD releases in various groupings, hoping to get additional sales for titles that have already been restored and released. Such is the theory behind the popular-priced Turner Classic Movies Greatest Classic Films Collection. A case in point is Holiday TCM Greatest Classic Films [Warner], which mixes four films with a Christmas-time flavor. Given that at least two of the four are highly recommendable favorites, this four-film-on-two-double-sided DVDs item is a welcome addition to the collections of anyone who likes heartwarming pre-'50s black and white comedies. The high spot for me is something called "Christmas in Connecticut" (1945), one of those career-girl-with-the-wrong-fiance-falls-in-love-with-a-soldier yarns. The girl is Barbara Stanwyck, which sets us on a high level from the beginning. (The soldier is Dennis Morgan, who is okay but clearly not on her level.) Stanwyck is bolstered by two veteran scene-stealers, Sydney Greenstreet and S.Z. (Cuddles) Sakall. Stanwyck is a Martha Stewart-type homemaking columnist whose publisher (Greenstreet) decides she should entertain a wounded soldier at her farm in Connecticut for the holidays; problematic in that Stanwyck doesn't have a farm in Connecticut, doesn't have the husband or infant featured in her columns, and doesn't know how to cook. She borrows house, husband and infant, and brings along the chef from her neighborhood restaurant. It all works out as you'd imagine, but the no-name director and screenwriters have a fine time getting us there. Of a similar pedigree, but needing little description here, is "The Shop Around the Corner" (1940). Theatre fans know it as the basis for Broadway's finest musical valentine, She Loves Me; filmgoers are familiar with remakes "In the Good Old Summertime" and "You've Got Mail." The first Hollywood version, a veritable sacher torte of a confection, features Margaret Sullavan and Jimmy Stewart, with screenplay and direction from the great Ernst Lubitsch. The other two items in the box are the 1938 version of "A Christmas Carol" starring Reginald Owen, pretty good if not comparable to the 1951 Alastair Sim version; and the not-especially-Christmasy "It Happened on Fifth Avenue" (1947). This last does hold some interest, as the cast contains future TV-star Gale Storm and former musical comedy-star Victor Moore.

It seems to me that if the purveyors of Blu-ray really want this format to take off, they would spend less time advertising and simply lasso fans into watching what Blu-ray can do for their favorite movies. Invite them to screenings of a favorite, send them home with a free copy of said favorite, and that customer will surely buy a Blu-ray player and start building a collection of other favorites. This theory comes courtesy of Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest [Warner]. A grand movie, no doubt, thanks to the varied contributions of Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, and Martin Landau, not to mention screenwriter Ernest Lehman and composer Bernard Herrmann. But those grand segments — the car ride along the mountain cliff, the knife-throwing at the UN, the police accosting the bellcaps in the train station, and most especially the crop-dusting sequence and that unparalleled Mt. Rushmore chase — are even more grand in Blu-ray. But even mundane moments grab our attention. Remember two detectives questioning Eva while she walks with Cary along the railroad platform in Chicago? Extras mill about in the background. There's a rail worker in a white shirt in the far corner of the screen, a couple of platforms away. As Eva talks, so help me, you can see this guy exhale a cloud of cigarette smoke. Now, that's Blu-Ray. This "50th Anniversary Edition" comes within a 48-page hardcover book, conveniently sized to fit on your DVD shelf. And filled with photos, including some shots of the Mount Rushmore set that might well alter how you watch that dazzling final sequence.

(Steven Suskin is author of "The Sound of Broadway Music: A Book of Orchestrators and Orchestrations" as well as "Second Act Trouble," "Show Tunes" and the "Opening Night on Broadway" books. He can be reached at Ssuskin@aol.com)